When I left Southern California for Abu Dhabi, in October of 2009, UCLA’s basketball program wasn’t John Wooden-esque, but it was solid. Respectable.

The Bruins had made the NCAA tournament 19 of the previous 21 seasons, and added their 11th national championship during that span. Wooden had won 10 championships in 12 seasons, ending in 1975, but no one expected anything like that going forward.

Those 21 seasons, through 2008-09, included a runners-up NCAA finish in 2006 and two additional trips to the Final Four (2007, 2008). During that span they had players like Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love, Darren Collison and Arron Afflalo.

So UCLA mattered — when we got on the plane.

But now …

UCLA has missed the NCAA playoffs three times in the past seven seasons, and finished with a losing record twice.

During that span, the Bruins also lost games to regional teams they should have crushed — to Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State in 2009-10, to Cal Poly in 2013.

Then came problems of competitiveness with the nation’s elite. Last season, there was the 83-44 humbling by future champions Kentucky and a 71-39 nuking by Utah.

And this season? Rivals USC beat the Bruins three times, including a 95-71 rout in the Pac-12 tournament first round today, ending UCLA’s season at 15-17.

A few years ago, a media professional in Los Angeles told me “UCLA basketball no longer matters. Nobody cares.”

Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times hammered that home, after the USC defeat, by noting: “For the first time in covering 20 years worth of Bruins postseasons, I was initially the only reporter in the UCLA lockerroom. This Bruins team was worse than bad, it was irrelevant.”

This was UCLA’s third season under Steve Alford, who has a seven-year, $18.2 contract. In his first two seasons leading the team, UCLA made it to the final 16 of the NCAAs, so it would not be fair to pull the plug on him.

He has a background of success, as a player for Bobby Knight’s 1987 Indiana NCAA champions, and as coach of three NCAA teams at New Mexico and three more at Iowa.

Also, UCLA has letters of intent from two of the top nine prep players in the country, according to ESPN.com, a 6-5 point guard from Chino Hills named Lonzo Ball, and a 6-9 power forward from El Cajon named T.J. Leaf.

The Bruins’ recruiting class was ranked No. 3 in the country, behind only Duke and Kentucky — who, by the way, are the closest pursuers to UCLA’s record 11 NCAA titles. Kentucky has eight, Duke five.

Help appears to be on the way, but UCLA has been about not quite delivering, for these past seven seasons.

They need to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament and beat some elite teams — and soon — to become a topic of conversation, again, in greater Los Angeles.

Their fans have just the one title since 1975, and it was 21 years ago now.

Not much glory reflects off of that one, a generation later, after a season with a 15-17 finish and three defeats to USC.