No team considered a serious contender for the national championship has experienced a turnaround as dramatic as the UCLA Bruins. A year ago, UCLA missed the NCAA tournament at 15-17. This season, the Bruins are a national powerhouse, in large part because of freshman point guard Lonzo Ball.
UCLA is bringing the Flying Death Machine to college basketball
Shout out to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the year 2011.
Ricky O'Donnell has covered basketball at all levels for more than a decade at SB Nation. He’s currently the Associate Director of Programming.
When the Bruins are at their best, no team is more entertaining. They proved it on Friday with this sequence in their first round matchup against the Kent State Golden Flashes:
The underhand pass by Ball, the scoop pass to the trailer, the flush by T.J. Leaf.
The Miami Heat earned a nickname during the LeBron James and Dwyane Wade years: the “Flying Death Machine.” The Heat were amazing in transition and when they got out on the break, you had no chance of stopping them.
This UCLA team is basically the college basketball equivalent of that. LeBron would be proud.
Bruins basketball is a thing of beauty when it’s working like this. Let’s see how far they can go.
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