UCLA basketball is beginning life in the Big Ten Conference. The Bruins are used to road trips to Pullman, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona. They are not used to road trips to Lincoln, Nebraska, but that’s what the Bruins will do on Saturday when they face Fred Hoiberg’s Huskers.
UCLA will travel multiple time zones. In the Pac-12, it would travel no more than one time zone and would usually play mid-afternoon or evening games on Saturdays. This Nebraska game involves a trip to the Central time zone for a game which starts at 1 p.m. local time in Lincoln, which is 11 a.m. Pacific time for the Bruins. Could this be a body-clock game? It’s not the norm for UCLA. The Bruins would very rarely if ever play an 11 a.m. local time game, maybe once in a great while at Arizona or Arizona State — noon Mountain, 11 Pacific — but that was not a frequent occurrence.
This is definitely going to be different. Moreover, Nebraska just won its Christmas tournament in Hawaii, beating Oregon State in the championship game. The Huskers soundly defeated Indiana in Big Ten play earlier this season. They are capable.
UCLA will need to beat a good opponent … and the body-clock question.