Q&A: Daily Bruin writers preview game
USC and UCLA are hitting the court again Thursday to add another chapter in the schools’ storied rivalry. Ahead of the game, Daily Trojan sports editor Stefano Fendrich had a chance to ask Daily Bruin senior staffer Jon Christon and sports editor Sam Settleman about UCLA’s season so far and what they expect for the big game.
SF: Aside from a few shaky performances, it seems [UCLA is] living up to the build as a top-10 team in the nation and Final Four potential. Would you guys say it’s fair to say that they’re living up to expectations so far?
JC: I think they had a top-10 team coming in, but there were a lot of question marks. Obviously, they had [senior guard/forward] Jaime Jaquez [Jr.] and [redshirt senior guard] Tyger Campbell coming back. But they’re losing Johnny Juzang, their leading scorer last year, and Jules Bernard and Cody Riley. That’s three out of the five starters from last year’s team. So it was a little surprising to see them in the top 10 just off the bat. Along the way, they lost to Baylor, but since then, they’ve been as good as advertised. So yeah, I think they lived up to expectations and kind of exceeded my own expectations just in the sense that they lost a lot of guys and haven’t really lost a beat.
SS: I think last year it was a lot easier to kind of set expectations, coming off that Final Four run, knowing what you were getting. This year, you lose a couple key guys, and you’re getting some freshmen that you’re depending on: two starters, [forward] Adem Bona and [guard] Amari Bailey. It was kind of tough to set expectations, and I didn’t really necessarily think that they would have been ranked as a top-10 team in the preseason. But the way they’ve been playing now, I think they’ve certainly lived up to that billing they had early in the season.
SF: What has this Mick Cronin era been so far for you guys? What kind of basketball do you guys expect to see night in and night out?
JC: Coach Mick Cronin definitely has a definite style, to say the least. Just going back to his time in Cincinnati, he was always known as a defense-first, hard-nosed, grinded-out type of coach. A lot of people wondered if that was going to follow to Los Angeles because L.A. is not known for hard-nosed stuff. But it’s followed pretty much to a tee and better than anyone could have imagined.
They’re still playing low-scoring games, defense-first teams, but these teams now have more talent than Crnin ever had at Cincinnati, and now we’re seeing a team that’s in the top 10 right now … [They play] just a lot of games that are not fun to watch whatsoever, but UCLA pulls them out more often than not … Low-scoring, grinded-out, hard-nosed, defense-first, whatever the cliches are, that’s Mick Cronin’s UCLA team.
SS: This is exactly what Mick Cronin has been known for across his time coaching, and you know exactly what you’re getting every night, which is a defensive-minded game … Oftentimes, it’s not exactly the most fun product to watch. It’s pretty consistent in that sense … and the offense is much less creative and has kind of struggled down the stretch recently. And we saw that in the last UCLA-USC matchup.
SF: The last time these two teams played, at halftime it was looking like it was UCLA’s game to lose, and they just about did up until the very end when USC climbed all the way back. How does UCLA need to play to make sure they don’t allow USC to get back into the game like they did last time?
SS: You’d be tempted to say [UCLA] probably won’t do that again if they get in that position. But I think that’s honestly what [UCLA] has looked like for a lot of halves this season. They just go stagnant on offense and they can’t really produce consistent offense. We saw UCLA lose to Arizona this past weekend, shooting like 31% [from the field]. When you can’t make shots and you have an offense like UCLA has right now, it’s just really not going to go that well. You know what you’re getting on the defensive end, but at the end of the day, you’re going to have to have some players make shots. I think guys like [fifth-year guard] David Singleton, some of the maybe less prolific scorers … those are the guys that are going to have to step up. [You need that] to be able to maintain that offensive pressure throughout and not have a 16-point let-down in the second half like they did last game.
SF: The Pac-12 this season is as close as it ever is. If USC wins, they could be second; if they lose, they could be fourth or fifth. How important do you think this game is going to be in terms of the Pac-12 standings and how we view the Pac-12 as a whole moving forward?
JC: UCLA has built itself, not a huge cushion, but with that winning streak, they are in first place and have multiple games of margin right now … If they lose, USC is just one game behind them, and they’d split the tiebreaker … But I think by the end of the season, I think UCLA would probably still have a bit of a cushion, but if they lose this game, they don’t have the margin of error that they have right now.
SF: And to end it off, what’s your score prediction?
SS: I’m going to go 70-64 UCLA. Maybe a little higher score than we saw last time out, but again when you have a team like UCLA, you kind of know what you’re getting on a night-in and night-out basis.
JC: I’m going to go lower than that. I’ll go 64-61 UCLA is going to win. I think it’s going to be close, and if the recent history of this rivalry has told us anything, it will be low-scoring. The crowd will probably be crazy at Galen center, and I think UCLA just has a little bit more talent to get it done.