A rematch of an NCAA Tournament West Regional semifinal last season pits No. 11 Gonzaga against UCLA on Wednesday in the fifth-place game of the Maui Invitational.
The Bulldogs won the Sweet 16 meeting 79-76 in Las Vegas, erasing a 13-point UCLA halftime lead. Julian Strawther’s 3-pointer with 7.2 seconds remaining put Gonzaga on top, and UCLA’s Tyger Campbell missed on a 3-point attempt at the buzzer.
Several key players from that matchup are gone, including Strawther and Campbell. One Bulldogs holdover from a season ago, Anton Watson, helped power Gonzaga to a 76-57 rout of Syracuse on Tuesday.
Watson was one of four Bulldogs (3-1) who scored in double figures, finishing with 12 points and 13 rebounds. Nolan Hickman, who didn’t score against UCLA in March, led Gonzaga with 19 points against the Orange.
A pair of newcomers to the Gonzaga lineup rounded out the double-figure scorers. Graham Ike produced 16 points, 14 rebounds and four steals, and Ryan Nembhard added 11 points, seven assists and five rebounds.
“It was open up a lot in the high post,” Watson said in postgame of Gonzaga’s ability to score 44 points on the interior. “We work on floaters a lot, so I could get to that and Graham was open on the baseline.”
While Gonzaga effectively scored from the interior on Tuesday, it surrendered 44 points in the paint on Monday in a 73-63 loss to No. 2 Purdue.
UCLA (4-1), which registered a 38-4 advantage for points in the paint in its 76-48 rout of Division II Chaminade on Tuesday, will look to continue attacking the interior on Wednesday.
Avoiding turnovers out of the post, however, will be a point of emphasis for UCLA. The Bruins committed 18 giveaways on Tuesday, and coach Mick Cronin attributed a number to his team being “soft” with the ball inside.
“Our post guys got stripped seven or eight times in the first half,” Cronin said. “When I coached (as an assistant at Cincinnati) a guy named Kenyon Martin (the 1999-2000 national player of the year), nobody took the ball from him ever.”
Maintaining possession is a possible question mark for the Bruins on Wednesday. So, too, is playing their third game in as many days.
Gonzaga faces the same proposition — and, to that end, Nembhard told NCAA.com’s Andy Katz, “Three games in three days, you can’t dwell on the past too much.”
UCLA came into the Maui Invitational with six freshmen having appeared during a season-opening, three-game homestand.
A seventh freshman joined the rotation on Monday with Berke Buyuktuncel being cleared by the NCAA. Two of the freshmen — Sebastian Mack and Aday Mara — started on Tuesday and recorded team-highs of 16 points and 10 rebounds, respectively.
“Right now, with the seven freshmen, you just don’t know what you’re going to get,” Cronin said.
That was true in the Bruins’ up-and-down, 71-69 loss to No. 4 Marquette on Monday. UCLA was outscored 26-22 on points in the paint and gave up 10 points on second-chance opportunities while scoring just four against the Golden Eagles.
–Field Level Media