IOWA CITY, Iowa — As I sat at a corner table inside another Courtyard by Marriott over the weekend, a floor-to-ceiling window protecting me from the 25-degree chill on a dreary morning, it struck me how much easier this would all be to do from home.
Nap until game time. Pick up the remote. Get a closeup view of every play.
Of course, that approach would also have deprived me — and Times readers — of so much over the last 10 years of being the only full-time traveling beat writer with the UCLA men’s basketball team.
Feeling a piece of stray confetti float against my cheek inside Lucas Oil Stadium after the Bruins reached the Final Four.
Seeing Prince Ali bound down a hallway inside Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena while yelling, “This is highway robbery, baby!” after the Bruins came back from nine points down with 51 seconds left.
Chatting with master storyteller Hep Cronin inside Kentucky’s Rupp Arena the day before an NCAA tournament game.
Interviewing Jaime and Angela Jaquez poolside in Maui before their son and daughter became on-campus celebrities.
People like to say they have the best seat in the house. Mine has often been 11F, window, on a United Airlines flight to some far-flung game that has made me cherish this decade of memories inside arenas all over the country.
There’s been so much more besides the palpable tension one can only feel sitting courtside, or in one of the media seats increasingly far removed from courtside in recent seasons. I caught a glimpse of Jake Kyman’s teammates dousing him with water after he made seven three-pointers against Washington and assistant coach Rod Palmer obligingly pushed the locker room door open a little wider than usual on his way out. Scanned cardboard cutouts of fans and pets inside San Diego State’s Viejas Arena. Wrote on deadline at Colorado while a trash collector roamed the stands blaring old Pink Floyd favorites from his boom box.
Yes, there have been annoying travel delays, crummy hotels and way too much time spent away from home. (A quick check of my Lifetime Titanium Elite status with Marriott shows 1,592 nights — the equivalent of nearly 4½ years — since 2003 while traveling for The Times in a variety of roles.)
But this is something I’m thrilled just to have the chance to do.
It takes an incredible financial commitment in a time of shrinking media resources to send someone on the road for every game with a college basketball team in 2026. That’s why I’m so grateful to my bosses for letting me take all these trips over the years.
Fortunately, I’m not the only one who realizes how special this is. Every time he sees me at a road game, Chris Carlson, UCLA’s longtime associate athletic director, has made a point to thank me for being there. He did it again Saturday, inside a club room deep within Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye Arena, after UCLA’s frantic rally had fallen short against the Hawkeyes.
Fans often ask me if I travel on the team plane. That would be a resounding no, leading to innumerable layovers at Chicago O’Hare on the way to somewhere else in Big Ten country while the Bruins travel nonstop via charter. I don’t mind in the least.
Life on the road with the Bruins always packs a wallop, even during down seasons. A few years ago, during coach Mick Cronin’s only losing season with the team, it had just snowed in Pullman, Wash., when I exited a regional jet onto an icy outdoor ramp. I took two steps and fell backward onto my head with such a violent thud that my glasses flew back into the cabin. (I survived, or you wouldn’t be reading this.)
Along the way, there’s been far more laughter than frustration, let alone the need to Google “subdural hematoma.”
I’ve enjoyed every destination in an old conference (Pac-12) without truck stops and a new one (Big Ten) with plenty. I’ve sparked a Twitter war with the Memphis International Airport over a baggage office being closed shortly after sundown. I’ve stood in a hallway when coach Steve Alford threw his players under the bus at Cincinnati — “If you lose,” Alford said, “you get in the gym on your day off and you figure things out, not wait and get in the gym when we meet with you” — not long before the firing of Alford led to the hiring of Cincinnati’s coach.
I’ve heard that new coach — Cronin — yell at his team from two rooms over inside T-Mobile Arena after a loss to Baylor. I’ve also heard Cronin’s teams silence arenas with huge early runs against Stanford, Marquette, Maryland and San Diego State.
Traveling to cover the Bruins has had its side benefits, of course. I’ve seen family in Portland, visited wine country in the Willamette and Napa valleys and taken memorable trips to Arizona and the Bay Area during the COVID-19 season in 2020-21. The enduring image from those trips was the bizarre game against Stanford in Santa Cruz (because of health restrictions in Palo Alto), which featured an equally bizarre ending on an inbounds pass to Cardinals forward Oscar da Silva for a buzzer-beating layup.
