Eric Dailey Jr. used to envision playing on the March Madness stage.
As a freshman at Oklahoma State last season, Dailey did not get the opportunity after the Cowboys finished just 12-20 and fired its head coach.
Meanwhile, UCLA head coach Mick Cronin was looking for more collegiate experience after also missing last season’s NCAA tournament — a first since 2010, not including the COVID-19 cancellation — with a Bruins team heavy on freshmen.
Now, Cronin has UCLA (22-10) back as the seventh seed in the Midwest Region, with a roster full of players eager to make their NCAA tournament debuts Thursday against 10th-seeded Utah State (26-7). Tip-off at Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., is scheduled for 6:25 Pacific Time and will air on TNT.
Dailey is one of 13 players on the UCLA roster yet to experience the Big Dance.
“I remember as a kid growing up making the different shot clock situations as a kid and being in the tournament and national championship game, and now it's actually here,” Dailey told reporters Wednesday. “It could be a possibility for us now. I just thank God for the opportunity to be here.”
Cronin revealed that Dailey, along with Tyler Bilodeau (Oregon State), Skyy Clark (Louisville), Kobe Johnson (USC), William Kyle III (South Dakota State) and Trent Perry (freshman originally committed to USC), all chose UCLA over more name, image and likeness dollars elsewhere for the opportunity to play deep into March.
Of that group, only Johnson and Kyle have played in an NCAA tournament. Neither have advanced past the first round.
“That’s why they came here,” Cronin said earlier in the week. “We tried to sell these guys, ‘Look, this is UCLA. The expectation’s to win.’
“They all had offers to go other places for more money. Now, we were in the ballgame, it wasn’t in another ballpark. But we were trying to get guys to gravitate toward what we were trying to build, to get back in the tournament.”
March has been UCLA’s ongoing focus throughout the season, Cronin added. He’s often reminded his players that they’re part of a program that hangs nothing less than a national championship banner in Pauley Pavilion.
Johnson said the point has been clearly made.
“We play for the name across our chest, and this program holds a lot of weight in college basketball history,” Johnson said. “So, coming into this tournament we gotta be able to uphold that standard, and we gotta show people why we are meant to be here.”
Clark added that while he expects the moment to be “super surreal,” it’s a team that’s not just satisfied with playing in the tournament.
“I say for everybody on the team, that trophy at the end of this tournament, it looks very nice,” Clark said. “It’s a very beautiful trophy, and I know everybody on the team would like to put their hands on it.”
To do so, the Bruins will try to look more like the team that had separate nine- and seven-game win streaks before closing the regular season with three victories over the final four games.
UCLA will try to avoid looking like the team that lost four in a row at the start of the new year and allowed a Big Ten tournament record-tying 19 made 3-pointers in a 16-point loss to Wisconsin six days ago.
Clark said slow starts have typically been a problem for the Bruins on the first game of road trips this season.
“We know that that’s one thing we cannot do, especially right now,” Clark said.
Standing in the way of a second game this weekend, UCLA will also likely be playing against a crowd on a neutral floor that is known to root for the lower-seeded teams to pull the upset.
Cronin said he’s hopeful that the most recent outcome against the Badgers will serve as a lesson to his players.
“You gotta come out tight on the game plan, in adherence to the game plan,” Cronin said. “You can’t let another team get started to their strengths because you start a snowball rolling downhill and it picks up steam.”
