College Basketball Odds, Pick for Arizona vs UCLA

UCLA takes on Arizona on Thursday, March 7 at 9:30 p.m. ET on ESPN. Here's college basketball odds and a pick for Arizona vs UCLA.

The final weekend of the regular season in the modern version of the Pac-12 begins on Thursday as league leader Arizona travels to Los Angeles for the first of two away games against UCLA and USC.

The Wildcats will win the Pac-12 regular season title with two victories this weekend, but a loss in either game would see them cede control of first place in the conference to Washington State.

Even more important for the Wildcats is their current position in Bracketology for the final No. 1 seed. With UConn, Houston and Purdue all but locked into a top seed, the Wildcats are vying for the fourth spot with SEC leader Tennessee and ACC leader North Carolina.

The Bruins have had a poor season by any standard and won't be going to the NCAA tournament barring a Pac-12 tournament title, but these two teams have played a ton of competitive games in the last few seasons. Even in the first meeting this season, UCLA led most of the game before collapsing to lose by six.

Given Arizona's inconsistent play away from home, the door is open for UCLA to surprise in this spot.

Arizona has a few impressive road wins on its resume — at Duke and at Colorado stand out. But from a game-to-game perspective, its performances outside of Tucson leave some questions about whether or not it's a true Final Four favorite.

The underlying metrics love this Arizona team — it has the 11th-best strength of schedule and fourth-best record quality — but the away-from-home metrics are a glaring red flag.

The Wildcats enter Thursday 347th nationally with a -3.47 rating in road games, per Haslametrics. Part of this is how dominant they've been at home and in semi-home environments. But a few of the away showings — a 3OT win at Utah, an 18-point loss to Stanford and a puzzling loss at Oregon State — show that Arizona isn't infallible.

Since their three-point home loss to Washington State, the Wildcats have reeled off three straight dominant wins. They beat Oregon, Washington and Arizona State by 16+ points each.

Arizona's ability to generate easy 2s in transition and dominate the offensive glass with its size turns it into an elite offense capable of running any team out of any gym on any night.

The fun matchups have come against UCLA in part because of how much their styles clash. The Bruins are elite at grinding games to a halt and in most years, they don't allow much in terms of second chances on the glass.

The problems for UCLA this year have come in the half-court on offense, where it's been awful at generating any easy looks consistently.

Arizona runs its offense at one of the fastest paces in the country (eighth nationally in tempo). UCLA is the slowest-paced team in the Pac-12 and one of the 15 slowest in all of Division I basketball.

This season has been a total rollercoaster for the Bruins overall, who began the campaign 6-10 overall and 1-4 in the Pac-12 and lost by 46 at Utah on Jan. 11.

Mick Cronin's team figured some things out at the end of January and into February, including home wins against Oregon, Colorado, USC and Washington. The Bruins battled back to 9-5 in league play, but four consecutive losses have their underlying metrics almost back to where they were following the Utah loss.

It's always dangerous to carve up the season into smaller splits because of the danger of small samples, but it's clear there were real things happening behind the scenes at UCLA based on press reports and quotes Cronin gave.

Since that Utah loss, UCLA is 52nd in Bart Torvik efficiency. The primary improvements have come in protecting the ball offensively and making a more reasonable number of 3s.

UCLA has been a poor first shot offense most of the season, and it's hard to see it getting much at the rim here.

The Bruins can expose a perimeter defense for Arizona that's shown real holes away from home. The Wildcats are a nationally average 3-point defense since the New Year and their overall defensive efficiency has been trending downward in the last two months.

Even if UCLA is mostly checked out based on the four consecutive losses, you'd expect it to be fired up for these final two home games at Pauley Pavilion.

The Bruins remain elite at taking away shots at the rim and forcing teams to play at their pace. That'll force Arizona to execute in the half-court and take more shots from outside the paint than it's used to.

At the other end, UCLA won't get much at the rim, but it's nationally average in the mid-range, and the Wildcats' defense outside the paint has regressed in the second half of the season.

In a lower possession game — where Arizona has been shaky away from home — I'd bet UCLA at +9 or better on Thursday.

Pick: UCLA +9