Sports
Men's Basketball Cruises to 85-66 Exhibition Win in Valencia – UCLA – UCLA Athletics
Men’s Basketball
VALENCIA, Spain – Lazar Stefanovic scored a team-leading 23 points and Sebastian Mack added 17 points as the UCLA men’s basketball team defeated Basquet L’Horta Godella, 85-66, on Thursday evening at L’Alqueria del Basket.
Stefanovic shot 7-for-16 from the field and was 2-for-7 from beyond the 3-point arc, as the Bruins improved to 2-0 during their nine-day trip through Spain.
UCLA’s win on Thursday evening came on a travel day. The Bruins boarded a train in Madrid just after 12:30 p.m. (local time) and arrived in Valencia nearly two hours later.
Mack (17 points), Kenneth Nwuba (15 points), Dylan Andrews (10 points) and Ilane Fibleuil (10 points) rounded out the Bruins’ list of double-figure scorers in the exhibition contest. Jan Vide had eight points, three rebounds and a team-leading five steals.
“I thought that today was more like a real game, as we played Valencia Basket’s junior team, their second team,” said Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach. “They’ve got a lot of good young players who have played with Aday Mara on the Spanish national team. Jan Vide knew a lot of their players. They’re very well-coached. The game was excellent for us, and we showed a lot of progress from game one to game two. That’s what you are looking for. Now obviously, we aren’t practicing in between games – we are sightseeing. But there was a lot of progress. I thought our guys looked a lot more comfortable playing together. That is going to be a big theme for us all season, to adjust, learn, get more comfortable together, learn how to win together. There were a lot of positives.”
UCLA finished the game with 42 deflections on the defensive end, including 28 in the first half. The Bruins shot 44.3 percent from the field, making 31 of 70 total shots. UCLA was 5-for-19 from beyond the 3-point arc and 18-for-28 (64.3 percent) from the free throw line.
UCLA outscored L’Horta Godella in each of four 10-minute quarters, playing with FIBA rules. The Bruins led the contest at halftime by a 44-38 margin, before L’Horta Godella opened the third quarter with a 9-0 scoring run to secure a 47-44 advantage at the 7:10 mark.
The Bruins responded with a 10-0 scoring run over the game’s next three minutes. Mack scored at the 6:52 mark before Jan Vide knocked down one of two free throws to tie the contest, 47-47. A jump shot by Andrews at the 5:15 mark put UCLA ahead, 51-47, before Vide nailed a corner 3-pointer with 4:19 to play.
After trailing 47-44, the Bruins outscored L’Horta Godella by a 23-8 margin to close the second half.
After having scored 14 points and collecting 13 rebounds on Tuesday night in Madrid, Stefanovic was even more impressive on Thursday in Valencia. He was a perfect 7-for-7 at the free throw line, had five rebounds and tallied three steals.
“Obviously, Lazar continues to be our most steady guy,” Coach Cronin said. “Lazar is our most veteran guy out there, with the most Pac-12 minutes, and I’ve quickly become a massive fan of him. I think that he’s going to be even more than we had hoped for, when he decided to transfer to UCLA. He’s got a chance to be an All-Pac-12 player, for sure. We desperately needed a veteran, smart player who can talk to our younger guys. That is exactly what he is. He’s a coach on the floor. We need that, because Dave and Jaime and Tyger and Jaylen Clark are all gone, and that’s what they were. They understood how to win and how to talk to each other. Lazar is going to be huge for us.”
Stefanovic helped ignite the Bruins’ mid-third quarter scoring spree on Thursday. With the Bruins ahead, 54-49, he found his way back to the free throw line with 3:30 to go and knocked down two free throws. After a basket by Fibleuil, Stefanovic made each of UCLA’s next three shots (highlighted by an old-fashioned 3-point play), all within a 90-second span, to put the Bruins on top, 65-49.
On a night where the Bruins repeatedly had three or four freshmen together on the floor, sophomore Dylan Andrews said he believes this squad will continue to grow and evolve.
“We have a lot of guys on this team with such raw talent,” Andrews said. “These guys want to push the pace. We just like to get out there, play defense. These guys are humble and these are guys who just want to win. This team is going to be special. I can’t wait for everybody to see what we are going to look like.”
After having played two exhibition games in a four-day span, the Bruins will return to action on Tuesday, Aug. 29, playing in Girona. UCLA will take on Girona CB at Pavello Girona-Fontajau at approximately 6:45 p.m. in Spain (9:45 a.m. in California). That will mark UCLA’s final game during a nine-day stay in Spain.
More Postgame Reaction
Defensive pressure proved to be key for the Bruins in the second half. UCLA finished the game with 17 steals, including three by Stefanovic, and forced 22 turnovers. Freshman forward Devin Williams had two blocks in 14 minutes off the bench.
“That was the difference in the game tonight – our ball pressure, our steals,” Coach Cronin said. “Our ball pressure and our defensive intensity definitely dictated the game. Then the second thing that we talk about is our rebounding. We finished with 19 offensive rebounds, and we had multiple guys with five or more total rebounds in this game. I thought that Ilane Fibleuil really made a difference on the offensive glass.”
Sebastian Mack (17 points) scored in double figures for the second time in three nights, having tallied a team-high 17 points in a win in Madrid on Tuesday evening. Mack has made 13 shots through his first two games and has gone 8-for-12 at the free throw line.
Lazar Stefanovic has averaged a team-leading 18.5 points per game in the two contests in Spain. Originally from Belgrade, Serbia, Stefanovic moved to the United States in 2020 for his first year of college. He spent his freshman and sophomore years at the University of Utah before transferring to UCLA in the spring of 2023.
“I had a lot of fun tonight,” Stefanovic said. “I know that we kind of have a lot of new faces, and I’m one of them. As coach has said, we have to talk more, we have to communicate more and be more aggressive. Tonight, I think that it was a big progression, compared to Tuesday’s game. Comparing our first game, with the first half and the second half, our second half was much, much better. We had started slowly in the first half. And today, again, we started the game a little better than in the last game. Today in the second half, we found some rhythm and we moved the ball a lot. We really had a lot of fun. I know that you always are playing to win, but this trip is also a lot about building team chemistry, getting to know each other, and I think that it came at a great time for us. We have a new team and it’s a perfect situation to get to know everybody.”
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