UCLA Basketball: Bruins Cap off Season with Sluggish, Sloppy Loss

Arizona 66, UCLA 58

UCLA capped off its season with a rough loss Thursday afternoon that eliminated them from the Pac-12 Tournament. 

After an unimpressive win against USC on Wednesday in which the Bruins scored a season-low 55 points, the Bruins offense looked sluggish again as they were struggling to get shots to fall, and struggling to create very many high-percentage shots on the floor. 

While UCLA certainly could have pulled through if it could have jump-started its offense, Arizona capitalized on offense by frequently taking advantage of Solomon Hill's mismatch on defense, which the Bruins had no response to. 

Hill, who played all 40 minutes of the game, scored a game-high 25 points with 12 rebounds and had a good night from behind the arc going three for six.

Lazeric Jones helped close the gap going into halftime with a few steals, but his 17 points wasn't enough to get the offense going. 

In addition to sloppy offensive play, UCLA was hurt greatly by foul trouble. Bruins' forwards David Wear (four fouls), Travis Wear (five fouls), Joshua Smith (five fouls) as well as guard Tyler Lamb (four fouls) all got into foul trouble. 

After playing only a few minutes in the Bruins' previous Pac-12 Tournament game against USC, Joshua Smith got into foul trouble early after only a few minutes on the court. 

With 11 minutes left in the second half, Smith fouled out having played only nine minutes in the game with seven points. The Bruins were hoping to get more production out of Smith in order to capitalize on their size advantage over Arizona. 

The Numbers:

	FG%	3P%	REB	TO	PF
UCLA	39.0	16.7	28	12	24
Arizona	34.9	33.3	37	17	15

As you can see through the stats, neither team shot well from the field and the Bruins had the opportunities presented to them to get their offense going but couldn't capitalize on the Wildcats' 17 turnovers. 

Top Performers:

UCLA: Lazeric Jones (17 PTS 5 AST 3 STL)

Arizona: Solomon Hill (25 PTS 12 REB 3 STL)

The Bruins will have a nice, long off-season to reflect upon the woes of this past season and strengthen the program with a talented recruiting class—combined with experienced underclassmen like the Wear twins, Tyler Lamb, and Norman Powell as the core of the program.

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