UCLA Basketball: This Element Of Bruins' Attack Almost Betrayed Them Vs Cal

Your UCLA Bruins' defense has rarely been an issue for them this season. It's their play on the other end that has generally let them down.

That almost proved to be the case yet again yesterday afternoon, as the club almost choked away a huge 14-point second half advantage against the California Golden Bears when their shooting went ice cold.

The Bruins connected on just 28% of their field goals in the contests second half.

6'7" junior Cal guard Jaylon Tyson was a big part of his club's insane late rally, but he ultimately was left wanting.

The Bruins had been connecting on 43% of their triple tries across their seven previous games (during which it had gone 6-1), but that well ran dry on Saturday.

Instead, UCLA connected on 29.4% of its threes for the night.

“Like you said, it’s a tough game," Adem Bona conceded. "If we had lost it we would be sitting here having a different conversation right now. You can see the growth of the team, to stay tough, to fight hard when the shots are not going in through the tough times. It’s great to see our growth, it’s amazing, it’s really good.”

Part of the reason the Bruins couldn't get much cooking on offense late was that the team seemed utterly confounded by Cal's 2-3 zone defense.

“We struggled with their zone towards the end of the game," Bona conceded. "We couldn’t get any shot to go in, but we stuck with it, and we tried to use our defense to our advantage. If we could not score, we were going to try and stop them from scoring, but eventually, towards the last couple minutes, we started to see some shots go in. Berke [Buyuktuncel] hit a big three towards the end of the game, and kind of helped boost the momentum.”

Ultimately, a win is a win. And UCLA is now 13-11 on the season, having gone 7-1 across its last eight games. But that was a little too close for comfort.