Hoops extras

Ben Howland on Nikola Dragovic, who is shooting 6-for-23 for 25 points with nine rebounds:
"He needs to rebound better than he's been rebounding. And he needs to shoot better. That'll come. He's not going to be a create-his-own-shot guy. But obviously we want to get him open looks. He's a returning starter from a team that won 26 games last year, and of course, we're expecting a lot out of him."

Drew Gordon, on the team's exhibition performances:
"We kind of overlooked the teams. 'It's not really the season, it's not technically counting toward our record.' We really didn't pay much attention. Well, we paid attention, we just didn't give our full effort. We came in expecting to blow out the first team we played. But you know what? Concordia is a great TEAM. They're small, they're athletic and they're well coached. We were kind of taken back by it at first.
"Now we're taking it game-by-game. Every game needs to be a Pac-10 game for us."

Ben Howland, on the UCLA "brand" in recruiting:
"It's such a storied history, but these kids are 15, 16 , 17-years old when we first start talking to them. They see us on TV all the time, and they've seen the recent success the program has had. But in terms of understanding the long-term history, I think sometimes mom and dad and coaches explain to them that this is a pretty special place."