Bruins slam Global Sports, 86-60

  KEITH ENRIQUEZ/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Junior forward
Jason Kapono tries to wrestle the ball away from a
Global Sports opponent in the Bruins’ win last night.

By Dylan Hernandez
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Whaddya know?

Steve Lavin actually outcoached somebody.

By far.

Okay, so UCLA wasn’t facing Mike Krzyzewski’s Blue
Devils or even Lute Olson’s Wildcats, but the manner in which
it dismantled the Maury Hanks-coached Global Sports squad Wednesday
night had to convince even the greatest of Lavin-haters that the
Bruin coach has been doing something right during this fall.

The Bruins, moving with a purpose on both ends of the court for
much of the 40 minutes, thrashed Global Sports 86-60 in front of
5,116 fans at Pauley Pavilion in their final preseason contest
before next week’s Maui Invitational.

Senior forward Matt Barnes, scoring 18 points, led five Bruins
in double digits. Senior guard Billy Knight threw in 16, and junior
forward Jason Kapono added 13. Senior center Dan Gadzuric and
freshman forward Andre Patterson contributed 12 and 10 points,
respectively.

Freshman point guard Cedric Bozeman, who bruised his tailbone in
last week’s game against EA Sports, sat out the contest.
Lavin said he would be ready to go against Houston in
Monday’s Maui opener.

“We made progress in terms of executing our
offense,” Lavin said. “We did a better job with our
help defense, and we contested shots. We still have a ways to go.
We could use more scrimmages and practices, but we’ll learn
from playing (in Maui).”

No, this wasn’t a flawless performance one would place
with Beethoven’s rendition of the Ninth Symphony. The Bruins
had lapses in which they either grew tired or indifferent, allowing
Global Sports to make occasional runs at them. Ramel Lloyd took
advantage of those dead phases and managed to score 22 points.

But for every Global Sports charge, UCLA had a sustained stretch
of domination.

Global Sports, a team with more talent than the final score
would indicate, was beaten so soundly mainly because its players
had no response for what the Bruins showed them.

Global Sports had great difficulty penetrating UCLA’s
defensive press and was forced to make individual plays with little
time remaining on the shot clock. Also, the Bruins did a better job
than they did last week against EA Sports of plugging holes that
opened up when an opposing player managed to penetrate.

“We didn’t play good defense last week,”
Barnes said. “We worked on it a lot. We’re getting
ready for Hawaii.”

“The press hurt us,” Hanks said. “Teams
don’t usually press us, and it killed us today.”

Offensively, UCLA was patient, often rotating the ball along the
perimeter and waiting for a man to cut inside or free himself on
the outside.

Work hard moving, score with ease. Basic perhaps, but often
forgotten.

Now, to Hawaii.

NOTES ““ Lavin announced the signing of 6-foot-8 two-sport
standout Matt McKinney of Santa Ynez High School. McKinney, an
All-CIF basketball and volleyball player, plans to compete in both
sports at UCLA.