The Maui Jim Maui Invitational provides the UCLA men’s basketball team with an appealing opportunity: It gives the Bruins a chance to quickly render their season-opening loss to Monmouth irrelevant.
If UCLA (2-1) wins just one game against the stacked field in Maui, it will give the team a signature win early in the season it desperately needs to boost its credibility. Right now, all that stands out in the Bruins’ tournament resume is the upset loss to Monmouth – a mid-major team.
“(In Maui), every win is signature,” said senior forward/center Tony Parker. “It’s gonna be a big-time tournament for us. It’s a March Madness kind of vibe there.”
The eight-team tournament begins Monday morning with a matchup between St. John’s (3-0) and No. 17 Vanderbilt (3-0). The unranked Bruins finish off the first day of action with a game at 6:30 p.m. local time – 8:30 PST – against UNLV (3-0).
The aptly-named Runnin’ Rebels like to push the tempo with a young and athletic lineup. UNLV lost its top two scorers from last year to the NBA, but freshman forward Derrick Jones Jr. has already made waves nationally with his highlight-reel dunking ability. The Rebels also have another high-profile freshman – 7-foot forward Stephen Zimmerman Jr. – who chose to go to his hometown college instead of UCLA.
“Obviously, starting with UNLV, you’re gonna get a really good idea, a good picture, of where your team is going into December,” said coach Steve Alford in a Maui Invitational teleconference back in July.
Both UCLA and UNLV are teams that are in their formative stages at this point in the season. The Bruins have three players in their playing rotation – freshman guards Aaron Holiday and Prince Ali, and sophomore guard/forward Jonah Bolden – who had not played a college game before this year. Alford said that he doesn’t know what the identity of his team is yet.
Meanwhile, Rebel coach Dave Rice has a handful of returning players at UNLV, but they’re still mostly underclassmen.
“I think for us, we got a lot of experience last year, we had five freshmen that played a lot of minutes for us,” Rice said in his Maui Invitational teleconference this summer.
One of those freshmen from last year’s team is Patrick McCaw. The 6-foot-7 guard has upped his scoring average from 9.6 points per game last year to 16.7 points per game in his sophomore campaign. He also has the ability to stretch to the perimeter and shoot 3-pointers, as he’s made eight of his 14 attempts from beyond the arc this year.
McCaw could pose the biggest problem for UCLA, as the Bruins don’t have a 6-foot-7 counterpart to match him with. The best matchup on paper would appear to be the versatile Bolden at 6-foot-10, but Bolden has yet to face a player of McCaw’s caliber.
Whatever the outcome Monday, both teams will assuredly learn more about their identities and NCAA Tournament resumes.