UCLA freshmen's stingy defense could give Bruins a boost against Gonzaga

A week before the season, Mick Cronin contemplated giving up nearly 90 points in a scrimmage against San Diego State and chuckled when a reporter inquired about his defense.

Not taking the cue, the reporter asked if this could be one of the best defensive teams the coach had assembled at UCLA.

“Uh, no,” Cronin said. “Too many freshmen.”

The way things turned out, he’d take a few more.

Freshmen Adem Bona, Amari Bailey, Dylan Andrews and Will McClendon have fortified a veteran core in forming Cronin’s most wicked defense in four seasons at the school. The Bruins rank No. 2 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to the metrics of basketball analyst Ken Pomeroy, up from No. 16 last season and No. 46 the season before when they reached the Final Four.

UCLA’s defense has made it a fashionable pick to get back to college basketball’s biggest stage even with a few massive roadblocks in the way. The second-seeded Bruins (31-5) are two-point favorites over third-seeded Gonzaga (30-5) on Thursday in an NCAA tournament West Region semifinal at T-Mobile Arena, largely because they are giving up just 60.2 points per game — sixth best nationally — while holding opponents to fewer than 70 points in 31 of 36 games.

The freshmen have played a huge part in their team staying stingy despite the loss of top defender Jaylen Clark, the Bruins briefly taking the No. 1 spot defensively last week before falling one place after a 68-63 victory over Northwestern in the second round.

“There’s a whole bunch of other guys on this team capable of doing the exact same thing,” Clark said Wednesday in his first comments to reporters since suffering a season-ending leg injury this month, “and you’ve seen Amari step up in a humongous way.”

Bailey has taken the responsibility of guarding an opponent’s top perimeter player. Bona blossomed into a shot-blocking force who was the Pac-12 freshman of the year and a member of the conference’s all-defensive team. Andrews might be the Bruins’ best on-ball defender. And McClendon has added scrappiness off the bench.

A related development: All four players are among the most athletic on the team.

“The better athletes you have, you have a much better chance to erase a mistake,” Cronin said. “So there's times where there might be a guy open, but Amari Bailey is such a great athlete that he deflects the pass, or Adem Bona changes the shot. … Their athleticism supersedes their inexperience at times and their toughness.”

Coming into the season, Clark was known for his relentlessness, and senior forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. had won widespread acclaim for the feistiness that twice earned him the Hungry Dog Award that goes to the player who tallies the most defl ections in a season.

But what about Bona and Bailey, two newcomers moving into the starting lineup, and Andrews and McClendon, who would log significant minutes off the bench? How many mistakes would they make before mastering a detail-oriented defense?

Addressing his seniors before the season, Cronin told them the team wouldn’t win anything if they didn’t help teach the freshmen. That meant not just learning how to defend the pick and roll but also immediately moving on after absorbing criticism at high volume.

“Sometimes I have to take them to the side and tell them, ‘He’s on you like this because he knows you can do it and you know you can do it. Calm down and relax,’ ” senior guard David Singleton said of his message to the freshmen. “Game by game, practice after practice, you see them apply the instructions I tell them, so I think they’ve grown with that.”

It’s unclear if Bona will be part of the Bruins’ efforts to stop Gonzaga’s Drew Timme after aggravating his sore left shoulder against Northwestern. Bona did not participate in the brief portion of practice open to the media Wednesday besides playing hacky sack with a basketball alongside Bailey and some team managers.

“I’ve been taking it day by day, getting better every day,” Bona said. “By the game day, we’re going to see how I feel.”

It was hard to get any meaningful takeaways from the open practice given that Singleton wore flip-flops and a few other players Crocs while hoisting half-court shots. Clark rolled a scooter onto the court, his right leg propped up, before swishing a shot from a courtside seat. Singleton did not seem hobbled by the sprained ankle he suffered near the end of the victory over the Wildcats.

“Somehow we've got to find a way to contain Drew Timme and not give up a lot of threes regardless who plays for us because we've got some guys day to day,” Cronin said. “If it doesn't go our way, I'm not going to come in here and say we lost because these two guys weren't playing or these three guys weren't playing. We're still going to get to play five-on-five. You've got to be tough enough to figure it out if you want to win.”

Count in the freshmen as willing to do whatever’s needed, though maybe they shouldn’t even be considered freshmen anymore.

“When you have guys that are just ready and they're going against veterans every day in practice, it makes it a little easier when they get out there,” senior point guard Tyger Campbell said. “But all that has to do with effort and them locking into the scouting report also. Because with young guards it's hard — they'll get backdoored, they'll get beat, there will be a lot of things you don't expect.

“But the guys we have, they've taken on this defensive job very seriously because they know that's the only way we're going to win.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.