NICOLE MILLER/Daily Bruin Senior forward Matt
Barnes drives through the EA All-Stars defense.
By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Great.
Another exhibition game.
Don’t get too excited.
The UCLA men’s basketball team will play the second and
last of its seemingly frivolous but necessary exhibition contests
tonight at Pauley Pavilion when it squares off against Global
Sports, which was last seen losing to Oregon by 20 points.
During their meeting with the press yesterday, most of the
Bruins said what they were supposed to say ““ that
tonight’s game was as serious as any other and that there
would be no letdown in intensity. They could have been telling the
truth.
But at least one UCLA player admitted that the team would have
trouble approaching Global Sports the same as they would, say,
Duke.
When asked how his team could possibly be 100-percent focused
tonight when the Maui Invitational was less than a week away,
senior guard Billy Knight smiled, trying to hold in his
laughter.
Why are you laughing? It is hard to get up for these games,
huh?
“(Exhibition games are) totally different,” Knight
said, grinning.
Knight said that the Bruins’ porous defense in last
week’s 102-77 exhibition win over EA Sports probably had much
to do with the way they perceived their opponents.
“And we were a little rusty,” Knight said.
“(Giving up 77 points) was mainly us wanting to shoot and
score.”
Defense was the one aspect of UCLA’s game that all of the
Bruins agreed needed improvement before heading to Hawaii.
Against EA Sports, the defensive rotation was slow, shots
weren’t contested and penetration couldn’t be stopped.
Regardless of the reason ““ whether it be effort, a lack of
total understanding of the system, or EA Sports’ run-and-gun
style ““ it wasn’t effective.
“We were broken down on the dribble,” Bruin head
coach Steve Lavin said. “We need better help-side
defense.”
“Everyone just drove to the paint at will,” junior
forward Jason Kapono added. “We can’t let guys drive so
easily.
“But it takes awhile to get used to it ““ how to plug
holes. We need to work on that.”
Since that contest, Lavin has directed a good deal of his
attention to the team’s defense and the Bruins claim they
have a better feel of it.
Now, only if they can take this game seriously.
NOTES: Freshman point guard Cedric Bozeman, who bruised his
tailbone against EA Sports, was cleared to practice on Tuesday.
Although he said yesterday that he was “a little sore,”
he expects to play today. Since Bozeman and redshirt freshman Ryan
Walcott, who has tendonitis in his knees, are both slightly
injured, Kapono may spend some minutes as the Bruins’ primary
ballhandler.