This past Friday night, your UCLA Bruins men's basketball program dropped its fourth consecutive bout (all were in non-conference play), a 69-60 loss to the Maryland Terrapins. With the defeat, UCLA falls to a 5-6 record on the year.
Starting UCLA freshman point guard Sebastian Mack explained his club's approach to stopping the Terrapins' best player, senior Jahmir Young.
The 6'1" Young had 37 points on 13-of-19 shooting from the floor (4-of-6 from deep), plus seven rebounds.
"We knew he was left-handed, credit to him, he's a great player.," I feel like we did not stress enough, even last year, we came out and we gave up 40 (points). We didn't follow the game plan with him. We knew he was left-handed, we knew he wanted to get to the basket, and we wanted to bite off the head of the snake, but we didn't cut his water off."
Although it didn't really happen on Friday, Mack revealed that his club is not going to be wanting for preparation. And Giff Smith recorded his first-ever pro NFL touchdown, to boot!
"We watch a lot of film, especially on last year's team," Smith said. Showing us how it wasn't one guy, and if he gets beat, he has faith and trust in his other guys that they are going to be there. That's what we are working on with our team. We feel like sometimes our guys are guarding by themselves, or they feel like there is no help behind them. That's what we are working on, knowing that our teammates have our back when you're guarding your guy, that if you get blown by that we are going to scramble and help."
"That just came from momentum and confidence," Smith continued. "We knew for a fact that we needed to get stops on the defensive end, and the offense was going to come. Worry about guarding your guard. Defense, rotating and scrambling, do what we can to get the ball in our No. 1's hands. We went on that run, it was a great run for us, great because we got the momentum, we just didn't keep it there when we should have. "
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