This post was updated Feb. 17 at 9:45 p.m.

Teams often focus on responding decisively after sustaining a blowout loss.

Especially when they are on the March Madness bubble. 

But the Bruins failed to avenge their largest defeat of the season after sustaining a 30-point loss to then-No. 2 Michigan on Saturday. 

No. 15 Michigan State (21-5, 11-4 Big Ten) trounced UCLA men’s basketball (17-9, 9-6) 82-59 at the Breslin Center on Tuesday night, cementing the squad’s winless Mitten State road trip. The Westwood bunch scored just 23 first-half points – courtesy of an eight-minute scoring drought – and allowed the Spartans to shoot 50%-plus from the field and beyond the arc.

The Bruins have mustered responses this season – failing to lose back-to-back games since their Jan. 3 and Jan. 6 defeats against Iowa and Wisconsin, respectively– up until their East Lansing affair.

But the Spartans dominated the Bruins in all facets of the game, especially in the paint. The Bruins recorded just 27 rebounds to the Spartans’ 37, as glass struggles continued to plague the team. 

“We just got thoroughly outplayed. That’s the best game they (the Spartans) played all year,” said coach Mick Cronin. “You (either) play up to your capabilities or you play below them. Blatantly, we’ve got guys playing below their capabilities.”

Junior forward/center Xavier Booker, who transferred from Michigan State ahead of the 2025-2026 campaign, and redshirt senior forward Steven Jamerson II – who enrolled as a student at Michigan State in 2021 before committing to play at San Diego – were brought in to bolster UCLA’s interior presence after former Bruin center Aday Mara left for Ann Arbor. 

Mara has helped cement Michigan’s conference-high 41.6 rebounds per game, but UCLA has posted just 32.7 boards per game this season, the fourth-lowest clip in the Big Ten. 

Meanwhile, Booker has contributed just 3.7 rebounds per contest despite starting at center, while Jamerson has added only 2.3 per game. 

And the pair notched just four combined boards Tuesday evening. 

Frustration also marred Jamerson’s performance, which was evident when he committed his fourth foul of the game.

Jamerson committed a flagrant one foul while attempting to block Spartan center Carson Cooper’s transition dunk attempt. Both teams scuffled near the baseline after the hard contact, resulting in a double technical on Cooper and Jamerson – giving the latter his fifth and final foul.  

Cronin grabbed Jamerson’s jersey as the forward/center walked to the bench and pointed toward the locker room to usher him off the court. The Spartan crowd jeered at the former East Lansing student as he strided into the locker room. 

“Steve’s a good kid, (but) he made a bad decision,” Cronin said. “If you want to be a tough guy, you need to do it during the game. Guy was defenseless in the air. Game’s a 25-point game – you don’t do that.”

The Bruins’ rebounding struggles could also be chalked up to the Spartans’ prowess on the glass. They ranked second in the Big Ten in rebounds per game with 41.2 ahead of the matchup. 

Squads that lack the talent and physicality to command the interior often need to dominate the perimeter. 

And the Bruins wilted around the arc as well, particularly on the defensive end. 

UCLA allowed Michigan State to shoot 51.9% from deep, the second-highest clip the Bruins forfeited this season, with guards Jeremy Fears Jr. and Kur Teng, along with forward Jordan Scott, netting three or more 3-pointers to spur its offense. 

The Bruins’ defensive backcourt struggles came in spite of the Bruins holding teams to a 30% long-range clip, the third-lowest mark in the conference. 

Although the Bruins drained 32% of their 3-point tries – senior forward Tyler Bilodeau paced the deep shooting effort with a 3-for-5 long-range performance – they recorded a season-low 36.8% field goal percentage and particularly struggled to convert inside the paint. 

The Bruins are now 2-7 against Quad 1 opponents, and their path to March Madness becomes even murkier with their 23-point loss in East Lansing. 

“We have to play smarter, execute better, and we have to have guys making plays,” Bilodeau said.

UCLA will face No. 10 Illinois at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday, which marks one of its two top 10 matchups remaining on the regular-season slate.

But to earn a tournament spot in March, the Bruins may need to bury their Great Lakes outing, where they posted a 53-point deficit across both games.

“We’re not where we want to be right now,” said senior guard Skyy Clark. “We just aren’t playing hard enough. We have to figure out something. We still have some big games coming up, (and) we have to stay together.”