Ucla Basketball

Ucla Women’s Basketball Cruises Past Washington State, 67-48

... ball to the glass for the first two points for the Bruins. This would not be the first time Billings made that kind of play. All game long she played an aggressive game going to the glass and getting the rebounds. She ended up tying her record of 25 rebounds in a single game. She brought the same fire that she played with on Friday night against Washington over and over against Washington State. Washington State played a good game defensively. They applied pressure on the Bruins all game long. They played man-to-man coverage, hoping that would slow down UCLA’s powerhouse offense. At times, that would happen, but the Bruins found ways to make their shots. Offensively, the Cougars could not get it done. From the three-point line, they had a game to forget. They only made a handful of shots from the arc even though they took many attempts. Washington State was also missing three players due to injury including freshman Chanelle Molina, who is recovering from an ACL tear. UCLA played much better this week. The Bruins need to continue this kind of play with them to Arizona on their final road trip of the season. The Bruins’ defense needs to continue to ...

Ucla Walk-on Smith Cut His Teeth With The Women's Team

... to be a better basketball player every day, just like them. But as things were developing and me being able to walk onto the men’s team looked like it could happen.”. He had to find out for sure. Smith dreamed of playing for one of the most celebrated programs in the history of college basketball. Only 15 guys can walk around campus and say they play for the UCLA basketball team. He wanted to know what that felt like. Close and Farrow started dropping hints to UCLA coach Steve Alford and his staff, praising Smith’s work ethic and vouching for his skill. The summer before his sophomore year, Smith started showing up at men’s practices and at coaches’ offices. His daily visits at one point promoted men’s assistant Duane Broussard to tell Smith, “You are the most persistent person I’ve ever met in my life.”. Courtesy of UCLA athletics. Each meeting, Smith would rattle off different reasons for why he’d be an ideal member of the men’s team: He was already enrolled, he said, and already academically eligible. His transition would be seamless. He had ...

Ucla Basketball Seeking Redemption After Usc Sweep

... Coast’s Cinderella run in the 2013 NCAA tournament. The duo passed up scholarship offers from schools like Kansas, Indiana and, namely, UCLA. On the heels of its latest loss to USC, the Bruins brought in a recruiting class headlined by point guard Lonzo Ball that has transformed them into one of the most exciting acts in college basketball. UCLA has signed the consensus No. 2 recruiting class in the nation for 2017 and isn’t making things any easier in the living room for Enfield. “Since we walked in the door, we had to get competitive with them,” Enfield said. “Since the John Wooden days, they’ve been getting the top players to go to UCLA. We had to do our part to elevate and ramp up our program, so that national recruits and local recruits would consider USC a place to go to school.”. There is perhaps no more important recruiting battle ground than the court, where USC has the edge. Riding its success against UCLA last season to the program’s first NCAA tournament appearance in five years, the Trojans rode the momentum to 14 straight wins to start this season. They have since lost four of eight Pac-12 games, raising the stakes for Wednesday’s game against ...

Ucla Men’s Basketball Attendance Its Best In 19 Years

... in Westwood, CA on Saturday, February 18, 2017 during the USC vs UCLA men's basketball at Pauley Pavilion. (Photo by Scott Varley/SCNG). By Clay Fowler , Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. # Comments. The UCLA basketball team’s attendance is its highest in 19 years this season. Prior to hosting USC Saturday night, Pauley Pavilion was drawing an average of 10,652 fans, the most since the 1997-98 team averaged 10,739. With three more conference games at home this season, including Saturday’s sellout, that number could surpass the 161,089 fans in 1997-98. UCLA coach Steve Alford isn’t just impressed with the totals, he paid the highest of compliments to the atmosphere created by the sellout crowd that aided the Bruins’ 82-79 win over Oregon Feb. 9. “In my four years, Pauley hasn’t sounded like that,” Alford said. “That’s been the best environment that one of my teams had a chance to play in.”. Saturday’s crowd may have challenged for that title amidst the “blueout.” UCLA provided blue shirts to each fan in attendance, pulling out all the stops in an effort to avoid its first five-game losing streak to USC since the 1940 s. Saturday was the most ...

