Bruin Bites: Football Awards and Women's Basketball

Good afternoon everyone. Nothing like starting off another Monday - especially coming off of a Sunday night holiday party. Thanks to finals, last week was another slow week for UCLA non-revenue sports, with just one women's basketball game on the schedule along with the Men's game against Prairie View A&M.

• The past week was a little more kind than the week before to Women's Basketball. The Bruins only played once, but were able to break their 4-game losing streak to a bad SDSU team in San Diego, 56-55. The Aztecs outrebounded and outshot the Bruins - bad signs when your opponent is 1-6 and plays in the MWC - but UCLA took care of the ball, keeping the game close throughout. The team will travel to Minneapolis this weekend to play the Gophers and Auburn in the Subway Classic Tournament.
• Elsewhere in the Bruinverse, the official site noted the significant UCLA presence on the national Women's Water Polo team that won the Holiday Cup Tournament last week. The squad beat Greece yesterday, 13-5 with Bruins Sami Hill in goal and Rachel Fattal the leading scorer to cap a 5-0 run in the tournament. Team USA plays Canada later this week.

The football program used the end of finals and of the Fall Quarter to hold its annual awards banquet at the Beverly Hilton. Merlones has already shared a few tweets from last night's festivities, and the official site has a list of all of the award winners. Xavier Su'a-Filo, Brett Hundley, Anthony Barr and Eric Kendricks were the big winners, but there were plenty of honors to go around.

Barr and Su'a-Filo were named the team's MVP's, while Shaq Evans, Jordan Zumwalt and Stan McKay were named the outstanding Seniors on offense, defense and special teams. Aramide Olaniyan received the Jackie Robinson Award for highest scholarship by a senior football player, while Kenny Clark and Scott Quesenberry honored for exhibiting the best balance of academics and athletics. The Award for best scout team player was renamed in Nick Pasquale's honor, and was awarded to Carl Hulick, Zach Vinci and Ryan Davis. The full list of this year's football awards is posted on the official site.

As I said at the start, that was a pretty slow week for Bruin athletics. This week isn't going to be that much busier, with the men's and women's games being supplemented by the Diving portion of the Swim & