Postgame Talk: UCLA Closes Out Cupcake Season with Dominant Performance Over Southern Utah, Win 88-43

I’m not going to use the “E” word but it was pretty dang close.

Lazar Stefanovic (Photo credit: @UCLAMBB)

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I said at the beginning of the cupcake series that UCLA needed to use these games to improve their focus and intensity in preparation for the tougher games to come.

Consider that message received.

The Bruins delivered a dominant defensive performance against what had been a pretty solid Southern Utah team, jumping out to an early lead that they would never relinquish and ultimately winning by the final score of 88-43.

The defense was the story of this game by far. If you only saw the box score, Southern Utah’s final tallies of 35% from the field and 25% from deep would already seem pretty good, but those numbers got a late boost by a late Thunderbirds push in the final four minutes. In the first half, Southern Utah shot only 30% from the field and was a miserable 1-12 (8.3%) from distance. Southern Utah was 8-31 (25.8%) from the field before the final 6:38, when they went on a brief scoring spurt and got 17 points on 6-9 shooting.

“But wait,” you might be wondering, “I’m noticing that Southern Utah only had 40 shots in the entire game, half of what UCLA had. How did that happen?” The answer, again, was UCLA’s defense, which asserted itself from the opening tip and ultimately forced the Thunderbirds into an eye-popping 30 turnovers as a team. Throw in that Southern Utah only got seven offensive rebounds in total (and only two second-chance points all game), this was an excellent effort in making the Thunderbirds as uncomfortable as possible.

I’m still not done with the defense, because let’s look at how UCLA played Southern Utah’s three best players:

• Jamir Simpson: The Thunderbird’s leading scorer at 18.4 points per game entering this one was held scoreless on 0-5 shooting. Impressively enough, three of his five shots were beyond the arc, which speaks to how difficult the Bruins made it for him to find something on the interior. He also ended with four turnovers.

• Dominique Ford: Finished with seven points, but only two of his six shots came from deep, and he missed both of them. Good job of recognizing the scouting report and limiting the damage.

• Tavi Jackson: Also scored seven points, but he’s not a prolific shooter so you live with that. More importantly, the point guard only had one assist and six turnovers.

Also in the preview, remember when I said this would be a good time to focus on rebounding? Well, the Bruins won the rebounding battle 41-27, and grabbed just as many offensive rebounds as Southern Utah grabbed defensive ones. All of this allowed UCLA to absolutely dominate on the brutal math front, as they had 80 shot attempts to only 40 from Southern Utah.

On the offensive end, not much to discuss here, other than I wasn’t really thrilled with Tyler Bilodeau forcing so much. The Bruins outside of Bilodeau shot 51.4% from the field, so if he let the offense come to him more instead of trying to get his shot to go in, then he would have benefitted. Doesn’t help the situation when UCLA had 21 assists overall, but the ball just stagnated in Bilodeau’s hands.

But the offense in general was pretty (last eight minutes of garbage time notwithstanding) and the Bruins got contributions all over the court. Lazar Stefanovic came off the bench and led the Bruins with 19 points, completely in his bag all night. Eric Dailey was hyper-efficient in scoring 15 points on 6-8 shooting, while Dylan Andrews had a great run to start the second half before sitting for the rest of the game, finishing with 11 points on 5-8 shooting. Throw in good outings for Trent Perry (nine points) and Sebastian Mack (eight points), and you end up with a night where the Bruins put up 88 points and shot 47.5% from the field despite poor performances from Bilodeau and Kobe Johnson. Johnson also was second on the team in rebounds (6) and assists (4) while completely shutting down Simpson, so you can at least live with that.

UCLA had a 50-point lead at one point. When was the last time that happened?

One last thing before we get out of here for a few days: UCLA got some more good minutes from Aday Mara and William Kyle III in this one. Mara in particular has looked like the light is coming on for him on both ends of the court; he still makes little mistakes here and there, but more often than not he’s making the right play. What stood out to me the most in this game was how confident he now looks in understanding where he is supposed to be. Late in the game, Dominick Harris got lost defensively and Mara pushed him to the right spot, then talked to him about where he was supposed to be after the play, a sign of his growing understanding on that end. Kyle had solid play as well, and the two bigs combined for 35 minutes of play, which can only help as the team gets closer to conference play.

Speaking of: Big Ten Conference play begins next week against *checks notes* another longtime Big Ten stalwart in Washington. That should be fun.

Go Bruins!

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