LOS ANGELES — Mick Cronin has a method to his big man rotation and, frankly, he doesn’t care if you believe there’s really a succinct plan or not.

When he chose not to play Aday Mara a single minute on Friday because he felt William Kyle III’s athleticism could better match the Iowa Hawkeyes’ quickness, it wasn’t because Mara had played himself out of the rotation.

“I love Aday,” Cronin said then.

Cronin gave Kyle the first crack on Tuesday in the Bruins’ game against Wisconsin, but after Kyle was slow to close out on a pair of made 3-point shots, Cronin showed that love to Mara.

UCLA trailed by six when he first subbed in, but he immediately imposed his will. Mara scored a season-high 22 points as the Bruins (13-6, 4-4 Big Ten) discovered a size advantage and exploited it on their way to an 85-83 victory over the Badgers.

The Badgers (15-4, 5-3) have long excelled in the Big Ten with their size and slow-plodding attack, but on Tuesday, the Bruins rode that strategy to victory.

The Bruins flipped the script. They out-Big Ten’d one of the conference’s perennially physical teams.

While the Badgers relied on their perimeter prowess, knocking down 15 3-pointers, the Bruins were the bludgeoning aggressors. They played through a 7-foot-3 Spaniard and a junior in Tyler Bilodeau that consistently shot over the Badgers’ big-men to add 16 points of his own.

Sebastian Mack, the Bruins’ 6-3 version of Popeye the sailor man, was just as formidable as his towering teammates. He bullied his way into the paint throughout the second half, putting a quiet first half behind him and lifting the Bruins back into the conversation of Big Ten title contenders.

He backed down Badgers guards Max Klesmit and John Blackwell from beyond the perimeter all the way into the paint. He scored 19 points, 15 of which came after the break. He bumped past Blackwell to earn a trip to the line to give the Bruins a two-point lead with 30 seconds left, a lead they never relinquished.

The Bruins shot 22 free throws in the second half, as the Badgers’ only answer for the Bruins’ size was to push them off their spot. Mara drew five trips to the line and was 7 of 9 from the free-throw line in the second half.

Mara’s first act came as the answer to a Badgers’ 8-0 first half run. He subbed in at the 7:47 mark and scored a quick seven points before the break.

Toward the end of the first half, Cronin played Mara and Bilodeau alongside one another, which he’s rarely done this season. He must have seen something he liked in that brief period because 2:46 into the second-half, he went back to it.

The two-big lineup proved effective as the Bruins took a 55-51 lead and began to dictate the pace.

Dylan Andrews remained confident, swiveling past Badger defenders with hesitation dribbles. He hit a jumper from the left elbow to extend the Bruins advantage to nine.

The Badgers fought back, rivaling the Bruins’ size by getting to the line. They hit six free throws in the final 3:22 and then Blackwell dribbled into a 3 right in Skyy Clark’s face to cut the Bruins lead to one.

After Mack split a pair of free throws with 30 seconds left, Cronin decided to sub Kyle back in, hoping to have five players on the court that could guard any position. It was his first time seeing the court since his flawed early stint, but Kyle rose up and blocked John Tonje’s potential game-tying jumper to seal the Bruins’ victory.

UCLA’s win over Wisconsin was its third over teams ranked inside the AP top 25 at the time of the game (Gonzaga and Oregon, the other two).