Alexander: UCLA survives, advances … and astounds

Still wondering why they call it March Madness?

UCLA’s Bruins, alone, have been maddening, frustrating … name your adjective to describe any of the opposing players and coaches who have run into them the last couple of weeks in Indianapolis.

There were doubts when the tournament started, the Bruins relegated to the play-in round after four straight losses. There were doubts when they played Michigan State, doubts when they played BYU, a feeling they’d gotten lucky when Abilene Christian took out Texas.

There were more doubts when the 11th-seeded Bruins stepped on the floor Sunday against No. 2 seed Alabama and its fast-paced, three-point fueled attack. And maybe we should just stop referring to seeds right here, because it’s evident by now that the selection committee woefully underestimated the Pac-12 and its representatives who made the field of 68.

Pac-12 teams are now 12-2 in this tournament with three teams in the Elite Eight, two of them from L.A. The last time three teams from this conference got that far was 2001: Stanford, Arizona and USC. (And the Pac-12 has two losses only because USC and Oregon played each other Sunday night.)

The doubts from the outside? I’m guessing the UCLA traveling party is laughing about them behind closed doors. Even after Alex Reese’s end-of-regulation three-pointer forced an extra period Sunday, even with Johnny Juzang having fouled out, the gutty lil’ Bruins flexed their muscles. David Singleton stepped up, Jaime Jaquez made a pair of dagger jump shots, the Bruins made almost all of their free throws at the end, and their 88-78 victory over the Crimson Tide should have hammered home this point: Right now, whatever these Bruins need, they find.

They are resilient, tough, determined, and their confidence grows with each opponent they topple. They scored nearly as many points in overtime (23) as they’d scored in the entire second half (25) against Alabama, and the bottom line is that they didn’t scare and didn’t shrink from the moment. They are, in short, a Mick Cronin team.

And they now have the opportunity to become just the second team in tournament history to go from the First Four to the Final Four. Virginia Commonwealth did so in 2011, also as an 11 seed, and by the time the Rams played Kansas in the regional final they were the nation’s darlings. The Bruins won’t be when they play Michigan Tuesday, which is quite understandable.

But this might be as good an example as any of a team that built on the lessons of an entire season and called on them when they were most needed.

“This is March,” Jaquez said. “It happens all the time.”

Toughness isn’t just physicality. It’s ignoring the noise, maintaining belief when others won’t, taking what would seem to be disadvantages and using them. Remember, this is a team that had its top recruit for this season bolt for the G-League, had one big man (Chris Smith) get hurt and another (Jalen Hill) unavailable for personal reasons. When one guy goes down, another steps up, and that’s what happened Sunday evening.

“There were some tough practices there where it was probably easier to just get down and try to wrap it in and call it a season,” Jaquez said. “But we stuck together. We stuck it out, and we came together. That’s the biggest reason why we’re winning these games, how close we are as a team, coming together and believing in one another.”

Cronin acknowledged the willingness of his players to be coached, and that shouldn’t be discounted. This staff is more focused on developing the players they have than obsessing over how many 5-star recruits they can bag on signing day. Part of that development involves the resilience that comes out at moments like these.

Cronin said he considered the First Four victory over Michigan State as a turning point, especially because that overtime win, in which the Bruins came back in the second half, came a year after the Bruins had lost to the Spartans 75-63 in Maui.

“We were down 14 in West Lafayette, and it’s cold,” said the transplant from Cincinnati. “We’re all from Southern California. Even me, now, I hate the cold weather. My blood is thin, buddy. But these guys just refused to give in.

“You know me. You know how much much I’ve been trying to instill that will in them, where you just refuse to give in. Somebody might beat you, but you never let up, and you never give in. So I give the kids all the credit, man.”

And some of that attitude may go back to another moment at the very start of his tenure last season. He told his players at the beginning of practice that whoever wanted to leave could, but that if they stayed, they were his guys.

“I hear this all the time: ‘Well, he doesn’t have his players yet,” Cronin said. “Yes, I do. I told those guys in the first meeting, if you show up at workouts tomorrow, you’re my player. If you don’t want to, I fully understand. We’ll find you a new home. But if you show up tomorrow I don’t ever want to hear that if we sign a player that ‘he’s going to play his guy.’ “

Everybody stayed, as he recalled it.

“I give the kids credit because look, there’s already a thousand people in the transfer portal,” he said. “So it’s easy to cut bait and run. It’s hard to dig in and deal with a short Irishman telling you to get in a defensive stance. I’m very thankful that the guys all hung in there and helped me build this.”

And now they have a chance to prompt a lot more red faces among the members of the selection committee. How much fun would that be?

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