#4 UCLA Bruins Go Bear Hunting, Beat UC Berkeley, 78-43
The Bruins threw one heckuva party for Jaquez' 22nd birthday.
It took me longer to come up with tonight’s headline than it did for the Bruins to dispose of UC Berkeley tonight, but, then again, that could be because it took the Bruins 55 seconds and four shots before finally registering their first points against the Golden Bears.
When Jaime Jaquez, Jr. finally got UCLA on the scoreboard, the game was over.
UC Berkeley never got any closer.
That’s due to the fact that the Bruins rattled off 12 consecutive points before finally allowing a bucket to the Northern Branch.
How lopsided was this game?
Let’s just say that, if the UCLA administration were to ask the Regents to re-visit the Calimony the Bruins are required to pay in return for being allowed to leave the Pac-12, the first half would be Exhibit A and the second half would be Exhibit B.
In fact, it took the not-so-Golden Bears more than six minutes to score any points at all when Joel Brown finally made a bucket for UC Berkeley.
At the midway point in the first half, the score was UCLA 17, Joel Brown 4, the rest of the Bears nothing.
Brown remained the only team member to score for UC Berkeley until Kuany Kuany finally got on the scoreboard with a three-pointer with 7:09 to go in the half. By that point, Brown had already scored all six of his first half points. In the final seven minutes of the half, Kuany would be the only Bear to score more than a point. That didn’t come until Berkeley’s final basket of the half, a three-pointer with 2:09 left.
The Bruins ended the half with a 23-point lead, 38-15.
The second half was marginally better for Mark Fox’s squad. Brown cut the UCLA lead to 21 points by scoring the first basket of the second half, but that would be as close as things got from that point forward.
On Jaime Jaquez’ 22nd birthday, Coach Mick Cronin gave him the gift of almost half the night off. After playing 17 minutes of the first half, Jaquez only saw nine minutes of action in the second half. He finished the game leading all scorers with 20 points. Jaquez also led both teams in rebounds with eight.
Amari Bailey was second in points with 16 while Jaylen Clark added 13.
Indeed, it was Clark who scored the basket that proved to be the game-winner. That came just under three minutes into the second half to put the Bruins up 44-19.
To conclude tonight, I want to offer an apology to the basketball teams at UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Irvine and even NAIA school UC Merced.
In December in my preview of UCLA’s game against UC Davis, I implied that UC Berkeley had the third-best basketball team in the UC system. After tonight’s game, I’m pretty certain that the Golden Bears are the ninth-best UC basketball team this season, but that’s only because UC San Francisco hasn’t grabbed five guys to field a team of their own yet.
The Bruins will now head to the Mountain schools for their final road trip of the regular season. If they can beat Utah on Thursday and Colorado next Sunday, they will enter the final weekend of the regular season needing to win one more game to lock up the Pac-12 regular season title.
Tip-off against Utah on Thursday will be at 8 pm PT and the game will air on Fox Sports 1.
Go Bruins!!!
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Great game! Jaime Jaquez gave us the present with another solid performance and the win. We thought no game would be more lopsided than the first one against Stanford in February and then came the Bears late in the season. Wow!