UCLA men’s basketball to play First Four matchup against Michigan State
Coach Mick Cronin will lead UCLA men’s basketball to its first NCAA tournament with him at the helm. The Bruins will play in the First Four in their first appearance since 2018. (Naveed Pour/Daily Bruin staff)
By Sam Connon
March 14, 2021 3:49 p.m.
This post was updated March 14 at 5:33 p.m.
For the second time in four years, the Bruins will be heading to the First Four with a spot in the field of 64 on the line.
UCLA men’s basketball (17-9, 13-6 Pac-12) earned a No. 11 seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament on Selection Sunday, but its first matchup will be against fellow No. 11 seed Michigan State (15-12, 9-11 Big Ten) in the First Four on Thursday. Coach Tom Izzo is already a Hall of Famer with eight Final Four trips and a national championship under his belt, and his Spartans beat the Bruins at neutral sites in both 2018 and 2019.
Redshirt junior forward Cody Riley said the rematch of those games will be a chance for UCLA to get some revenge, as well as make a statement by taking down a big-time program on a national stage.
“When I saw (the matchup), I was just like, ‘Man, that’s a heck of a play-in game,’” Riley said. “I saw that Michigan State had a down year, but we heard that they have a pretty good coach. So we’re going to go in with the mindset knowing it’s going to be a fight – it’s Michigan State, at the end of the day.”
The Bruins also appeared in the First Four in 2018 – the last time they made March Madness – where they lost to St. Bonaventure and failed to advance to the main bracket.
Should UCLA win, it will face No. 6 seed BYU (20-6, 10-3 West Coast Conference). Michigan, Alabama, Texas and Florida State are the top four seeds in the region, but all games will be played in Indiana.
The Bruins were on track to earn a far higher seed for most of the season, opening the year 12-2 and holding sole possession of first place in the Pac-12 as late as Feb. 26. Since then, UCLA is 0-4, blowing second-half leads in each game and losing its lone outing at the Pac-12 tournament to Oregon State.
“We did not play poorly down the stretch, we played well,” said coach Mick Cronin. “We just didn’t win, we didn’t close games out.”
The Beavers, who were not projected to earn an at-large bid, went on to win the conference tournament and steal a spot from a bubble team by qualifying automatically. Georgetown did the same with a win earlier Saturday in the Big East championship game, and Cincinnati nearly followed Sunday afternoon by making the American Athletic Conference title game.
As a result, the Bruins got pushed from the Last Four Byes category into the First Four.
Through the first three regions announced, UCLA hadn’t popped on up screen, meaning the Bruins had to wait until the last second to discover their postseason fate. Sophomore guard/forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said he and his teammates cheered, clapped and hugged each other when they saw they had made it in, but only after quietly sitting and worrying throughout the rest of the selection show.
“It was definitely stressful, it was definitely nerve-wracking, waiting that long to eventually finally hear our name called,” Jaquez said. “The mood of the room was very stressful, very tense, but once we heard our name called, we just had a sigh of relief and we were all just very happy.”
Cronin has now made 10 consecutive appearances in the tournament, excluding last year when it was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cronin made March Madness in each of his final nine seasons at Cincinnati, but he has yet to appear in the First Four since it was introduced in 2011.
While Cronin has coached in 17 NCAA tournament games in his career, his roster this time around lacks his experience on a national stage, as no active Bruin has ever appeared in March Madness.
“For our guys though, mentally, this is great for them, really happy for them,” Cronin said. “I left a great situation to build UCLA back into a championship program, so this is a step forward for us.”
The Bruins haven’t earned a single-digit seed since 2017, and they’ve only done so once in the past seven seasons. They were a single-digit seed in seven of the nine seasons prior to that stretch.
The tipoff time for UCLA’s game against Michigan State on Thursday has yet to be announced.
