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Alexander: UCLA handles the pressure, survives and advances

March 21, 2026

PHILADELPHIA — The first thought, if you follow UCLA men’s basketball, might be that it only gets tougher from here.

But the Bruins, the No. 7 seed going into this year’s edition of The Madness, should have expected that they would get Central Florida’s absolute best punch. And Friday night’s first-round matchup was indeed in doubt right down to the final seconds before the Bruins prevailed, 75-71, to earn a couple more days here and some more opportunities for Mick Cronin to sample this city’s culinary delights before they square off with No. 2 seed UConn (30-5) on Sunday night.

Yeah, they earned it.

They had to sweat out a furious effort from the 10th-seeded Knights (21-12), who had lost four of their last five going into the NCAA Tournament but played like a team with nothing to lose and plenty of rocks in their slingshot, and additionally had the expected support – loud support – of the majority of the crowd, especially the longer they hung with the Bruins.

Remember, this was not Cinderella that UCLA was playing. This was a power conference team, part of a Big XII that sent eight teams to the tournament including a No. 1 seed (Arizona), two No. 2’s (Houston and Iowa State) and a No. 4 (Kansas). The Knights are in their third season in that conference after making the upgrade from the American Conference, and maybe this was a stepping stone for them.

“You take a team to the NCAA Tournament, you left your legacy,” said head coach Johnny Dawkins, a former 76er returning to Philly with his team, who talked of how proud he was that his players stayed in the fight until the very end.

“They left a foundation for what we want to grow our program (into) from this point on,” he said. “I think for the players that will return – you never know in our world. I can’t say that with assurance anymore – but … they understood what it took along this journey to put us in this position.”

And the Bruins accomplished this without Tyler Bilodeau, who looked good enough to raise Cronin’s spirits during Thursday’s practice but woke up with stiffness in his right knee on Friday. Cronin said he didn’t like the way Bilodeau was moving in shootaround, and while his player wanted to play, the coach felt he had to make the hard decision.

“If you want to know why I said no, then you should probably never coach,” Cronin said. “You got to be responsible for the people underneath you and try to do the right thing. You might see me being hard on guys, but when the rubber meets the road and they need somebody, I’m the guy, so they can take it to the bank. I’m not going to put that guy in harm’s way.

“Hopefully, he has a good day tomorrow. Before you ask, we’ll see how he is on Sunday.”

The players had expected Bilodeau to play, too, so there was some emotional adjustment involved.

“I saw the look on their face at shootaround,” Cronin said.

Without Bilodeau’s 30.3 minutes per game, 17.6 points, 5.6 rebounds, 51.8% shooting and 46.4% marksmanship from 3-point territory, others had to step up and did.

Eric Dailey Jr. made eight of his 17 shots and finished with a game-high 20 points, adding five rebounds, two steals and two blocked shots. Xavier Booker added 15 points, eight rebounds and four blocks, with one of his two 3-pointers giving UCLA a 54-43 lead with just under 11 minutes to play.

Trent Perry finished with 15 points, including 7 for 10 from the free-throws line – and 6 for 8 in the final minute, in a cauldron of noise particularly on the last two makes with 8.3 seconds left and the Bruins clinging to a three-point lead.

“Crazy stuff happens in March, like Trent missing three free throws,” Cronin said. “Never happens. But he’s human. I still want the ball in his hands and believe in him.”

Was Perry surprised that the other two in crunch time didn’t go in, given that he came into the game an 86.3% foul shooter?

“A hundred percent,” he said. “At the end of the day, just be confident. Trust in the work, trust in the process. It’s something I have been doing for a living, so (I) never lost confidence in that.

“A game like this, in an environment like that, just stick to what I have been doing for the past years, honestly. … It’s routine.”

Donovan Dent added 10 points, five assists, six steals, no turnovers and a cool head in the second half when the Knights turned up the full-court pressure. They’ve come back from double-digit deficits to win five games this season, and UCLA was ready for the pressure and ultimately handled it.

“In that situation, in an elimination game, you’ve got nothing to lose,” Cronin said. “Once they got the game down under 10 minutes and we pushed it back out (to, eventually, a 58-44 lead with 7:47 left). I told them, ‘they’re coming now.’

“We weathered it all.”

And maybe Skyy Clark, beyond his eight points and two steals, provided some inspiration after getting part of a tooth broken late in the second half after UCF’s Themus Fulks inadvertently popped him in the mouth.

“I saw him smile and it was bleeding,” Dailey said, and that probably endeared him to his coach even more.

“Looks like a boxer,” Cronin said. “He just looked tough. … We need a late-night oral surgeon.”

Toughness is what matters at this time of the year, both physical and mental. UCLA built the lead, had it trimmed, weathered the press and half-court traps, and made its free throws in crunch time; not just Perry’s six in the final minute but two by Dent and one of two by Clark at the very end, his swish on the second of two with 2.3 remaining providing the final margin.

It was only at that point where it became kind of, sort of comfortable. The Bruins might as well get used to that.

jalexander@scng.com

Orange County Register

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Alexander: UCLA handles the pressure, survives and advances

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