Lonzo Ball, TJ Leaf focused on NCAA, not Pac-12 title

No. 10 UCLA trails No. 5 Oregon by two games in the Pac-12 standings.

Two days before a game the UCLA basketball team seemingly needs to win to retain hope for a Pac-12 regular season championship, the Bruins’ two best players said they were more focused on a larger goal.

No. 10 UCLA will host No. 5 Oregon on Thursday trailing the Ducks by two games in the conference standings, but Lonzo Ball and TJ Leaf are more concerned about how the game effects their preparation for the NCAA tournament.

“Since the beginning of the season the focus was to win a national championship, not the Pac-12 title,” Ball said. “We’re just trying to get ready for March.”

Oregon handed UCLA its first loss of the season on Dec. 28 when Dillon Brooks made a 3-pointer with .08 seconds left in the Ducks’ 89-87 win in Eugene, Ore. UCLA proceeded to lose three of its first nine Pac-12 games, making a conference title difficult to achieve with Arizona and Oregon having lost just one conference game apiece with seven remaining.

The freshman duo of Ball and Leaf was downplaying the rematch when speaking with the media on Tuesday.

“We’re going to try and go out and win every game and if that means us winning a Pac-12 title, then it does,” Leaf said. But we’re not focused on that as the end of our season.”

Senior Bryce Alford took a different approach, calling the matchup with Oregon the team’s “biggest game to date as far as trying to stay in the Pac-12 race.”

“We want to win as many championships as we can,” Alford said. “The Wooden Legacy, that was our first try at a championship and we got that done. The Pac-12 regular season title, that’s another championship we’re going after. Then we have the Pac-12 tournament and the NCAA tournament. Obviously the main goal at the end of the year is to be the last team standing in the NCAA tournament, but right now we’re in Pac-12 play, so that’s obviously our goal.”