Bruins Coach Reacts to Dominant Exhibition Win

The UCLA Bruins attained a blowout exhibition win earlier this week. Coach Mick Cronin gave his thoughts on the performance and a few of the key players that will play a massive role this season.

Feb 18, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; UCLA Bruins head coach Mick Cronin reacts against the Utah Utes in the first half at Pauley Pavilion presented by Wescom. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The UCLA Bruins are days away from their first regular season game of the new season and got some exhibition experience earlier this week in preparation for their first season in the Big Ten.

After a convincing 100-64 win over Division-II Cal-State Los Angeles, Coach Mick Cronin spoke regarding his team's performance and a few individual stat lines that stood out to him.

The Bruins dominated all aspects of a game that they were set up to succeed in.

The biggest star of the night was junior transfer Tyler Bilodeau, who led the team in scoring with 24 points, shooting 9-of-11 from the field and got to the free throw line eight times, nailing six of them. Bilodeau transferred from Oregon State where he averaged 14.3 points and 5.7 rebounds per game.

Cronin had a big smile on his face mentioning one of his newest transfers.

"Tonight, we were much more organized with what we were trying to accomplish, throwing the ball inside," Cronin said. "As you can see Tyler Bilodeau can score. He could score at Oregon State, he can score here."

Regardless of playing a team from any division, in college basketball, you still have to make shots and that's exactly what the Bruins did, shooting the absolute light out all night long. They did the best from beyond the three-point arc.

"We shot over 50% from three tonight," Cronin said. "I thought most of our shots were great shots."

Another transfer star guard Skyy Clark was 3-of-3 from 3-point range, finishing with 17 points. He is going to be a major threat in his junior year after coming over from Louisville last year. He is also one of the only Bruins players with Big Ten experience after spending his freshman year at Illinois.

The defense did receive some great experience early in the year even against a much lesser program. The Bruins matched up against a much smaller team that utilized kick-out 3-points as a way of generating offense. Cal-State LA's top scorer, Jaden Lazo, was 8-of-13 from 3-point range.

It didn't seem to be an unsettling stat for Cronin that gave credit to his opponent but kept a cool head when talking about his defense.

"They made a lot of shots," Cronin said. "A team like that, they're getting their shot blocked whenever they went in there [the paint] so we had four blocks, most of them early. So, they were just trying to beat us and spray it out and shoot it. It was great practice for us to have to deal with all that cutting and movement and all that. Give him credit, especially #15 [Lazo] made a lot of shots, he made eight on his own."

The Bruins will prepare for their first regular season game at home against Rider University on Monday. It will be a good test to see where they match up against a fairly similar opponent as it pertains to the Division I level. Cronin will have his guys ready to go and should see even more scoring.

Ensure you follow on X (Twitter) @UCLAInsideronSI and @tcav30 and never miss another breaking news story again.

Please let us know your thoughts when you like our Facebook page WHEN YOU CLICK RIGHT HERE