Pac-12 Basketball: Can UCLA break the “defense wins championships” adage?

The UCLA Bruins continued its impressive 2016-17 campaign Thursday night by holding off California to move to 15-1 on the season.

As the college basketball season enters its nitty gritty portion of the year, we start finding out more and more about the contenders and pretenders for the NCAA Tournament.

UCLA, without question, is a legitimate national championship threat. Steve Alford’s team has the most imposing offensive attack in the country, a roster oozing with experience and a historic freshman class, and great guard play - something that is always imperative to a postseason run.

What’s concerning with this UCLA squad, however, is its defense. Many speculated coming into the season that the Bruins would have a tough time stopping opponents, especially if the backcourt trio of Lonzo Ball, Bryce Alford and Aaron Holiday chose to frequently push the tempo. UCLA stumbled to a dismal 15-win season last year, mostly due to a tissue soft defense that allowed 80 or more points in half of its conference games.

Luckily for Alford and company, the defense isn’t nearly as awful as it was last season. If it was, well, the Bruins wouldn’t have already tied its 2016 win total before its fourth Pac-12 matchup.

In order to gather some context on whether UCLA’s defense will be enough for a deep run in March, I gathered a handful of key metrics from the last five season’s Final Four teams to see how well UCLA compared to the nation’s elite. This year’s UCLA team is also included in the sortable table, and the statistics used are briefly explained below.

• Opp PPG Rank - average points allowed per game rank
• Tempo Rank - average possessions per game rank
• Def Eff Rank - defensive efficiency rank (points allowed per 100 possessions)
• Opp TOV% Rank - opponent turnover percentage rank (possessions that end with a turnover)
• Opp eFG% Rank - opponent effective field goal percentage rank (shooting metric that properly weighs 3-pointers more than 2-pointers)

Here are a few quick notes:

• The worst defensive efficiency to reach the Final Four the past five seasons was Michigan’s 39th ranked defense in 2013. Each of the last 20 Final Four teams have finished in the top 40 in defensive efficiency. UCLA currently ranks 82nd.
• Only twice (both last season) has a team reached the Final Four the past five seasons with a top 100 tempo rank. UCLA loves to push the pace, as the Bruins are 11th in the nation in tempo.
• Five of the previous 20 Final Four squads ranked lower in opponent turnover percentage, but three of those five also finished in the top 40 in opponent effective field goal percentage. The other two? Those were the 2014 and 2015 Wisconsin Badgers teams, which both finished 1st in the country in offensive efficiency.

The following table stacks up this year’s UCLA team against the best, worst and average Final Four defenses in the last half-decade.

UCLA’s defense might not be prepared for a rainy day

“Why are you concerned about UCLA’s defense when it has one of the best offenses college basketball has ever seen?” Because teams can get cold in the tournament.

Last year’s Oklahoma team was a perfect example. The Buddy Hield-led Sooners rode its formidable offense all the way to the national semifinal, where it met the eventual champion, the Villanova Wildcats. After averaging a 116.3 offensive efficiency and 100.3 defensive efficiency the first four games, the Oklahoma offense (and defense) was completely slaughtered by Villanova, yielding a 80.9/150.8 off/def efficiency rate in the 95-51 blowout loss.

This game was an anomaly, sure. It’s not an everyday occurrence that a team goes 35-49 and holds the player of the year under 10 points, but when national contenders go cold on offense, those teams usually can fall back on a stingy defense to force turnovers or bad shots and create easy transition baskets on the other end.

As good as this UCLA offense is, no team is ever immune to a cold-shooting night, especially when the lights get brighter. The defense must show strides from now until the Pac-12 Tournament.

Turnover percentage and effective field goal percentage

Opponent turnover percentage and opponent effective field goal percentage are also vital to a deep tournament run. As mentioned earlier, there have been five Final Four teams that ranked lower in opponent turnover percentage. However, defenses are structured differently.

Not all defenses are centered around forcing turnovers as well as contesting each shot. It is ideal, but not realistic. Some teams are more focused on forcing bad passes and pushing a fast break the other way, and then you have teams that are content with staying in front of their opposition in hopes of contesting each and every shot, which limits the likelihood of creating a turnover.

UCLA’s offense would be perfectly paired with a turnover-igniting defense, but the Bruins are 266th in opponent turnover percentage. UCLA opponents are far more inclined to slow down the pace when on offense (236th in average possession length) while the Bruins move at a rapid speed when they have the ball (9th in average possession length.)

Because UCLA doesn’t pressure opposing offenses, it would hope to fall back on a defense that prevents good looks at the basket. Alford’s team isn’t bad in this area by any means, but it is far from elite.

The trend among contenders that rank ahead of UCLA in KenPom is a mediocre defense in terms of forcing turnovers, but a stout opponent effective field goal percentage. The defending champs, Villanova (203rd in opponent turnover percentage and 86th in opponent effective field goal percentage), is the only exception.

Conclusion

Will UCLA overcome its average defense to make a deep title run? Time will tell. History says that the Bruins have a lot of work to do if it plans to be one of the last teams standing.

UCLA has gone 2-1 in its three biggest games of the season to this point, a thrilling 97-92 victory over Kentucky in Lexington, an incredibly efficient 102-84 win against Michigan at home, and a tough 89-87 defeat at the hands of Dillon Brooks and Oregon in Eugene last week.

UCLA’s defense efficiency in those three games? 121.9. That would rank 347th in the country if Bruins played those three teams every night. It’s a small sample size and is not fair to UCLA because these are games exclusively against top 30 KenPom teams, but there is some substance to the trend. Matchups against Arizona and Oregon down the stretch should provide an interesting glance at UCLA’s defensive strides.

What are your thoughts on UCLA’s defense? Be sure to leave a comment below or contact @boettger_eli and @PacificTakes on Twitter.

(All stats used in this article are courtesy of KenPom and Sports Reference.)