Surprised UCLA has crafted a solid 8 point halftime lead on North Cheatolina's *home* court. For geographic and recruiting reasons, MSG will always be a No Car *home* court, so help me 16 FTAs to 3 for UCLA.
UCLA has held an enormous edge at the C and SG positions, thanks to Bilodeau (who is taking bigly advantage of a rare height edge at C |since Tyler is a PF|), with a nice supporting role from Kyle ~ that said, Mara is unequivocally not playing well as he missed a bunny, traveled the one time he had inside position, and completely got himself deleveraged in committing a PF in the low blocks ~ he just looks intimidated both MSG & UNC-intimidated). The antithesis of that is the sensational & confident play of Mack who is sparkling on O. Unfortunately, we know from experience that we can't expect that to continue.
Would help if UCLA could press it's height advantage on the boards, as a mere 17-16 edge in boards has got to make *Hubert Davis" happy.
On the plus side, UCLA is pressing an edge in TOs (10 vs 11) which was a major concern given the solid speed of No Car's guard cohort. UCLA is overtly ballhawking the passing lanes and NoCar on O hasn't been able to make UCLA pay for that.
Dylan Andrews continues to be AWOL (scoreless), while my main concern is Dailey is detached from the game at this point, despite his big 6'8" height edge. A Dailey sighting in the 2H would be huge for the good guys.
Hopefully we can assert ourselves from the get-go in the 2H and not let No Car dictate their preferred helter-skelter pace
GO BRUINS!