UCLA Basketball: Ascendant Bruins Sophomore Impressing Coaches

Sophomore UCLA Bruins guard Will McClendon has been one of the few three-point shooting salves for the 5-2 club thus far this season.

Jack Nelson of The Daily Bruin reports that just two UCLA players are connecting on 30% or more of their triple tries this year, in McClendon and Lazar Stefanovic, a 6'6" junior transfer out of Utah. Cumulatively, the Bruins are making just 31.3% of their three-point tries (on fewer than 100 attempts), "good" for just the 248th-such best mark in the nation. That's not quite good enough.

McClendon shot a scant 1-of-5 from deep across consecutive starts for UCLA when facing Lafayette and Long Island. He's made 50% of his three-pointers since, upon moving back to the bench.

“He worked really hard in the offseason, summer, and we saw him this year in practice, preseason before we started playing games,” associate head coach Darren Savino commented. “He was one of our, if not our best, three-point shooter.”

“If he starts to take hard shots and too much movement, that’s where he would struggle,” Savino said. “But when he’s open and we can kick it to him, we’re pretty confident that he can make it. So moving forward, it’s a nice little weapon for us if he can continue to play with that confidence.”

He's connecting on 42.1% of his 2.7 three-point attempts a night this year, a marked uptick from his 7.1% on one triple try.

“The coaches trust me, they get mad at me when I don’t shoot it,” McClendon noted.

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