Donovan Dent comes to Westwood with three years of experience at New Mexico. Most notably where he won Mountain West Player of the Year in 2025. It was a surprise to many that Dent chose UCLA as their lack of NIL money has hurt their chances with star players. But, UCLA brings one thing to the table that not many schools can provide. The chance to make it to the NBA and have that resume of being a Bruin.
UCLA is an historic school and has many players go on to the next level and succeed. Mick Cronin has also started to create a great player tree with the likes of Jaime Jaquez Jr, Jaylen Clark and Johnny Juzang. This will allow Dent to get great exposure playing in the Big Ten against premier competition to show playing in the Mountain West was not a fluke. UCLA is also expected to compete as they return Skyy Clark, Tyler Bilodeau and Eric Dailey Jr. while adding in transfers of Dent from New Mexico and Xavier Booker from Michigan State.
The stakes are high as Cronin has not been able to repeat the success of his First Four to Final Four run in 2021, which started to create the Gonzaga curse for the Bruins. Bringing in one of the most sought after transfers in Dent brings new hope. Dent has shown his ability to score from all three levels as seen by his 49/40.1/78.4 shooting splits. While also being a good facilitator for his teammates at 6.4 assists per game last season. Dent scored in double digits all 35 games that he played in and had 15 or more points in 28 of those games. His scoring was on display last season as he put up 40 points versus VCU.
New Mexico point guard Donovan Dent dropped 40 on VCU tonight 😳 pic.twitter.com/Kqy2IPxERZ
— B/R Hoops (@brhoops) December 19, 2024
The high scoring volume that Dent brings to the table will help out the Bruins tremendously as they struggled to find any offense outside of Clark versus Tennessee in March Madness this past year. Dylan Andrews and Sebastian Mack combined for four points on 1-5 shooting that night in a 67-58 loss. Now with both gone into the transfer portal with Andrews to Boise State and Mack to Missouri, the back court is rejuvenated. With a new year, it brings new hope and UCLA with the 13th best odds to win the title can bring that winning energy back to Westwood.