Non-Revenue Sports Bruin Review and Calendar

by Ryan Rosenblatt on Jan 5, 2009 6:37 PM PST Comment 4 comments

With classes beginning again today, UCLA sports will get going again as well. This week begins the spring season, which is the busiest season of the year as the Bruins have 15 teams that compete during the spring. Only three teams are currently in action, but by the end of the month both tennis teams, track teams, swim and dive and women's water polo will join the fray so let's start with our first spring non-revenue sports look.

Women's Basketball

This is the one team that didn't take a break over the holidays. Since my last report, the Bruins have beaten Rice in Houston, defeated Kansas in front of a national TV audience, dropped a game in Lubbock to Texas Tech and opened up Pac 10 play with a split versus Oregon and Oregon St. The Bruins rallied from 17 down to take down Oregon St., 60-53 on Friday, but Oregon became the first team to defeat the Bruins in Pauley when they handled the Bruins, 73-56 on Sunday. Next up for the Bruins (10-3, 1-1) is a date with USC on Sunday at Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins got some great news today as 2008 McDonalds All-American Jasmine Dixon announced that she will transfer from Rutgers to UCLA. The Long Beach Poly standout will be eligible to play from the Bruins after the fall quarter.

Men's Volleyball

The #2 Bruins begin their 2009 season this week with the UCSB Collegiate in Santa Barbara on Friday and Saturday. The 8 team field includes #4 Long Beach St., #5 Cal St. Northridge, #6 UC Irvine, #8 Stanford #9 BYU and #14 UC Santa Barbara so the Bruins will have their work cut out for them. UCLA will open the tournament versus Northridge and should they win, play the winner of Pacific and UC Santa Barbara.

Women's Gymnastics

#4 UCLA will open their 2009 season on Friday when they head to Salt Lake City for a meet with #2 Utah. The Bruins may struggle early on in the season because of inexperience (7 of the 16 women on the team are freshmen and 6 are sophomores), but their high pre-season ranking shows just how talented the Bruins are. They did get a bit of bad news today when Kristina Comforte announced she would retire from gymnastics due to a labrum tear, but she will stay on as an undergraduate assistant.

Baseball

Construction of the Jack Gifford Hitting Facility continues to hum along beautifully. The place is still on pace to be completed in mid-January. You can track the progress here.

Calendar (all times pacific)
Friday, January 9
Men's Volleyball vs. Cal St. Northridge (UCSB Collegiate), 1:00 pm- Santa Barbara, CA
Women's Gymnastics vs. Utah, 6:00 pm- Salt Lake City, UT
Saturday, January 10
Men's Volleyball (UCSB Collegiate), TBD- Santa Barbara, CA
Sunday, January 11
Women's Basketball vs. USC, 2:30 pm- Pauley Pavilion

Ticket information for all sports can be found here while facility information and directions for all sports can be found here. GO BRUINS!!!

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.

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Jasmine Dixon

Seems like a huge get for Coach Caldwell.

by Nestor on Jan 5, 2009 6:54 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

I don't know enough about women's basketball to form my own opinion

but everything I’ve read makes it seem like she can be a major impact player and help lead the Bruins to big things. Coach Caldwell seems to be doing one hell of a job early on.

by Ryan Rosenblatt on Jan 5, 2009 6:58 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

My daughter played against her team in AAU club ball

This is a photo I took of Jasmine (#33), then an eight-grader. – “A woman among girls,” I thought at the time. She has incredible athleticism. We saw a lot of her and both of our teams competed at the 2004 AAU Nationals in Louisiana. Her team finished tied for 5th; ours for 9th. Though she’s had great success through high-school, I always had the suspicion that she wasn’t always getting the best coaching, though I had nothing with which to back that up.

I read the stories a couple of weeks back about her transferring from Rutgers, thinking it would be interesting if UCLA could nab her, but wondering at the same time the reasons for leaving a top 20 team like Rutgers. Here’s looking forward to seeing what Nikki Caldwell will do with her.