Three days after allowing Eastern Washington to shoot nearly 54% in a defensive display that left Mick Cronin livid<\/a>, the No. 12 Bruins (2-0) made little easy in holding Pepperdine to 34.4%.<\/p>\n Xavier Booker<\/a> scored 15 points to lead four players in double figures for the Bruins, pleasing a far larger, more energetic crowd than they hosted in their flat-all-the-way-around opener. Booker was a menace on both sides of the court, grabbing five rebounds, blocking five shots and even throwing a nifty pass to a cutting Jamar Brown<\/a> for a layup.<\/p>\n UCLA\u2019s Donovan Dent<\/a> added a relatively quiet 12 points and four assists and was joined in double figures scoring by Skyy Clark<\/a> (11 points) and Eric Dailey Jr.<\/a> (10).<\/p>\n Making his season debut after sitting out the opener while rounding into form from a knee injury, Dailey received the loudest ovation during player introductions.<\/p>\n UCLA\u2019s Donovan Dent, left, controls the ball in front of Pepperdine\u2019s Javon Cooley in the first half Friday.<\/p>\n (Melina Pizano \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Dailey rewarded those fans with some active play early. He made a step-back three-pointer, found Clark for another three-pointer before adding some impressive defense. After grabbing an inbounds pass in the backcourt, Dailey went in for a layup in which he was fouled, eventually making the free throw to complete a three-point play.<\/p>\n UCLA was just getting started in what eventually became a 15-0 run mostly sparked by its defense. After allowing Pepperdine to shoot 50% midway through the first half, the Bruins made baskets hard to come by over the final 10 minutes, the Waves shooting just 32.1% by halftime.<\/p>\n Doing his best to keep that percentage as low as possible, Booker blocked three shots in the opening minutes of the second half and added a three-pointer as the Bruins took a 17-point lead.<\/p>\n Javon Cooley scored 17 points for Pepperdine (1-1), which generated some cheers during a timeout in the first half when Waves assistant coach Tyus Edney was recognized as the honorary captain more than 30 years after his buzzer-beating layup helped propel UCLA to an NCAA tournament victory over Missouri on the way to its last national championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"That was more like it. Much more like it. After a sloppy start, UCLA turned up the intensity,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":363964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[32072,1582,276,4160,176277,176280,2961,5617,224,5337,67653,118393,11148,176276,9323,449,173182,176278,2501,176279],"class_list":{"0":"post-363963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-bruins","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-coach","12":"tag-dailey","13":"tag-double-figure","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-layup","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-message","19":"tag-mick-cronin","20":"tag-minute","21":"tag-pepperdine","22":"tag-player","23":"tag-point","24":"tag-skyy-clark","25":"tag-tyler-bilodeau","26":"tag-ucla","27":"tag-xavier-booker"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115512737748123887","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n
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