Westwood, CA –It’s clear that the UCLA men’s basketball program has gone through many, many changes since the pre-Transfer Portal/pre-NIL era.
Could one imagine if there were NO NIL? NO Transfer Portal? There’s a good chance that UCLA would- let alone could – have won a few more national championships, based on quality players that stayed at one school.
As far as last night’s game against visiting fourth-ranked Purdue is concerned, UCLA showed flashes of a championship team, especially deep in the second half.
Even the spirit of legendary College Basketball Hall of Fame and UCLA Coach John Wooden, a proud Purdue alumni icon himself, would agree, while watching the game with wife Nell from a very big screen TV via a Heavenly-sized satellite.
Tyler Bilodeau’s jumper with eight seconds left in the game, helped by a final team defensive stop that led to a missed Purdue shot attempt at the buzzer, sealed a 69-67 victory for the survival-minded Bruins, who gave themselves a positive checkmark in the eyes of the 2026 NCAA Tournament Selection Committee.
The victory snapped a nine-game winning streak by Purdue. Donovan Dent led UCLA with 23 points and 13 assists, but he and his teammates took the reins on both sides of the court to rally from a 27-15 deficit in the first half.
Using a defensive effort worthy of Wooden’s famed Pyramid of Success, the Bruins mixed in a series of blocked shots, steals and key rebounding efforts despite lacking a true old school center, à la Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) or Bill Walton.
Purdue appeared to have made a statement that they were on its way to a 10th straight easy win, but Dent, Bilodeau, Eric Dailey, Jr., Trent Perry, and Xavier Booker had other plans for the Boilermakers.
The result was perhaps the best Wooden-like defensive effort by a UCLA basketball team against a ranked opponent in recent memory.
Someone close by in the media seating area even cleverly suggested that Coach Wooden was somewhere smiling on a night when he was honored, mostly by a giveaway of bobblehead figurines in his image to those among the 10,235 fans in attendance.
A smiling Grant Walters, assistant sports editor at the award winning Daily Bruin campus newspaper, agreed with the Wooden reference.
Meanwhile, UCLA (5-3 in the Big 10 conference, 13-6 overall), also remains undefeated at home (11-0). The Bruins are currently holding on to the eighth spot in the conference.
But even if the Bruins can patch together a winning record from now until the end of the regular season (12 games), there is a realistic chance that it would have to travel to another region besides the West Region if it squeezes into the tournament.
That means UCLA would need to go undefeated, or close to it, 10-2 at the least, to be marginally considered. Otherwise the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) would probably be a guaranteed destination at the estimation of a 23-8 regular season finish.
All estimates considered, the reaction from the happy UCLA fans was all the Bruins needed as they walked off the court victorious. But only for one night. A gauntlet of Big 10 powerhouses led by Michigan and Michigan State await them -both on the road- until the season ends March 7.
