UCLA Basketball: Why the Bruins will win the Pac-12 in 2018-19

With the Bruins returning three players from last season (who decided against the NBA Draft), the UCLA basketball team has an excellent chance of winning the Pac-12 next season.

The UCLA basketball team is a lot more stable than they were a week ago, simply because three players have decided to return to Westwood after testing the waters of the NBA Draft.

With this stability comes great responsibility, especially for head coach Steve Alford. Now that he has his roster set for next season (though UCLA is still waiting to hear if 4-star commit Shareef O’Neal will be eligible), there is no reason to not be successful next season and because of that, UCLA will win the Pac-12 Conference.

Here is why…

UCLA, Itself

Let us first look at the Bruins themselves. They just got word that all three freshmen that declared for the draft (Jaylen Hands, Kris Wilkes and Cody Riley) are returning for next season, bringing stability and experience to a team that would have had to heavily rely on the production of in-coming freshmen and underclassmen.

Though we do not know the academic status of Cody Riley, having Jaylen Hands and Kris Wilkes back is huge! Before their return, it looked like Prince Ali, Chris Smith and Alex Olesinki would be the only Bruins to return next season. All three collectively accounted for only 21.6% of the total points scored last season.

With Hands and Wilkes back, that percentage shoots up to 49.98%, just about half, which is clearly a better output.

On top of that, UCLA once again has depth, at least 2-deep at each position. With 12 scholarship players available, head coach Steve Alford has a lot to work with.

The Pac-12, Itself

The Pac-12 itself is, well, it is not good. Aside from the FBI investigation into Arizona and USC hoops, both teams are losing a lot of their core and will have to rely on youth to power through next season.

Towards the end of last season, Arizona lost several recruits, including 4-star PF Shareef O’Neal, who as since committed to UCLA. It was not until recently that players started committing to the program, which includes 4-star PG Brandon Williams who recently recommitted after breaking off with Arizona amid the FBI probe.

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Though they have talent coming in, the three players committed to the 2018 class cannot replace the likes of Deandre Ayton, Dusan Ristic, Rawle Alkins and Allonzo Trier.

The same goes for USC who will be without Chimezie Metu, Jordan McLaughlin and Elijah Stewart. The Trojans have also been doing well on the recruiting trail, but like Arizona, the new crop will not be able to replace the outgoing players.

As for the rest of the conference, well, there really isn’t a lot behind UCLA, USC, Arizona and Oregon. The Ducks, who had a down year this season, will look to bounce back, especially with the #4 2018 recruiting class, but key losses will hurt their chemistry.

Stanford could have been a contender, but their top scorer from last season, Reid Travis, just withdrew his name form the NBA Draft and instead of returning to Palo Alto, he is going to transfer, so their goes hope for the Cardinal.

Next: The UCLA Basketball All-Time Team

So with the conference down overall, there is no reason why the Bruins should not win the Pac-12 next season, yet somehow it seems like UCLA could in fact stumble along the way. And because of that, we will examine why UCLA will not win the Pac-12 in an upcoming article.