The Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook has named their preseason Top 25 and the UCLA basketball team comes in at #14 in their rankings.
Even though college football just started, college basketball will be here before you know it and with that, college hoops analysts are getting ready for the season. The Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook is one of those as they have just released their preseason Top 25 and the UCLA basketball team made the cut.
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The Bruins are looking to erase the memory of the 2017-18 season in which they finished 21-12 and had a humiliating loss to St. Bonaventure in the NCAA Tournament play-in game. That should be easy as the Bruins bring in a solid Top 5 recruiting class.
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Though UCLA lacks experience (their only upperclassmen are redshirt juniors PF Alex Olesinski and SG Prince Ali), they will have a cornucopia of talented youth at their disposal this winter.
UCLA loses three key players as Aaron Holiday and Thomas Welsh are off to the NBA and Gyorgy Goloman has graduated. Luckily, they have sophomores PG Jaylen Hands, SF Chris Smith, and SF Kris Wilkes returning, which should help the Bruins’ stability.
In addition, they get to utilize the talents of big men PF Cody Riley and PF/C Jalen Hill who are coming off a season-long suspension.
On top of all of that, UCLA has six studs assimilating with the program. The biggest catch is 7-foot C Moses Brwon who was a 5-star recruit out of high school. He will be joined by 4-stars PG Tyger Campbell, SG Jules Bernard, SG David Singleton, PF Shareef O’Neal, and 3-star C Kenny Nwuba.
Though they are a young team, they are chockful of talent and that is why they get the #14 ranking in The Blue Ribbon College Basketball Yearbook.
Oregon is the only other Pac-12 team to make the rankings as they came in above the Bruins at #9. The Top 5 are as follows: 1. Kentucky, 2. Kansas, 3. Gonzaga, 4. Duke and 5. Tennessee.