{"id":540882,"date":"2026-01-25T03:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-25T03:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/540882\/"},"modified":"2026-01-25T03:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-25T03:15:13","slug":"tyler-bilodeau-and-trent-perry-power-ucla-men-past-northwestern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/540882\/","title":{"rendered":"Tyler Bilodeau and Trent Perry power UCLA men past Northwestern"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If the UCLA men\u2019s basketball team<\/a> hopes to make up ground in the Big Ten race, now is the time to do it.<\/p>\n

Riding momentum from an upset of No. 4 Purdue<\/a> four days earlier, UCLA\u2019s first victory over a ranked opponent, the Bruins took a must-win approach into Saturday afternoon\u2019s contest against Northwestern and won 71-64<\/a> at Pauley Pavilion.<\/p>\n

It was the second straight win and fourth in five games for a squad in the middle of a six-game West Coast swing, with five games at home. The next four are against teams below them in the conference standings.<\/p>\n

Tyler Bilodeau<\/a> and Trent Perry<\/a> each scored 18 points, Donovan Dent<\/a> had 13 points and Eric Dailey Jr.<\/a> had 11 points and eight rebounds. Bilodeau has at least 10 points in 15 of 17 games, totaling 20 or more seven times and helping pick up the scoring slack while guard Skyy Clark is sidelined by a hamstring injury.<\/p>\n

The Bruins (14-6, 6-3) improved to 12-1 when leading at halftime. They outrebounded Northwestern 34-32 and prevented the Wildcats from making a field goal for 11 minutes in the second half, but losing the turnover battle (10 to 9) and struggling at the free-throw line (11 for 21) kept the score too close for coach Mick Cronin\u2019s comfort.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a little fatigue late,\u201d Cronin said. \u201cGuys are playing a lot of minutes … that we\u2019re winning games in this conference without Skyy Clark<\/a> says something. Nobody wants to be back more than him … we\u2019re trying to hold down the fort until we can get him back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s win coupled with Ohio State\u2019s loss Friday at Michigan moved UCLA into seventh place. The Bruins would climb into a tie with Wisconsin for fifth should USC knock off the Badgers on Sunday in Madison.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve put in a lot of work getting to my spots and executing,\u201d Perry added. \u201cSkyy\u2019s advice to me has been to keep being aggressive.\u201d <\/p>\n

UCLA was eight for eight from the floor during its 12-2 run over a three-minute span late in the first half, capped by a pull-up jumper by Perry that gave the Bruins a 14-point lead. They led 41-31 at halftime.<\/p>\n

The Bruins will go for three in a row Wednesday at Oregon before returning to Westwood for games against Indiana, Rutgers and Washington. Wins in this stretch are critical since UCLA wraps up the regular season with four games against ranked teams (one against undefeated Nebraska) and two against rival USC<\/a>. Only three of their remaining 11 are outside of the Pacific time zone.<\/p>\n

\u201cEric Dailey\u2019s physicality and defensive rebounding was a big, big key for us,\u201d Cronin said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t give up layups and dunks, you\u2019ve got a chance to stop people. They only had 24 points in the paint.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"UCLA <\/p>\n

UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau shoots over Northwestern\u2019s Jake West in the second half. Bilodeau scored in double figures for the 15th time in 17 games.<\/p>\n

(Mark J. Terrill \/ Associated Press)<\/p>\n

Bilodeau, who began the day ninth in the Big Ten in scoring (18.2 points), had 16 in the first half and was four for four from three-point range. He hit the go-ahead three-pointer Tuesday to give UCLA its first victory over a top-five opponent since the then-No. 5 Bruins beat No. 3 Arizona 75-59 on Jan. 25, 2022, in their third year under Cronin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had a good start but yes, we could\u2019ve executed better at the end,\u201d Bilodeau said. \u201cThis gives us confidence going forward. We have to build on these two home wins and clean up our rebounding and defensive mishaps.\u201d<\/p>\n

UCLA fans have yet to leave Pauley Pavilion disappointed this winter, as the men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams have combined to win all 21 games on their home floor\u201412 by Cronin\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n

Forward Nick Martinelli scored 20 points and grabbed eight rebounds for the Wildcats (9-11, 1-8), who were riding high after shocking USC 74-68 on Wednesday<\/a> at Galen Center for their first conference win. Tre Singleton added 12 for Northwestern, which was making its first appearance at Pauley Pavilion and fell to 1-7 against the Bruins.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe struggled at the foul line and [Northwestern coach] Chris Collins made a great adjustment in the second half,\u201d Cronin said. \u201cWe don\u2019t have anyone to throw it into the post. We struggled with that today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinelli\u2019s layup pulled the Wildcats to within 67-60 with 1:08 left, but Dailey was fouled with 35 seconds left and made both foul shots. Perry added a pair of free throws 11 seconds later to seal the deal.<\/p>\n

\u201cNick is a talented player,\u201d Cronin said. \u201cYou try to make him work for his shots. He played a lot of minutes as did a lot of our guys.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the UCLA men\u2019s basketball team hopes to make up ground in the Big Ten race, now is…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":540883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[75664,32072,1582,276,1910,2961,224,5337,471,22183,37476,449,7909,5950,6620,223887,176278,2501,3355,2030],"class_list":{"0":"post-540882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-basketball-team","9":"tag-bruins","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-game","13":"tag-la","14":"tag-los-angeles","15":"tag-losangeles","16":"tag-no","17":"tag-northwestern","18":"tag-opponent","19":"tag-point","20":"tag-saturday-afternoon","21":"tag-season","22":"tag-time","23":"tag-trent-perry","24":"tag-tyler-bilodeau","25":"tag-ucla","26":"tag-victory","27":"tag-win"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115953567365729261","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540882","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=540882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}