CHICAGO — Donovan Dent was relaxed as he sat at his locker. He gripped his phone as he lounged back in a fold-up chair, briefly opening Instagram as a group of reporters moved to swarm him.
There, he couldn’t escape clips of him knocking down stepback 3-pointers or acrobatically twisting his body midair to finish layups amid crowds of defenders, though he didn’t seem to want to.
Dent had just scored 23 points as No. 6-seeded UCLA dismantled No. 3-seeded Michigan State in an 88-84 Big Ten Tournament quarterfinal victory. Meanwhile, the senior guard had just dished out 12 assists to add to a total of 77 in the past seven games, with just six turnovers in that span.
When Dent is asked about his remarkable assist-to-turnover ratio, he says it’s “cool.” He saw on social media the previous night that his 65 assist-to-turnovers ratio hadn’t been matched by any Division I or NBA player in the last 30 years, per OptaStats.
That same evening, which he also recorded the first triple-double in Big Ten Tournament history in a 72-59 win against No. 17-seeded Rutgers, he shifted the credit to his teammates. They made the “game a lot easier” for him, he said, amid a 5-1 run for UCLA.
Perhaps, it was just easier for senior forward Tyler Bilodeau to shower him with praise.
“It's just fun to see (Dent) slither around,” Bilodeau said, “get open, get in the paint (and) make great passes.
“Also, he's a great teammate. Shout out to Donny.”
But it wasn’t too long ago when Dent had hit "rock bottom," he told Big Ten Network on Friday.
The reigning Mountain West Player of the Year with New Mexico had come to UCLA with the expectation of “(changing) things” for a team that concluded its previous season in the Round of 32 of the NCAA Tournament. He was supposed to help the Bruins move the ball quickly and get out in transition, while also excelling in the pick-and-roll game.
In the summer, UCLA held an about 80-minute workout open to reporters, which the L.A. Times said Dent displayed all those traits.
Through the season’s first 10 games, however, he’d turned the ball over 27 times and made just 2-of-16 3-pointers he attempted. Even at the rim, his sweet spot, he wasn’t excelling. For each flash of talent, it seemed Dent would produce an equally perplexing error.
When UCLA fell to 5-2 with a November 80-72 loss to Cal, Dent had scored just three points on 1-for-8 shooting to go with his six turnovers before leaving with an injury. Coach Mick Cronin said the team had hit a perhaps five-year low as their “attitude was terrible,” and those giveaways certainly weren’t helping.
In a 82-72 defeat to then-No. 8 Gonzaga in early December, Dent had a double-double with 12 points and 10 assists, but he also had four turnovers as Cronin said his guys weren’t playing “smart.”
A player once known for easily blowing past defenders to the paint, Dent was getting bumped off his line by more physical defenders. Not to mention, he was lacking on-ball defensive prowess, a pull-up game and the capacity to knock down 3-pointers.
“I’m down on his turnovers because those kill,” Cronin said. “In a game like this, (you) can't just throw it away and they lay it in. He's too good for that.”
Despite the poor play, Dent still said he’d shaken an early-season “mental stretch,” seemingly that “rock bottom” period, and was feeling more confident on the court.
But those results didn’t come immediately as the team hit another low in mid-February with an 82-59 loss to Michigan State, a game in which Cronin ejected his own player, forward Steven Jamerson II, and lashed out at a reporter for “raising” their voice. Dent had just six points on 3-for-11 shooting, and he didn’t make any of his three 3-point attempts while he turned the ball over four times.
But Dent was less worried about the offense and desperately worked on defense. Cronin preached that the offense would come, he said.
It worked wonders as UCLA rattled off a 95-94 overtime victory against then-No. 10 Illinois four days later, beat crosstown rivals USC twice in the following weeks and blew out then-No. 9 Nebraska, before embarking on their ongoing Big Ten Tournament run.
The team had upgraded their defensive mentality as it bought into a mindset shift during the stretch, Dent said. It allowed just 52 points to the Cornhuskers, and he had two steals.
He also had eight assists despite a poor scoring outing.
“It's just hustle,” Dent said Friday of the team’s recent defensive changes, “whether or not you want to do it. Right now, we all want to do it. We want to keep doing it. We like winning.”
As Dent stood in the locker room after one of UCLA’s hardest-fought victories yet, Friday vs. Michigan State, he quipped that he was “pissed” about finishing second with 11 deflections, talking beside forward Eric Dailey Jr., who led the team with 12 deflections.
It didn’t matter that he had four steals that night.
“I needed some time to adjust,” Dent said. “But it's March. This is what we get paid for.”