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LOS ANGELES — When Ezequiel “Zeke” Jaquez turned 80 in November 2019, he celebrated with his family in Maui. Nineteen relatives made the trip, which was a substantial number even though it represented but a sliver of Zeke’s extended family. The gathering included Zeke’s wife, his brother and sister-in-law, his four children, their spouses, and his nine grandchildren, all of whom lived within a mile of his house in Camarillo, California. The group was so big they spread across three hotels.

No one needs an extra reason to visit Maui, but the Jaquezes had one anyway. The Maui Invitational was being played that week, and UCLA, where Zeke’s grandson, Jaime Jr., was a freshman forward, was in the field. Not that anyone expected much out of Jaime that week. In the last game UCLA played before leaving for Hawaii, he played two minutes in a humbling home loss to Hofstra. Through the Bruins’ first six games, he had managed a total of 10 points and averaged 11.0 minutes off the bench. He started off the Maui Invitational by going scoreless in 11 minutes in UCLA’s loss to BYU.

The next day, the Bruins played Chaminade, the Division II school that has long served as the tournament’s host and Cinderella participant. UCLA’s starters came out listless and uninspired, prompting first-year coach Mick Cronin to send Jaquez to the scorer’s table earlier than usual. “Go in there and defend and rebound,” Cronin told him. He didn’t have to ask twice. Granted the opportunity he had deeply desired and worked so hard for, Jaquez played with reckless abandon. Cronin was so impressed he started Jaquez in the second half. He finished with 17 points and 11 rebounds, both team highs, in a 74-48 win. “He was the only one who was ready to play that game,” recalls Tyger Campbell, now a 5-11 senior point guard.

The following day was Zeke’s birthday, and he got the best present a grandpa could want: Jaime was promoted into UCLA’s starting lineup. Three years later, he has yet to come out. Now a 6-foot-7 senior wing, Jaquez (pronounced “HAH-kez”) has twice been named to the Pac-12’s All-Defensive team, and last season he was voted first-team all-conference after averaging 13.9 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.1 steals. He enters his senior season as the runaway favorite to be the Pac-12 preseason player of the year and a bona fide All-America candidate. As a second-generation Mexican-American, Jaquez also has a long-term opportunity to ignite a passion for hoops south of the border should he fulfill his goal of playing in the NBA.

Jaquez may be the long-haired, partially goateed face of one of college basketball’s most storied programs, but his game is far more grit than glamour. He’s not speedy, but he’s quick enough. He’s not huge, but he’s big enough. He’s not a great long-range shooter, but he scores at all three levels, and his combination of size, skill and guile makes him a difficult match-up. What really separates Jaquez, however, is his persistent effort. He is, as Cronin calls him, “a star with a glue-guy mentality,” the type of player who is eager to dive on the floor, drive into bigger players, finish through contact, and be ready at all times to compete at both ends and on every possession.

“He’s a great competitor,” Oregon coach Dana Altman says. “He’s one of those guys who knows where the game is tilting. He’ll go get the rebound when the team needs a rebound. He has great basketball savvy, but his competitiveness is the thing that will give him an opportunity to keep playing when he gets done at UCLA.”

Yet, for all the heat he brings to the game, Jaquez evinces a deep dash of California cool. He attributes his success on the court to understanding that “half the battle is wanting it more,” but he is quick to add that “basketball isn’t very stressful.” He figured out long ago that it’s much better to apply pressure than to feel it. “I won’t say I never get stressed because we’re all human,” he says. “But for the most part, if things are out of my control, why worry about it?”

Jaquez leaned on that equanimity last season as he battled a pair of ankle injuries which cost him much of his aggression as well as the long hours in the gym which spur his skills and confidence. UCLA’s season began with Final Four aspirations but ended with a painful loss to North Carolina in the Sweet 16. Now healthy and rejuvenated, Jaquez is using those disappointments to motivate him in what is likely to be his final season in Westwood. He understands what is expected of him, and he is comfortable being the life of the party. “I believe that when I’m healthy, I can be one of the best players in the country,” he says. “My goal right now is just to try to stay in the moment, and enjoy it as much as I can.”

