UCLA enters 1st Big Ten tourney on quiet roll

Mick Cronin's biggest worries all season have focused on getting better and reaching March with healthy bodies.

"Got to make sure these guys are fresh when the big dance starts," the UCLA coach said.

First, though, the fourth-seeded Bruins (22-9) face either fifth-seeded Wisconsin (23-8) or 13th-seeded Northwestern (17-15) in the Big Ten tournament quarterfinals on Friday in Indianapolis.

"I feel like we got good momentum going into the tournament," guard Eric Dailey Jr. said. "This is the basketball we know we can play. We got to keep playing our brand of basketball."

The Bruins closed the regular season by winning 11 of their last 14 games. Still, they are not among the seven Big Ten teams ranked in this week's Associated Press Top 25.

"I don't know if it's the West Coast bias. I don't know what it is," Cronin said. "I try to tell our guys all the time that it shouldn't matter if somebody else thinks you're a success. You cannot care about what other people say."

There is a ranked team in Westwood, however. The UCLA women are No. 1 this week — a position they held for 12 straight weeks earlier in the season — after beating rival Southern California for the Big Ten Tournament title last weekend.

Last year, Cronin's Bruins had their first overall sub.-500 record since 2015-16 and they missed the NCAA Tournament for the first time in his tenure, a run that includes three straight Sweet 16 appearances and a berth in the 2021 Final Four. UCLA owns a record 11 national championships, 10 of them under the late Hall of Fame coach John Wooden.

UCLA made its debut in the Big Ten this season, leaving behind the manageable travel schedule of the West Coast-based Pac-12 for repeated trips to the Midwest and East Coast, which Cronin griped about.

The Bruins are back in Indiana for the third time in a month, having split separate trips to Indiana (win) and Purdue (loss).

After rising as high as No. 15 in the AP poll, the Bruins dropped out of the rankings for good in early January. Their plunge coincided with an 0-4 start to Big Ten play.

Cronin publicly ripped his team, and they responded by reeling off seven straight wins, including beating eventual Big Ten regular season champion Michigan State at Pauley Pavilion.

"We learned a lot," guard Lazar Stefanovic said. "That was the biggest turnaround for us, when we figured out what we got to do to win and we're all aware of things that make us a good team."

This season's roster includes such impact transfers as Tyler Bilodeau from Oregon State and Kobe Johnson from rival USC, as well as Dailey from Oklahoma State and Skyy Clark from Louisville. Aday Mara from Spain, who's one of the nation's tallest players at 7-foot-3, has seen his minutes increase since scoring a career-high 22 points in a win against Wisconsin on Jan. 21.

The Bruins arrived in Indianapolis coming off an emphatic 90-63 blowout of USC last weekend.

"I'm proud of how they fought through the struggles," said Cronin, who has urged his team to play with a one-and-done mentality on Friday.

"We just try to focus on 'Get better.' Everything else is a distraction," he said. "The most successful people, whether it was Tom Brady, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant in recent memory, that's all they worried about. They didn't worry about what you said about them."

The Bruins are projected as a No. 6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Winning the Big Ten Tournament could likely push them higher and keep them closer to home.

But Cronin has said he doesn't care who wins the league tournament, even if it's the Bruins.

"We proved four years ago it doesn't matter," he said, referring to UCLA's Final Four run in 2021 after losing a Pac-12 Tournament quarterfinal to Oregon. "I'm much more concerned with our location than our seed. The travel is much more important."

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