Amari Bailey Breaks Out as UCLA Beats Oregon State 62-47
It was a glorified scrimmage for the most part.
I’m not going to mince words: UCLA was never going to lose this game. Even the team that could not hit the broadside of water a few weeks ago would have handled this Oregon State team easily.
It is in that vein that I just want to talk about a few things before turning out collective attention to Oregon. To wit:
Amari Bailey Broke Out
Bailey finished the game with 24 points on 10-16 shooting, showing off an excellent ability to create and finish around the rim that has been missing for most of this season. It would be easy to say Bailey has struggled a bunch this season, but I think that’s a bit of a cop-out for what has really been happening. The reality has been more of an unlucky variety, as Bailey has generated good looks consistently that have not fallen while still playing excellent defense.
It is in this regard that Bailey’s performance was so important. Yes, Oregon State is not exactly a good team, but sometimes a player just needs to see the ball go through the hoop a bunch of times, and that’s exactly what happened for Bailey. It would be a lot to ask Bailey to continue this level of performance going forward, but if he can harness this game and use it going forward, it would go a long way towards “fixing” the offensive issues.
The Defense Travels
Consider this: UCLA went fully into garbage time with 2:25 left in the game. At this point, they had held Oregon State to 37 points. Even considering the Beavers scored 10 points in those final minutes, the Bruins still held Oregon State to under 50 points. That’s pretty, pretty good (again, even considering that Oregon State is bad).
UCLA held Oregon State to a measly 0.770 points per possession, which is really good! They forced 18 turnovers, which is kinda low compared to what they’ve usually forced from opponents but still really good compared to the national average. UCLA scored 17 fastbreak points, again a sign that the defense is starting to cause those major turnovers again that can give them easy points. Jordan Pope, Oregon State’s impressive freshman, was limited to only 17 points, which is exactly what Mick Cronin said needed to happen for the Bruins to win. It was an excellent performance and a good reminder of how good this defense can be when locked in.
This and That
I went looking through the stats for this game, trying to find anything at all to talk about in what was a generally unremarkable game and came away with a few small things.
Jaime Jaquez was not great from the field in this game (seven points on 3-10 shooting) but he did grab 12 rebounds to lead the team by a significant margin. It speaks to Jaquez’s talent that he can impact the game in a variety of ways outside of just scoring the ball.
On the flip side, Jaylen Clark finally saw the ball go through the hoop consistently, putting up 16 points on 7-11 shooting. The UCLA gameplan seemed to focus as much on getting him going early, as he took seven of those shots in the first half and raced out to an early 10 points. Clark has a knack for dominating lesser opponents, but maybe this is the performance he needs to get back on track, which the Bruins could desperately use.
There were seven second-chance points combined in this game. Part of that has to do with the Bruins shooting so well - they shot 50% from the field overall - and also due to both teams just crashing the defensive glass hard.
The Bruins only had nine bench points in this game, which feels really low considering that David Singleton is back in his sixth-man role. But the bench only took seven shots total, and while four of them played at least 10 minutes, it really came off as they were mostly in for a supportive and defensive role. It’s not a bad thing, but you would think the Bruins would like the supporting cast to contribute more.
UCLA will next play on Saturday, when they travel to Eugene to take on the Oregon Ducks. Tip-off is scheduled for 7:00 PM PT.
Go Bruins!
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This was a fun game to watch, for sure, but the true litmus test of where we are as a team will be tomorrow's game against the Ducks. That will truly show us how tournament-ready we are at this moment, 7 games out of the Pac12 tournament (winning this has always been our goal). Still, gotta give credit to our Bruins and to Mick's great game plan; we really looked good last night.
Unfortunately didn’t get to watch the first half. The second half showed cronin the happiest I’ve seen him in a while. He also got Dylan Andrews a lot more play time as he tries to find some good back up for tyger. Defensively great… even with a big win the offensive efficiency metrics continue to go in the wrong direction