Jaquez was extremely fortunate to be born into a family full of athletes, educators, and entrepreneurs. Zeke, an accomplished multi-sport athlete in his own right, taught Spanish at Rio Mesa High School in nearby Oxnard. Zeke’s brother, Dick, also taught at Rio Mesa, and together they coached the varsity baseball team to a state title. Jaime’s older cousin, Richard, taught biology and coached baseball at Camarillo High. Both of Jaime’s parents were basketball players at Concordia College in Irvine, California — they met on a practice court, naturally — and his mother, Angela, who grew up in Minnesota and Arizona and was a two-time Division II All-American, is currently a P.E. teacher at Pleasant Valley School of Engineering and Arts, a charter school in Camarillo.

Then there’s Jaime’s paternal grandmother, Gloria, a native of Zapotlanejo, Mexico, who met her husband while visiting the States, emigrated to the U.S., and opened her own beauty salon in Camarillo. “My mom knew absolutely zero English,” Jaime Sr. says. “It’s an incredible story when you think about it. When you’re at the beauty salon, all you do is talk.”

With that kind of talent and determination woven into his DNA, it was inevitable that Jaquez would dive into sports at a young age. He was great at everything he tried. He would smash plastic baseballs off a tee, play soccer with his younger siblings in the family playroom (they set up the couches as goals), ride skateboards around the neighborhood, and play for hours across the street at Pitts Ranch Park. When Jaime showed an affinity for music, his parents bought him a drum set and a guitar and enrolled him in hip-hop dance classes. Jaime may have been an active child, but he was rarely hyperactive. He could run around all day, announce to his parents that it was time for bed, and then climb under the covers and put himself to sleep.

Jaquez was likewise fortunate to come of age in a multi-hued melting pot of races, ethnicities and nationalities. His friends and teammates were not only fellow Latinos but also Black, White, Asian, Muslim, Filipino, and everything in between. He cherished the family’s frequent trips to Arizona to visit his mother’s family, and to Mexico to visit his father’s. Gloria was one of 14 children, so when the family went to Zapotlanejo, Jaime and his siblings had more cousins to play with than they could count.

When Jaquez decided early on that basketball was his favorite sport, his father was more than happy to dive in with him. He coached Jaime with the Dons, the same local basketball club where Jaime Sr. had played for Zeke. Jaime Sr. was an exacting taskmaster, and the boys did not enjoy the way he ran them ragged at practice. They did, however, enjoy wearing out every opponent, which enabled them to win most of their games. “I told them, if you want to run up and down, there’s going to be a price to pay, and that price is you have to be in shape,” Jaime Sr. says.

Jaime Jr. was blessed with a height that is uncommon in his family. His confidence stood equally tall. When he was in seventh grade, his English teacher asked the class to write an essay declaring their professional ambitions. Jaime chose to write about his desire to play in the NBA, but the teacher told him to pick something more realistic. “I was like, hey buddy, I don’t know about you, but this is realistic to me,” he says. The teacher relented.

All of this motivation was internal. Jaquez’s parents never pressured their kids to play sports, or to specialize in just one. They encouraged them to pursue music and dance, and gave them space and time to let their bodies and minds recover from all that running around. “If you think our family is really good at athletics, you should see us rest,” Jaime Sr. says. “We’re all phenomenal nappers.”

As Jaquez moved on to high school and excelled on the grassroots circuit, he drew interest from well-known prep schools who promised more exposure and a higher level of competition. Camarillo High School had scant basketball tradition, but Jaime never considered leaving. He still had the same three best friends he had made in second grade, and he loved being around his family. Nor was he persuaded by the arguments that he needed to change schools in order to get recruited by big-time colleges. “Listen, if you’re good, you’re good,” he says. “You don’t need to go somewhere else to make yourself good.”

Camarillo didn’t win any state titles while Jaime was playing there, but it did score a very satisfying victory during his senior year over Mater Dei, a traditional state powerhouse in Orange County. Jaime’s skills and body evolved, but his demeanor remained the same. “He’s very, very competitive, but if you look at his facial expression he never looks mad,” his sister Gabriela says. “He always stays very calm and neutral.” With all those teachers in his family, it was understood that Jaquez was expected to excel in the classroom as well. He graduated with a 4.0 grade point average.

