UCLA’s basketball team might downshift its lineup in an attempt to hasten success.
Eric Dailey Jr. said Wednesday that the plan next season was for him to move to small forward, which would presumably entail Tyler Bilodeau switching to power forward to take Dailey’s vacated spot.
“It’s my natural position,” Dailey said after a name, image and likeness event at the student store on campus. “We kind of played a little small-ball with Tyler at the five last year and with our new recruits coming in, we’ve got more size at the forward and power forward positions.”
The departures of Kobe Johnson and Lazar Stefanovic have created a void that Dailey might fill. But a lineup featuring the 6-foot-8 Dailey at small forward and 6-9 Bilodeau at power forward would need a new center. The Bruins brought in transfer big men Xavier Booker from Michigan State and Steven Jamerson II from San Diego to man the middle after the departures of Aday Mara and William Kyle III.
Other options to play small forward could include redshirt freshman Eric Freeny, sophomore Trent Perry, redshirt sophomore Brandon Williams and Jamar Brown, a transfer from Missouri-Kansas City.
A naturally gifted scorer who can create his own shot, Dailey suggested that defending smaller players than he did as a power forward last season wouldn’t be an issue, especially since he played all five positions as a freshman at Oklahoma State.
“It’s really the same for me,” said Dailey, who averaged 11.4 points and 4.0 rebounds last season for the Bruins, who finished 23-11 after losing to Tennessee in the second round of the NCAA tournament. “What y’all don’t know is I played guard my whole life — I actually played point guard, I played shooting guard, really until college and I started playing the forward position just because of my height, but [coach Mick] Cronin has seen me play the guard position before and he knows I can do it. Being that wing, just being in transition and flying around defensively is my job here.”
The Bruins could do everything faster next season after landing Donovan Dent, the Mountain West Conference player of the year who was perhaps the top point guard in the transfer portal. The newcomer quickly impressed his new teammates last week during a campus visit.
“He’s a very down-to-earth, humble guy, and he really just wants to work,” Perry said. “You guys have seen it [when Donovan helped New Mexico beat the Bruins in November] — downhill playmaking, can shoot the ball, and so he’s going to be a great addition.”
Said Dailey: “Definitely that factor we need that can get downhill and spray the ball out to shooters and find guys and push the ball up the court.”
Perry indicated that he was ready to put in the work needed to take a massive leap in production after averaging 3.7 points in 11.4 minutes per game last season.
“Everybody had high expectations of me possibly going to the [NBA] draft this year, me possibly playing more, you know, what-ifs,” Perry said, “but it didn’t happen because I was behind D.A. [Dylan Andrews], I was behind Skyy [Clark] and I learned from it; I had to stay patient, I had to keep working, keep my head down, so the biggest jump for me is just basically staying locked in. You know, I know what I can do, I know I can impact the game, but I’m going to have to do that at a high level next year. … I’ve got to produce three times as much as I did this year.”
Expectations are high for UCLA next season both internally and externally — ESPN ranked the Bruins No. 14 nationally after the transfer portal closed this week.
“We just want to improve what we’ve already built,” Dailey said. “We’ve got the same core, we’ve got some added pieces and we’re really going to kick things off this next year. It’s going to be bigger.”
That could also include the starter at small forward.
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