For Mick Cronin to extend his streak of three-straight NCAA Tournament appearances at UCLA, the Bruins must win the Pac-12 Tournament and secure the conference's automatic bid. To do that, Cronin has decided to lean on his sophomore point guard, Dylan Andrews, who scored a career-high 31 points in their first-round win over Oregon State.
Cronin’s team finished the regular season at 16-16 and 10-10 in conference play to earn the No. 5 seed and a first-round matchup with the last-place Beavers. Andrews went 7-9 from three in the historic performance which now ranks fourth all-time in UCLA history for single-game scoring in the Pac-12 Tournament.
UCLA Pac-12 Tournament single-game scoring leaders
Points | Player | Year | Opponent |
|---|---|---|---|
39 | Reggie Miller | 1987 | Arizona State |
36 | Isaac Hamilton | 2015 | USC |
34 | Aaron Holiday | 2018 | Stanford |
31 | Dylan Andrews | 2024 | Oregon State |
Next, the Bruins will face the Pac-12 No. 4 seed, Oregon Ducks at 2:30 p.m. PT. In the last meeting, UCLA won 71-63 at Pauley Pavilion and Andrews finished with 21 points and seven assists. He finished the regular season tied with Adem Bona as the team’s leading scorer, averaging 12.4 points.
Andrews’s performance was the highest-scoring game by any Bruin since Johnny Juzang dropped 32 points in a regular season win over Washington in February of 2021. That postseason, Juzang led Cronin’s team to the Final Four with four 20+ point performances in the NCAA Tournament.