Jaquez was considered a borderline top 100 recruit in his class, but he showed enough promise that then-UCLA coach Steve Alford offer him a scholarship at the end of his junior season. Jaquez never seriously considered another school, although things got dicey when the Bruins started off 7-6 in 2018 and Alford was fired on New Year’s Eve. When UCLA tapped Cronin to be his successor four months later, Cronin, who tried to recruit Jaquez to Cincinnati, told Jaquez he hoped he would follow through on his commitment. It wasn’t a tough sell. Some recruits may have seen the program’s turbulence as a reason to bail, but Jaquez relished the challenge. “I figured, this is perfect,” he says. “I knew the program had been down, but now I can come in, help bring UCLA back and restore its former glory.”

Having been coached so hard by his father at a young age, Jaquez didn’t blanch when Cronin erupted at him from time to time that freshman season. “He never complained when he was getting yelled at,” Campbell says. “He would just say ‘Yes, sir’ and do what he needed to do.” After his emergence in Maui, Jaquez started every remaining game that freshman season, and as a sophomore he was the team’s third-leading scorer (12.3 points per game) and second-leading rebounder (6.1). UCLA was one of the last at-large teams invited into the NCAA Tournament, and it would not have made it out of the First Four without Jaquez’s game-high 27 points, which lifted the Bruins to an overtime win over Michigan State.

Jaquez continued to play superbly the rest of the tournament, averaging 13.6 points on 45.0 percent 3-point shooting to go along with 6.3 rebounds, 3.0 assists and 1.5 steals as UCLA made a remarkable run to the Final Four. It is instructive that when Jaquez is asked to name his favorite memories from that experience, he talks not about the games but the bonding that took place with his teammates inside the NCAA’s de facto bubble in Indianapolis, which was created to mitigate the risks from the COVID-19 pandemic. From watching “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” in a hotel room to the Super Smash Bros. tournaments to the impromptu soccer games that broke out when the players were given access to a nearby field, those three weeks reminded Jaquez why he fell in love with sports in the first place. “Basketball brings us all together, but what’s really fun is being able to create those relationships that you don’t have with other people,” he says. “You have these moments in time together, and those things will never die.”

Jaime Jaquez Jr.’s tenacity got him on the court early at UCLA, and a constantly growing skill set has him eyeing the NBA. (Soobum Im / USA Today)

Jaquez was playing well last season until he developed inflammation in his right ankle midway through the season. He later sprained his left ankle stepping on another player’s foot. He did his best to play through the pain, but the injuries limited his effectiveness, and his 3-point shooting plummeted to 27.6 percent. That concern, combined with the need to have surgery to remove bone spurs in his right ankle in April, prevented Jaquez from entering his name in the NBA Draft.

Jaquez is finally pain-free, and he spent much of the summer working on his conditioning, just like he did when he was playing for his dad with the Dons. He has studied the way Steph Curry is constantly in motion and recognizes he needs to be in tiptop shape to do that. But as an NBA player, Jaquez envisions himself more in the Jimmy Butler mold. “He’s just a dog, man,” Jaquez says. Jaquez also hopes to build on the acclaim he gained while playing for the Mexican national team at the Pan Am Games the summer before his freshman year. He gets frequent interview requests from Mexican media outlets, and he is excited by the notion of becoming a breakthrough attraction for a country that has produced very few NBA players. “To grow the game of basketball in Mexico would be huge,” Jaquez says. “There’s a very untapped market there.”

Jaquez will technically have another year of eligibility after this season — the NCAA granted all athletes an extra year during the pandemic — but he anticipates this will be his last go-round in Westwood. “I think four years in school is a long time,” he says. He may be the best player on his team, but he could arguably be the second-best UCLA athlete in his family now that Gabriela, a top-rated basketball prospect who was the MVP of the McDonald’s All-American Game last March, has joined the women’s team. His brother Marcos, meanwhile, is a senior defensive end on the Camarillo High football team, and a three-star prospect.

As for grandpa Zeke, he will turn 83 on November 29, and he still attends every UCLA home game and quite a few road ones, along with many other members of the boisterous Jaquez clan. Having given his grandfather quite a big present when he turned 80, Jaime knows he needs to come through big-time this year. “Maybe I’ll get a 40-ball,” he says. “That’s my next goal.” Jaquez has already given his family lots of reasons to celebrate, but as far as he’s concerned the party is just getting started.

(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)