Men's Basketball Outlasts Madrid All-Stars, 76-68
August 22, 2023 | Men's Basketball
MADRID – The UCLA men's basketball team defeated the Madrid All-Stars, 76-68, on Tuesday evening in the first of the team's three exhibition games during a nine-day stay in Spain.
Freshman Sebastian Mack led the Bruins with 17 points, connecting on 7 of 13 shots.
Junior Lazar Stefanovic tallied 14 points and a game-high 13 rebounds. Stefanovic knocked down six of eight shot attempts and totaled three steals.
"For us, we're just playing these games like a practice," said Mick Cronin, the Michael Price Family UCLA Men's Head Basketball Coach. "We're trying to play everybody, and we even had three point guards on the floor at times. We had four guards out there a lot. Three of our guys who'll be with us this season aren't playing for us yet, and we even had a couple guys out there cramping up. So right now, we are trying to get better and take advantage of practicing against another team. I know that people think that these are games and that they matter, but they don't. For me, it's a glorified scrimmage, and we came over here to get three of them and get that experience of playing against somebody other than us in practice. That's a key. That way, you have to think and make adjustments."
UCLA and the Madrid All-Stars played four 10-minute quarters (FIBA rules), and the two teams were deadlocked, 35-35, at halftime. The Bruins outscored the Madrid-based squad by a 23-14 margin in the third quarter and pushed their advantage to 62-49 with 8:07 left in the fourth quarter.
Madrid reduced UCLA's fourth-quarter advantage to six points – at 64-58 – with 5:53 remaining. Stefanovic made a jump shot with 5:30 to go, before Mack found his way to the free throw line. Mack, a 6-foot-3 guard who went to high school in Las Vegas, made both free throw attempts to put UCLA ahead by a 68-58 margin.
The Bruins extended their margin to 74-63 at the 2:20 mark on a layup by freshman Devin Williams, who finished the game with 14 points and seven rebounds.
Following a missed shot by the Bruins, Will McClendon took a charge with 1:22 remaining and UCLA ahead by eight points. UCLA regained possession and Mack again found his way to the free throw line.
"Being out here and experiencing something like this is great," Mack said. "We compete a lot in practice, but you always want to see some different faces and show our toughness. I feel like we did a good job of that today. I feel like this year, it's going to be fun. We've just got to keep working hard and focusing on what Coach is saying."
In all, nine Bruins scored in the exhibition contest. UCLA shot 38.5 percent from the field (27 of 70) and was 2-for-18 from beyond the 3-point arc. The Bruins limited the Madrid squad to 37.5 percent shooting on Tuesday evening (21 of 56).
Looking at the breakdown by quarters, UCLA trailed the Madrid All-Stars, 18-16, after the first quarter. The Bruins opened the game up 4-0 before Madrid took a 17-14 lead in the final minute of the opening period. UCLA outscored its opposition, 19-17, in the second quarter. The Bruins outscored the Madrid-based team in the third quarter, 23-14.
Tuesday's game took place just a few hours after the Bruins spent nearly two hours touring Toledo, a city in Spain approximately 45 miles southwest of Madrid. Toledo, known as the "City of the Three Cultures," was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986 and is located along the banks of the Tagus River.
"For all of us, the guys on the team were looking at me like, 'Hey we've got a game and we are going to go on this tour?' but hey, that's why we are here," Cronin said after UCLA's game. "The culture and the team bonding and that education as a person, you just realize that the world is a very special place. Toledo is an unbelievable city. I was a history major, and I could've stayed in Toledo for two days and kept walking around. But for everybody, life is short and you've got to enjoy these experiences while you can. We are here to get some practice games against some other teams, and that's great. But the culture and the team bonding is the best of part of this trip. I thought Toledo was great, and we have some other really good activities planned as well."
More Postgame Reaction
UCLA's first exhibition contest saw 10 Bruins get into the game, including six student-athletes who were not on the team last season. The Bruins' starting five featured senior Kenneth Nwuba, junior (transfer) Lazar Stefanvoic, sophomores Dylan Andrews and Will McClendon, and freshman Brandon Williams.
"It's going to be fun," Coach Cronin said. "We have a lot of talent. We are young. But I look forward to having everyone together. But right now, because we don't, it's great to have a guy like Devin Williams get a lot of playing time. I was really happy with Devin, and I thought that he played really well."
As for the 14-point, 13-rebound performance of Lazar Stefanovic?
"Yeah, you can see how important Lazar Stefanovic is for us," Coach Cronin said. "He had 13 rebounds. He has such high efficiency and finished the game with 10 deflections. He never gets tired. That's why coaches love experience."
Midway through the third quarter on Tuesday night, the Bruins had a stretch of four consecutive baskets – from the 2:45 mark to the 0:35 mark – to help push the advantage to 12 points. Two of those four baskets came from Sebastian Mack, who finished with a game-high 17 points.
"He got a couple of teeth knocked out at practice the day before we left," Coach Cronin said. "He accidentally lost a couple teeth there, they were rolling around on the floor. He ran into the wrong elbow. Tonight, I thought that he played really well. He's going to be a scorer for us. And we had recruited him because we thought he was an aggressive kid who could score the ball. We need that on this team. We lost almost all of our scoring, from last season. But he's not quite 100 percent, I mean if you had teeth knocked out a couple of days ago, you might be a bit gun shy. He's got a couple temporaries in there and a mouthpiece, but he's got a lot to learn. He is super quick and he can score."