Ucla Basketball’s Old Man Isaac Hamilton

... student sections for each basketball game and football game when I was in school—kinda don’t like the camera thing, either). In this week’s version of  Mark Titus ’s power rankings at The Ringer, he provides the best- and worst-case seeding scenarios for each of his top twelve teams. 7. UCLA (23–3). Selection Sunday best-case scenario: The Bruins are in the same boat as Arizona. Establishing themselves as the cream of the Pac-12 crop would put them in position to secure the no. 2 seed in the West … but could also land them the (weirdly unappealing) no. 1 seed in the South. So, like the Wildcats, UCLA’s best-case scenario has more to do with location than seeding. If the Bruins can play every game in California before the Final Four (which is in nearby Phoenix), UCLA fans should be thrilled. Selection Sunday worst-case scenario: The committee had the Bruins as a no. 4 seed last weekend, even after their thrilling comeback win over Oregon. Considering that UCLA has only lost three games and that ...

Kadeem Allen Expected Back Vs. L.a. Schools; Dusan Ristic’s Return Date Unclear

... initially making it appear as if he was going to play. “In that situation, it’s important that you listen to the trainer, not Kadeem,” Miller said. “Kadeem just wants to play, but it wasn’t in Kadeem’s best interest to play. He could’ve really hurt himself, so we’re not going to put him at risk. Having him go through warmups was more about the future. It was good for him to go through warmups because we anticipate him making a full return this coming week.”. While Miller seems convinced Allen will be back to face the L. A. schools next week, he was not as sure about Dusan Ristic ’s status. UA’s starting center suffered a “grade 1” ankle sprain against Washington State on Thursday which forced him to miss Saturday’s game versus Washington. “Dusan has a mild ankle sprain,” Miller said. “He has a little bit of swelling. Grade 1. ...

Old Man’ Isaac Hamilton Getting It Done For Bruins

... and the top returning scorer in the Pac-12 this season. Hamilton’s “old-man game” existed long before he was a five-star recruit at St. John Bosco High School, but he embraces the label more for his interests off the court. “I like doing old-man things,” Hamilton said. “I like to read. I take cleaning seriously. It all correlates to each other on and off the court. I embrace it. It brings me peace.”. Hamilton is a renaissance man, indeed. When he’s not reading, cleaning or playing basketball, he loves to cook. He makes a mean cannoli and is trying to perfect his enchilada recipe. Sometimes he’ll drive home to Leimert Park to use his mother’s blender for homemade salsa. The Hamiltons have since added on to their home, but it was 1,100 square feet when it housed all six of their children. That space is where Isaac’s passion for cleanliness, among other things, was born. “When you’re living in such tight quarters, I made sure they kept ...

Reset Of Ucla Hoops Recruiting

... UCLA could far more easily make the case to Hardy that he comes in, sits behind Hands for a season, Hands goes pro after his sophomore or even his junior year, and Hardy is the UCLA starting point guard in the type of offense he wants to play in for 2 or 3 seasons. There is  James Akinjo , from Richmond Salesian, who is a notch below Williams and Hardy, but someone to know. He's smallish, at about 5-10, but he is a true point guard. He's had a mediocre junior year, being pretty inconsistent.  He's a good ball handler and passer, but probably not the guy you want to, at least, be a good defender. A guy we were hoping would step up in his junior season is  Payton Moore , a guard from Los Angeles Windward, but Moore has taken a step back this year.  He's very athletic and could help to improve UCLA's backcourt athleticism, but he'd have to have a very big spring and summer to get on UCLA's radar. At this point, we'd like to see UCLA not only look nationally for elite point guard prospects, but develop an expanded list of ...

The Creator Of Ucla's Iconic Frisbee Cheer Fondly Remembers When He Did It His Way

... Ranch on Feb. 16. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times). Davis was the one trying to reach his fellow students when he started the cheer as a UCLA undergraduate majoring in biochemistry. Interest in the school’s basketball team had waned a bit in the two years after legendary coach John Wooden retired, with attendance at Pauley Pavilion dipping about 1,000 fans per game from Wooden’s final season in 1974-75. Davis got the idea while watching Pepperdine water polo players perform a similar cheer in support of their school’s volleyball team during a match against UCLA. He later learned it had been performed previously at a Pepperdine swim meet, where a student stood up and asked, “Are those the starting blocks? Is that a diving board?”. Davis did something that made the cheer entirely his own. He copyrighted it. The unveiling of the cheer at Pauley Pavilion during the 1976-77 season was modest, Davis starting with a ...