No. 3 UCLA women’s basketball handled San Diego State to begin its season on Monday, which isn’t too surprising. The Aztecs kept it close for a quarter before the Bruins’ talent became too much, with UCLA winning by a final score of 77-53.
UCLA went 34-3 a season ago, reaching the NCAA Tournament semifinal and losing to the eventual champion UConn Huskies. UCLA’s roster is even healthier and talented this season. It showed on Monday. The Bruins soared past an Aztec team that went 25-10 last year. Here are five takeaways from Monday’s opener.
Kiki Rice off the bench?
UCLA was always going to have more than five players capable of starting any given game but it was surprising to not see senior guard Kiki Rice in the starting lineup. Rice has been a Bruin mainstay since she was a freshman and she still will be this season.
UCLA head coach Cori Close said postgame that Rice was on a minutes restriction, which influenced the starting lineup. Rice played 25 minutes more than Angela Dugalic and Charlisse Leger-Walker, who both started for UCLA.
Shooting struggles were supposed to be fixed
UCLA brought in Gianna Kneepkens to replace Londynn Jones and that swap was supposed to help the Bruins’ spacing. Oftentimes teams would focus so much on Lauren Betts and the UCLA roster didn’t have enough shooting to make opposing teams pay.
The Bruins shot 25.9% from three on Monday on 27 threes. 41% of UCLA’s shots came from threes and unless they get better results that’s likely too many threes. Comparatively, the Bruins shot 64.1% on two point shots
Few college players can guard Lauren Betts… Still
From the beginning of Monday’s game it was clear that San Diego State had no one to guard Lauren Betts. It even looked like they didn’t have any practice players to emulate Lauren Betts as the All-American carved the Aztecs defense.
Betts shot 9-12 but got great looks at the rim. Monday’s game served as a good warm up for the team on entry passes to Betts but it will get tougher as the season continues.
Lena Bilic will be apart of the rotation
Bilic played 21 minutes in the season opener and it’s unlikely she’d play that much in a closer game, it’s clear that Close believes in the freshman from Croatia.
Bilic was 1-6 from the field, all of which were from three and was the only UCLA player with a negative +/-.
Charlisse Leger-Walker was worth the wait
Leger-Walker missed the entire season last year as she recovered from a torn ACL but on Monday you saw why UCLA recruited her despite knowing she’d be out a full season.
Leger-Walker can shoot, facilitate and she’s got active hands, which led to two steals and a block on Monday. She could end up being one of UCLA’s best players.
This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: 5 takeaways from UCLA’s comfortable win over San Diego State
Reporting by Dylan McNeill, UCLA Wire / UCLA Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
