[2] Their lineup featured three former McDonald's All-Americans: sophomores Jaylen Hands and Kris Wilkes were both named second-team All-Pac-12, while first-year player Moses Brown was voted to the Pac-12 All-Freshman Team.

[10] On December 31, 2018, two days after the Bruins' loss to Liberty, UCLA fired Alford and named Bartow the interim head coach.

[4] They opened conference play 2–0 at home against San Francisco Bay Area schools Stanford and California.

[11] Emphasizing the team's speed and athleticism,[11] he had the Bruins play more aggressive, trapping and applying pressure on defense and attacking on offense by running on both missed and made baskets.

While Bartow was pushing for a faster pace, an unintended consequence was UCLA's conference-leading 17.3 turnovers per game, almost four more than they committed during non-conference play.

[17] However, they lost their third straight game on February 9 after blowing a 22-point lead with 12:10 remaining in a 93–92 loss to Utah, which won on a buzzer-beating three-point field goal.

[21] In their opening game of the Pac-12 tournament, UCLA switched to a man-to-man defense after having played predominantly zone under Bartow, and they defeated Stanford 79–72.

Bruins freshman guard David Singleton broke his foot in the final minute, ending his season.

[23][24] Afterwards, Bartow stated that he was not interested in having his interim tag removed, and expressed optimism that UCLA would "hire a very good coach".