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Alexander: UCLA runs out of answers in 2nd half, NCAA Tournament ends again

March 23, 2026

PHILADELPHIA – It was close … and then it wasn’t.

To be precise, two Connecticut scoring runs ended UCLA’s men’s basketball season Sunday night. The first, a 14-0 run midway through the second half when the Bruins went more than 5½ minutes without scoring, got them in trouble, trailing 56-44 with 10:40 left.

UCLA rallied from that one, scoring eight straight points to pull within 56-52 on Eric Dailey’s basket and free throw with 8:11 left. But the 11-1 UConn run that followed? That was the killer. That gave the Huskies a 69-55 lead that they took to the bank, and will take to Washington D.C. for Friday’s East Regional semifinal following Sunday’s 73-57 triumph.

UConn will face Michigan State. UCLA’s players and coaches will head home having failed to get out of the first weekend of the tournament again, a carbon copy of last spring. A year ago, they were a No. 7 seed in Lexington, won their first game against Utah State and were eliminated by Tennessee. This time, they won an uncomfortably close game over Central Florida and just didn’t have enough against UConn, the No. 2 seed to Duke in this region.

“It’s tough, man. Definitely tough,” Eric Dailey Jr. said. “You feel like you’re so close to getting everything, all the pieces flowing and to come out like that tonight, it’s hard. Obviously … we didn’t have Tyler (Bilodeau), but we can’t make excuses. It’s still five-on-five.”

The numbers didn’t lie. UCLA was 19 for 49 from the field, 14 for 36 on 2-point shots, and a sizable percentage – “I’m going to guess 20 or 25,” Mick Cronin said – came at the rim.

And 10 of those misses came during those two second half droughts. The Bruins were 0 for 5 with three turnovers – specifically two missed 3-pointers, two missed 2-point jumpers and a layup during a 5:39 stretch when the score went from 44-42 Bruins to 56-44 Huskies, and three jumpers and two layups during the 4:28 span without a field goal when UConn widened its lead to 69-55 with a little over three minutes to play.

“There was a lot of physicality,” Cronin said, “but I told the guys early in the game” that this was to expect.

Would Bilodeau have made a difference? Sunday night, he was in sweats, having been ruled out before the game, his right knee still too sore to chance playing him. It had to be killing him, as a senior having to sit out the biggest games at the end of his career.

But Cronin said he told Bilodeau this: “If this is the worst thing that happens to you, you’ll have a hell of a life.”

In the midst of that second drought, the one that decided the game, Cronin was slapped with a technical after watching Donovan Dent drive the lane and get hammered with no call. Alex Karaban made both technical free throws, and Braylon Mullins scored inside on the ensuing possession to put the Huskies back up by 13, 67-54.

Maybe he just needed to vent. This wasn’t the same as the Marty Schottenheimer unsportsmanlike conduct penalty that cost the San Diego Chargers a playoff game a couple of decades ago. And the officiating crew statement obtained by a pool reporter, which said the coach ran afoul of the rulebook passage regarding “disrespectfully addressing an official” and “objecting to an official’s decision by rising from the bench or using gestures,” sounded pretty weak.

But in the end, it’s like Cronin said earlier in the week: If you want a better seed, win more games.

Right now, even with their tradition and their banners, the Bruins seem to be just one of many teams in the squishy middle – good enough to win a game or maybe two in the tournament, not really good enough to uphold that legacy by winning it all.

As an aside, it is now 31 seasons since the school’s last men’s basketball national championship. In Westwood, that’s an eternity. And yet, while the NCAA Tournament retains its traditional trappings and brackets and upsets keep the country entranced, the underpinnings of college basketball are totally different.

The programs that have the biggest player payrolls seem to be having the most success, and while Cronin was an early booster of NIL on his campus with the launch of “Men of Westwood,” UCLA seems to be dropping back in the pack.

The four letters still represent a standard of excellence, but consider: UCLA got to the Final Four under Cronin in 2021 in the semi-bubble of Indianapolis, and might have gotten to the championship game if not for Jalen Suggs’ overtime buzzer-beater from the logo to send Gonzaga past the Bruins.

Before that, the last Final Fours on the Bruins’ ledger came in 2006, ’07 and ’08 under Ben Howland. It probably seems even longer in Westwood. And with the portal and what other schools can offer in NIL money, who knows what the roster will look like in 2026-27.

Bottom line: At a school where, as Cronin noted last week, the only thing that truly counts is the NCAA Tournament, this disappointment stings.

“It’s a zero sum game in this tournament, guys,” the coach said. “You got to play well. We didn’t play well enough. Blame me, but we didn’t play well enough. You’re not going to score 57 points and beat anybody in this tournament, let alone UConn.

“That’s because we didn’t finish at the rim.”

jalexander@scng.com

Orange County Register

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Alexander: UCLA runs out of answers in 2nd half, NCAA Tournament ends again

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