It was a decision that seemed to send its intended message.<\/p>\n
After a sloppy start, the No. 12 Bruins turned up the intensity, exerted some defensive pressure and pulled away for a 74-63 victory<\/a> at Pauley Pavilion that served as a solid rebuttal to their coach\u2019s challenge.<\/p>\n Three days after allowing Eastern Washington to shoot nearly 54% in a defensive display that left Cronin livid<\/a>, UCLA (2-0) made little easy in holding Pepperdine to 34.4%.<\/p>\n Xavier Booker<\/a> scored 15 points to lead four players in double figures for the Bruins, pleasing a far larger, more energetic crowd than they hosted in their flat-all-the-way-around opener. Booker was a menace on both sides of the court, grabbing five rebounds, blocking five shots and even throwing a nifty pass to a cutting Jamar Brown<\/a> for a layup.<\/p>\n UCLA\u2019s Donovan Dent<\/a> added a relatively quiet 12 points and four assists and was joined in double figures scoring by Skyy Clark<\/a> (11 points) and Eric Dailey Jr.<\/a> (10).<\/p>\n UCLA\u2019s Donovan Dent, left, controls the ball in front of Pepperdine\u2019s Javon Cooley in the first half Friday.<\/p>\n (Melina Pizano \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n Making his season debut after sitting out the opener while rounding into form from a knee injury, Dailey received the loudest ovation during player introductions.<\/p>\n Dailey rewarded those fans with some active play early. He made a step-back three-pointer, found Clark for another three-pointer before adding some impressive defense. After grabbing an inbounds pass in the backcourt, Dailey went in for a layup in which he was fouled, eventually making the free throw to complete a three-point play.<\/p>\n UCLA was just getting started in what eventually became a 15-0 run mostly sparked by its defense. After allowing Pepperdine to shoot 50% midway through the first half, the Bruins made baskets hard to come by over the final 10 minutes, the Waves shooting just 32.1% by halftime.<\/p>\n Doing his best to keep that percentage as low as possible, Booker blocked three shots in the opening minutes of the second half and added a three-pointer as the Bruins took a 17-point lead.<\/p>\n Javon Cooley scored 17 points for Pepperdine (1-1), which generated some cheers during a timeout in the first half when Waves assistant coach Tyus Edney was recognized as the honorary captain more than 30 years after his buzzer-beating layup helped propel UCLA to an NCAA tournament victory over Missouri on the way to its last national championship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mick Cronin wasn\u2019t kidding about taking punitive measures to get his team playing better. Just 26 seconds into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[8932,4690,29083,29086,48,52,51,25946,47,50,49,4446,8750,5463,12227,9442,1417,25947,29084,1092,29085],"class_list":["post-43769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bruins","tag-coach","tag-dailey","tag-double-figure","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-layup","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-message","tag-mick-cronin","tag-minute","tag-pepperdine","tag-player","tag-point","tag-skyy-clark","tag-tyler-bilodeau","tag-ucla","tag-xavier-booker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43769","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=43769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} <\/p>\n