Bellerophon is not wasting any time to get us even more fired up for the start of the 2008-09 Ben Ball season. Our guys get it going tonight in an exhibition against Cal Baptist. The LA Times has a report on tonight’s game:

The UCLA coach gets a glimpse at how the newcomers mesh with guard Darren Collison and other veterans as the Bruins face Cal Baptist in an exhibition at Pauley Pavilion on Monday night.

The team needs a mix of old and new to compensate for the loss of Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, all of whom left for the professional ranks. That puts pressure on freshmen such as guard Jrue Holiday.

"It's a big step up," Howland said.

"Very, very few freshmen are ready to play right now."

But UCLA still has enough proven talent -- Collison is joined by returners Josh Shipp, James Keefe and Alfred Aboya -- to warrant a No. 4 preseason ranking.

Tonight's first test comes against a Cal Baptist team that is 2-0 and ranked fifth in the NAIA.

I am sure the players are going to be a little fired up to go at someone else beside their own team-mates. Jill Painter from the DN gives us a little taste of what our Fab-5 has been experiencing since the start of practice:

Jrue Holiday will be expected to rebound, too, and here's what he said about often banging with Alfred Aboya in practice.
``He just throws me down,'' Holiday said. ``It happens to everybody. Alfred is a beast.''
Holiday said it's fun battling with BoBo Morgan and Aboya in practice. He tries to use his rebounding advantage.

``I'm a lot faster and quicker and I have a little more explosiveness,'' Holiday said. 

The game is not available on cable. However, you can catch it online. Mogan Center has announced that it will offer live online video streaming for our two exhibition games. Each game will be available live and on-demand at a rate of $9.95 per game to non-annual-subscribers - or both games can be purchased for a total of $14.95. For more details go here.

We will put up an open game thread right before tip-off (around 7:30 pm PT) for those who will be following the action on their desk/lap tops.

GO BRUINS.