Joshua Smith looked down, tugged down at his shirt and grinned when asked if he had any chest hair.
“A little bit,” he said, laughing while taking stock of his small tuft.
After that game, he has a little more.
The UCLA freshman center was a beast against the Big East’s St. John’s Red Storm, throwing down dunk after dunk as the Bruins spoiled Steve Lavin’s return to Pauley Pavilion with a 66-59 win on Saturday morning in front of 8,592.
Smith had a team-high 19 points and added eight rebounds and three blocks in 27 minutes in a physical matchup against the ultra-aggressive Red Storm, which beat Duke last week 93-78.
While his teammates struggled against a flustering full-court press, ultimately committing 22 turnovers, Smith set the tone for his physicality early, slamming home four dunks in the first 10 minutes.
“I just think any time an east-coast school comes into the west, they’re going to try to bully you,” said Reeves Nelson, who had 12 points and 17 rebounds. “We don’t really have any little sissies on this team. You could just tell that they knew they were going to try to – the term we used today was ‘punk us’ – and we just weren’t having that.”
They were early.
The Red Storm blitzed the Bruins from the onset, forcing four turnovers and jumping to leads of 13-4 and 19-11. UCLA’s backcourt of juniors Lazeric Jones, playing with a sprained left wrist, Malcolm Lee and Jerime Anderson had trouble simply advancing the ball past the half-court line. The Bruins were flagged with two 10-second violations and looked simply lost.
Then Smith and fellow freshman Tyler Lamb found themselves.
Lamb hit two crucial 3-pointers in the first half to help UCLA weather the Storm and the Bruins lead 29-26 at the half, ultimately going up by as many as 10 early in the second half.
“That is obviously a very important win for us,” UCLA head coach Ben Howland said. “They are an excellent team that creates a lot of match-up problems with their veteran guards.”
With senior Dwight Hardy leading the way offensively – he had 32 points on 13-of-24 shooting – the Red Storm (13-9) clawed back despite a murky foul situation, as UCLA shot 41 free throws, making 27, to St. John’s’ seven.
If the Bruins could have hit a bit more down the stretch, a desperation 3-pointer from Nelson would not have been needed. But the sophomore power forward hit a fading, off-balance heave falling out of bounds from the left corner with the shot clock running out and 34 seconds left that sealed the deal.
“The play was for Malcolm and Josh, but I told Jerime that if those two weren’t open, I was just going to pop out to the three and shoot it,” Nelson said. “I got a pretty decent look at it, and I knocked it down, and that was the game really.”
UCLA, 16-7 and winners of 13-of-16, made up for its porous late-game foul shooting – the Bruins made just 3-of-10 free throws in the final four minutes – with crucial offensive rebounding. Nelson and sophomore forward Tyler Honeycutt teamed for three big boards following missed free throw attempts down the stretch that chewed up clock and let UCLA control the tempo.
“As a coach – and I’m thinking about Steve – that just kills you as a coach when they have inside positioning,” Howland said. “That happened to us against ASU twice, down the stretch, and it allowed them to get back into the game. …That was great, I was so pleased to be on the other side of that.”