This post was updated March 4 at 12:06 a.m.

Three top-10 wins.

All at Pauley Pavilion. 

This time in convincing fashion.

In its final home game of the 2025-26 season, UCLA men’s basketball (20-10, 12-7 Big Ten) upset No. 9 Nebraska (25-5, 14-5) 72-52 on Tuesday night at Pauley Pavilion, all while honoring eight Bruin athletes for the squad’s annual Senior Night celebration. The Bruins concluded the campaign 17-1 at home, falling in double-overtime in their sole loss.

“Since I’ve been here, we don’t lose much at home,” said coach Mick Cronin after the game. “My friend, if they’d call the travel in overtime (against Indiana), we were up two with 20 seconds left, and the guy took three steps, we’d be undefeated. But anyway, I digress.”

While the Cornhuskers entered Tuesday night’s affair as the fifth-most efficient defense in the country, per KenPom, it was the Bruins’ stifling defensive effort that clinched the victory. UCLA held Nebraska to just a 38.8% field goal percentage and 5-for-24 shooting beyond the arc.

The Bruins consistently forced the Huskers to settle for pull-up jumpers or slashes to the rim, while also forcing Nebraska’s worst shot-makers to make open shots.

But UCLA’s defense remained steadfast, staying square with Nebraska players through the drive. And when they did get beat on the drive, the Bruins helped the helper – leading to blocks, turnovers and contested shot attempts. 

The Bruins held Huskers’ top two scorers – forward tandem Pryce Sandfort and Rienk Mast – to just 20 combined points and 7-for-16 shooting from the field. Prior to the contest, Sandfort and Mast averaged 18.3 points and 13.7 points, respectively, with the former’s tally tying for No. 10 in the Big Ten. 

And the cherry on top was Sandfort’s 2-for-7 mark from deep, a stark contrast from his 40.8% long-range average entering Tuesday.

UCLA’s stalwart defensive performance comes just three days after falling to Minnesota in Minneapolis, where the Bruins allowed the Golden Gophers to shoot 58% from the field and 12-for-23 from beyond the arc.

[Related: UCLA men’s basketball seeks home-court advantage on Senior Night against Nebraska]

“Plus 10 on the glass, shoot 51%, make 10 3s – you should win, but not with this team,” Cronin said after UCLA’s Saturday defeat. “We’ve struggled defensively all year. It’s been a grind, something I haven’t experienced in 30 years in college – 23 as a head coach, seven as an assistant. We just have deficiencies and they exposed them.”

On the other end of the court, Nebraska failed to match the defensive tenacity it has illustrated all season – holding teams to a 39.8% field goal percentage and a 29.4% clip from beyond the arc, marks that rank No. 18 and No. 11 in the country, respectively.

[Related: Scouting Report: UCLA men’s basketball vs. Nebraska]

While the Bruins were not prolific shooters Tuesday night, they still managed to achieve 43.3% and 33.3% clips from the field and beyond the arc, respectively. Leading the Bruins’ scoring efforts was sophomore guard Trent Perry, who knocked in 20 points to go along with seven boards and four assists.

Perry’s efforts marked a bounce-back performance after he left Minnesota empty-handed, failing to score despite taking seven shots.

But after Perry committed a turnover just over two minutes into the game, instead of taking the seemingly open shot, Cronin made a shooting gesture to the sophomore. And from that moment, Perry went 8-for-15 from the field, knocking down three 3-pointers.

“For me personally, I feel like I let my team down last game (against) Minnesota. (I) faced a different type of adversity, not just on the court, off the court, getting a lot of comments, hate comments, threats, all that type of stuff,” Perry said. “I felt like I had to come out here tonight and really just bounce back on my team, play for something that’s greater than myself.”

Joining Perry at the top of the box score was junior guard/forward Eric Dailey Jr., who knocked in 14 points to go alongside a team-high eight rebounds.

But Dailey’s point total mattered little to Cronin.

“Eric had six deflections and eight rebounds. That’s all I care about,” Cronin said. “Everybody else cares about his points, (but) his defense and his rebounding and his toughness will give him a chance to play beyond here. Not his shooting. He was awesome tonight with his toughness. It’s contagious.”

Although senior guard Donovan Dent did not light up the scoreboard, he continued to efficiently facilitate the offense, garnering eight assists to just one turnover. Dent has recorded 46 assists to just two turnovers across his last four games.

“We got offensive talent,” Cronin said. “When we share the ball, we’re hard to defend, and they’re the fifth-best team, metrically in the country, defensively. So we’re hard to defend when we execute and share the ball. We have proper spacing. But really we got guys who can shoot.”

And while he may not have dominated any stat, redshirt freshman guard Eric Freeny made his minutes count Tuesday night, scoring four points and grabbing five rebounds through just 18 minutes of play.

Freeny continues to be an integral bench piece, providing toughness and energy even when his impact is not felt in the box score.

“That’s a tough guy right here, very tough to get hit in the face with the ball and not flinch, and he brings that every day in practice – what we see, this (is) what he do every day,” Dailey said. “He works hard. He’s in the gym early, and all the work that he’s done in the dark is coming to light.”

After earning its third top-10 win of the season, UCLA will travel across town Saturday to face USC for the final game of the regular season.

“We got to take that attitude that we played with tonight and bottle it up and keep it rolling,” Dailey said. “We’ve been having the same problem, like coach been saying, but tonight, this team looked different, and the way we play tonight, we keep the same energy and attitude and the plays and the hustle will be fine down the stretch.”