UCLA up 29 at the half

Well, we know one thing for sure.

Westmont sure ain't Concordia.

A year after UCLA barely escaped from the NAIA Eagles the Bruins appear to be handling the Warriors with ease, up 54-25 at the half.

Reeves Nelson is leading the way with 12 points, including four dunks, while freshman center Joshua Smith has nine and sophomore small forward Tyler Honeycutt has added seven.

Some initial observations:

* The Lazeric Jones/Jerime Anderson point guard battle is pretty close. Jones has 11 minutes played, six points and two assists and has played pretty solid defense. He's lost his man a couple times and was way late on a close-out, but gets good leverage. Anderson has six points and an assist in nine minutes, but has added two steals. He's played well.

* A little surprised to see Brendan Lane as the sixth man, but given Joshua Smith's conditioning issues, I guess we'll see that a lot to start. I imagine it going Smith/Nelson then Lane/Nelson then Stover/Lane then Smith/Lane then Smith/Nelson once more.

* Reeves Nelson is noticeably more athletic than last season, and it showed with four first-half dunks. He played really well on transition - except for four bad turnovers; needs to cut those out - but his outside game is not as far along as he thinks.

* Smith is big. Really big. Really, really big. He got hacked a few times and just totally absorbed the contact, continuing to go up strong. Once his conditioning catches up to his game, watch out.

* Tyler Lamb played OK in four minutes, but even he got caught a few times being late behind screens and was killed on a backdoor cut.