THOSE GUTTY LITTLE BRUINS ARE BACK!
Sophomore Jaime Jaquez Jr. of Camarillo, California, has sparked the Bruin run to the Final Four with an average of 16.8 points per game and 6.8 rebounds through the team’s first four wins in this year’s NCAA Tournament.
It’s been a wonderful week for this UCLA grad! Did I ever tell you I am also a sports fan? Specifically, a Bruin sports fan? Especially a fan of the school’s legendary basketball program? That I was a student at UCLA even before the wizard John Wooden won his first of ten national championships? How fitting it is that, against all the so-called experts’ expectations and predictions, the Bruins are going to Indianapolis for NCAA hoops’ Final Four?
Listen to Bill Walton you East Coast pundits and NCAA nose-pickers; your glaring prejudices are showing! The PAC 12 is the Conference of Champions, and you sold us short again this year! You invited only five of our teams to the annual March Madness tourney, branding our conference as down, weak, not competitive with the big boys. Not only did we get shorted on invitees to the Big Dance, you compounded the insult by seeding those five teams no higher than sixth (USC in the West Regional). How sweet it is to watch you folks dine again on raw crow!
You fork-tongued soothsayers really should hide your blushing heads in shame. You told us the mighty Big Ten was going to kick our posteriors. You never drew the logical conclusion that the teams in the PAC-12 had so-so win-loss records because they had to play each other!
Yet you invited nine teams from the oh-so-awesome Big Ten, including two number-one seeds (Illinois and Michigan) and a number-two (Ohio State). They didn’t go far, did they? By my reckoning, the Big Ten had an overall tournament record of eight wins and nine losses through the semi-finals, with no survivor making it to the Final Four.
By contrast, the PAC 12 has amassed a sterling 14-4 win-loss record, with UCLA knocking off the East Regional’s number-two seed Alabama and then number-one seed Michigan, both in heart-wrenching upset thrillers, in their surprising run through March Madness; yes, the Blue and Gold will carry the West Coast’s colors to Indianapolis.
OK, so I know my joy in our Cinderella story comes to an ugly end tomorrow when my Bruins meet the unbeaten Bulldogs from Gonzaga. The only way we get by that superhuman bunch is for the entire Zag team to come down with (asymptomatic) Covid-19 and be quarantined. (Not that I wish that.)
But to end on a happy and hopeful note, did you know that not a single Bruin player who performed on this year’s tournament team and reached the Final Four is a senior? Meaning? That every one of them will be back next near to make another run for what would be the Bruins’ Twelfth National Championship. Back as well will be my nominee for coach of the year, Mick Cronin. You benighted pundits can put all that in your nimbus-filled crystal balls and…you know where to stick it.
(NB: Any stuffy, learned, high-toned reader who thinks college sports is not what academic life is supposed to be about should also know that in the ranking of research universities worldwide, three PAC 12 teams are in the Top Twenty-five; they are Stanford, Cal and…wait for it!…UCLA. You might conclude that scholarship and athletic excellence coexist in the Golden State.)