{"id":101545,"date":"2025-12-19T19:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T19:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/101545\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T19:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T19:12:07","slug":"ucla-basketball-shouldnt-struggle-against-winless-long-beach-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/101545\/","title":{"rendered":"UCLA basketball shouldn’t struggle against winless Long Beach State"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dec. 19, 2025, 10:48 a.m. PT<\/p>\n

Coming off their most lopsided win in decades, the UCLA Bruins<\/a> will play their final nonconference regular season game on Saturday against Long Beach State. Much like the game against Cal Poly<\/a>, the Bruins<\/a> will enter the game as heavy favorites.<\/p>\n

Maintaining the momentum is priority No. 1 for UCLA<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s important that UCLA doesn\u2019t slip against the Beach and have their four-game winning streak snapped, the Bruins need to be sure that they\u2019re heading back into Big Ten Conference play with momentum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

UCLA played terrific basketball against Cal Poly, scoring 115 points while playing disruptive defense. Things will get tougher for the Bruins after this game, the Mustangs are a struggling Big West Conference team who was without their best player and Long Beach State is winless on the season at 0-9. Once UCLA gets into conference play they\u2019ll be facing NCAA Tournament-caliber teams night-in and night-out.<\/p>\n

If UCLA can stop JaQuoia Jones-Brown, they’ll stop the Beach<\/p>\n

Long Beach State\u2019s best player is sophomore guard JaQuoia Jones-Brown. Jones-Brown leads the team in points (17.2), rebounds (6.7) and assists (2.4).\u00a0 She does most of her work inside the three-point line but Jones-Brown does shoot it at 37.5% from deep.<\/p>\n

Need a news break? Check out the all new PLAY hub with puzzles, games and more!<\/a>The Bruins have some great defenders to throw at Jones-Brown<\/p>\n

The Bruins will have options on who to guard Jones-Brown, and regardless of who UCLA chooses, the Bruin will have the height advantage over the 5\u20196\u201d Beach guard. Kiki Rice stands at 5\u201911\u201d and Gabriela Jaquez is 6\u20190\u201d, giving the Bruins two solid defenders in their starting lineup they could put on Jones-Brown.<\/p>\n

UCLA also has the tallest, and best, player on the court<\/p>\n

One of the more encouraging things from UCLA\u2019s last two games is how great Lauren Betts has looked. The Bruins have some of the best depth in the country but they need Betts to be a superstar to have a true chance at bringing home a national championship. Long Beach State doesn’t play anyone over 6\u20192\u201d more than 10 minutes per night, it should be an all you can eat buffet for Betts.<\/p>\n

A win is nearly a guarantee but that won’t be the case for long<\/p>\n

A win is hardly in doubt for UCLA on Saturday, it\u2019s just a matter of playing a solid game and sharpening their skills before a taxing next three months in the Big Ten and then the NCAA Tournament. The Bruins have the talent, now they need to get it done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dec. 19, 2025, 10:48 a.m. PT Coming off their most lopsided win in decades, the UCLA Bruins will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[243,131,133,132,55347,55348,509,5727,507,1350,55350,25943,12690,1349,13084,377,13082,55349,55351,246],"class_list":["post-101545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-accessfree","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-sstssportscollegeuclawomens-basketball","tag-sstsnwomens-basketball","tag-tagbasketball","tag-tagbig-10-hub","tag-tagcalifornia-gold-rush","tag-tagcollege-sports","tag-taglong-beach-st-beach-womens-basketball","tag-tagncaa-big-ten-conference","tag-tagncaa-mens-basketball-tournament","tag-tagoverall-positive","tag-tagsmg-listicle","tag-tagsports-news","tag-tagucla-bruins","tag-tagucla-bruins-womens-basketball","tag-tagwomens-college-basketball","tag-typestory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}