Swanson: In every way, a great day for UCLA basketball

LOS ANGELES – The inverse of Murphy’s Law? Well, Yhprum’s Law, no? Wherein anything that can go right will go right.

It was one of those really good days for UCLA basketball, when across the country, everything the Bruins could have wanted to happen, happened.

The men’s team was a big winner, the women’s team too, those buoyant Bruins’ hoopers winning by a combined 56 points – a one-two punch of big-game blowouts.

There was the No. 4 UCLA women’s 75-46 win over No. 13 Ohio State in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals secured the Bruins a third crack at JuJu Watkins and USC in the conference tournament finals on Sunday.

And then, in the Big Ten regular-season finale at Pauley Pavilion, their counterparts on the men’s team wound up with the best possible path forward after every domino fell that needed to for the Bruins to secure a double-bye in the Big Ten Tournament:

A Wisconsin loss to Penn State? Check.

A Northwestern loss to Maryland? Check.

And, finally, the one that was totally in their control: A Bruins victory over USC?

A nothing-left-to-chance checkmark, bold and underlined and celebrated heartily by a crowd of 12,018 on Senior Night: UCLA 90, USC 63.

The Bruins finished the regular season 22-9 overall and, importantly, 13-7 in conference. The Bruins earned the three-way tiebreaker with the Badgers and Purdue because they’d beaten the conference champion Spartans – a 63-61 nail-biter won on Eric Dailey Jr. go-ahead floater with 7.5 seconds left on Feb. 5 – and the other two teams hadn’t.

Because of that, Saturday’s rout will ease the Bruins’ route at the conference tournament in Indianapolis, where they won’t have to play until Friday, after taking a couple well-earned and much-needed days off first.

“Best news of the day,” Coach Mick Cronin said of the forthcoming respite.

“I’m not a big believer in conference tournaments … ’cause around here, man, they ain’t gonna hang no banner for the Big Ten Tournament,” he added. “They might give us a T-shirt because they’re winning national championships around here in all kinds of stuff.”

The real goal, said Cronin – whose 2022-23 team lost a taxing Pac-12 Tournament championship game to Arizona 61-59 and then came up short in a Sweet 16 loss to Gonzaga 13 days later – is always for his team to be ready when it really matters.

“We gotta make sure these guys are fresh when the Big Dance starts,” said Cronin, who has sashayed his way to a 9-3 record in those games as UCLA’s dance instructor.

These Bruins showed excellent timing when it came to finding their rhythm. They punctuated their first sweep of their crosstown rivals since the 2017-18 season with the most complete game of this season so far, sending USC (15-16, 7-13) home early, without even a conference tournament bid, in Eric Musselman’s first season at the helm.

UCLA started the game on a 14-2 run and slammed the door on USC’s comeback hopes early in the second half with an 8-0 run, laying it on thickest after halftime with 51 second-half points. This was a runaway win that made everyone watching wonder just how deep of a run could the Bruins go on if they play like this?

Five Bruins scored in double figures and collectively they shot the dictionary-definition of efficient: 61.7% from the field (37 for 60) and 45.5% (10 for 22) from 3-point range. They also scored 37 points off turnovers, if you’re wondering whether Cronin’s defense demands also checked out Saturday.

The Bruins’ crowd-pleasing 7-foot-3 sophomore center Aday Mara displayed his feathery touch from his perch in the clouds and swatted away a couple shots too.

A skipping, head-shaking, cheesing Dailey Jr. scored a season-high 25 points on 10-of-13 shooting, but that was overshadowed, Cronin insisted, by his nine deflections.

And Skyy Clark added another 13 deflections, Cronin said – and 17 points (7-for-10 shooting) to go with six assists and three steals.

It really was UCLA, all day.

But can the Bruins stack enough of these sorts of days to make it a great month? A month to cap a potentially great season? One that could leave them with more than just a T-shirt?

Credit to them, Cronin’s crew seems to believe so.

“I think we’ve got good momentum going into the tournament,” Dailey Jr. said. “And great defensive plays, a lot of deflections, a lot of movement, we hit a lot of shots tonight.

“This is the basketball we know we can play. And we need to keep playing this basketball going into the tournament, going into March Madness. We’re gonna go a long way with this.”