Freshman forward Tyler Honeycutt played his first game for UCLA last night in the team’s 73-61 loss to top-ranked Kansas.
Honeycutt didn’t exactly scorch up the stat sheet – 1-for-6 shooting, three points – but his six rebounds showed his athleticism and energy.
With Reeves Nelson moving into the starting lineup and Honeycutt recovered from a stress reaction in his shins and a sore back, the Bruins will be a scrappier group, a high-energy team that battles on the boards.

How do you feel?
“I feel good. My shins feel good. My back feels fine. Everything.”

What can you bring to this struggling team?
“Playmaking – creating for my teammates, creating for myself, doing whatever it takes to win. A couple times I snuck in there and got some rebounds.”

What do the freshmen
“We have to show some leadership out there. There are only a few seniors out there. When we’re out there, we have to not look like we’re nervous. We need to know what to do.”

“I feel like our team is a lot more united. Sometimes when things didn’t go Drew’s way, he’d have a fit. We’d try to help him, and he didn’t want to hear it. Now that he left, we kind of feel like we need to start over. That was our first game, against the No. 1 team. We learned a lot from that game.”