UCLA Basketball: Bruins NBA Prospect Reacts To New Career-High In This Stat
Sophomore UCLA Bruins men's basketball power forward/center Adem Bona may have enjoyed a relatively modest night offensively for the Blue and Gold against the Arizona State Sun Sun Devils, but he remained the club's defensive stalwart, as he has for much of the season.
During an eventual 68-66 road comeback victory, Bona scored nine points on 4-of-6 shooting from the floor and 1-of-2 shooting from the foul line. He also chipped in six rebounds, five assists and a steal.
But the craziest metric of all was his seven blocks, a new career high.
Per UCLA Communications, Bona revealed postgame that he was amped when he reached that tally.
“I was like ‘Wooooo! I’ve got seven blocks!’ It was kind of exciting,” Bona said.
UCLA trailed ASU 36-23 after an offensively challenged first half, but rallied in a major way in the second, outscoring the Sun Devils 45-30.
Bona, 20, has taken a bit of a scoring leap from where he was last season, where he emerged as a starter for Mick Cronin's 31-6 club that finished with a Sweet Sixteen defeat. As a freshman, Bona was named to the Pac-12 All-Defense and All-Freshman teams and also as his conference's Rookie of the Year.
This year, he's averaging 12.3 points on 60.4% field goal shooting, 6.2 rebounds, two blocks, 1.3 steals and 1.1 assists (against 2.7 turnovers).