There have been white-knuckle prop plane flights from Seattle to Pullman and white-knuckle drives across the Bay Bridge thanks to gephyrophobia. Tense drives from Spokane to Pullman because of the dreaded Colfax speed trap and walls of fog that can blindside you like a fearsome backcourt press.
Including stints covering USC basketball and an additional UCLA season under coach Ben Howland, I’ve logged three trips to the Maui Invitational — including one played in Honolulu — one to the old Great Alaska Shootout and one to Mexico for an exhibition game. The one trip that I really wanted to take — to China in 2017 — and was told no because a boss didn’t think it would be worthwhile ended in an international ordeal. Maybe it was the basketball gods’ way of telling him to keep me on the road.
As the pandemic made the prospect of taking flights seem perilous during the 2020-21 season, I covered a handful of road games off television. Admittedly, it was great to get replays and instant injury reports before hopping on a Zoom for postgame interviews.
But something just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t until the Bruins made the NCAA tournament and I accompanied them for every game on that unforgettable run in central Indiana that I fully understood one of the most important rules of quality coverage.
Being there matters.
Olympic sport of the week: Women’s gymnastics
Jordan Chiles helped UCLA rally to win the Best of the West Quad in Seattle by placing first in all four events.
(Courtesy of Jamie Mitchell)
Trailing California after two rotations in its season-opening meet, the UCLA women’s gymnastics team could rely on something else no one had in its comeback bid.
Jordan Chiles.
Predictably, the Olympic gold medalist helped the fourth-ranked Bruins rally to win the Best of the West Quad at Alaska Airlines Arena in Seattle by placing first in all four events.
Sticking her double layout dismount on the uneven bars, Chiles scored a 9.925 to help UCLA overtake the No. 20 Golden Bears and move into third place after the third rotation. Chiles topped herself with maybe her best beam performance at the college level, earning a 10 from one of the two judges and a 9.975 score.
UCLA senior Ciena Alipio contributed a 9.925 on the beam, helping her team edge Cal, 196.875 to 196. Host Washington finished third with 195.625 and No. 19 Oregon State was fourth with 195.550.
The Bruins next face No. 1 Oklahoma, No. 2 LSU and No. 5 Utah on Saturday at the Sprouts Farmers Market Collegiate Quad in West Valley City, Utah. The meet will be televised live on ABC at 1 p.m. PST.
Opinion time
With two months left before the NCAA tournament, UCLA men’s basketball is teetering on the bubble, with bracketmatrix.com — an aggregator of bracket projections — listing the Bruins as a No. 9 seed before they lost to Iowa on Saturday. Where do you think UCLA finds itself on Selection Sunday?
An elite finish leads to a protected seed
A solid Big Ten run puts it in Nos. 5-7 range
The Bruins just barely make it into the tournament
They’re left out for the second time in three years
Click here to vote in our survey.
Poll results
We asked, “What was your favorite UCLA sports moment of 2025?”
After 453 votes, the results:
The women’s basketball team’s trip to the Final Four, 49%
The men’s water polo team’s national championship, 21%
The football team’s three-game winning streak, 19%
The baseball team makes the College World Series, 9%
The softball team makes the Women’s College World Series, 2%
In case you missed it
Lauren Betts and No. 4 UCLA rout No. 17 USC in a commanding performance
UCLA’s second-half surge can’t erase ‘unbelievably soft’ start in loss to No. 25 Iowa
UCLA’s Bob Chesney rounds out his coaching staff with many joining him from JMU
Jerry Neuheisel is leaving UCLA to rejoin Chip Kelly at Northwestern
Cori Close, passionate about the growth of women’s basketball, wants the media to do its part
Chip Kelly is named offensive coordinator at Northwestern. Can he repair his reputation?
Have something Bruin?
Do you have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future UCLA newsletter? Email me at ben.bolch@latimes.com, and follow me on X @latbbolch. To order an autographed copy of my book, “100 Things UCLA Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die,” send me an email. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.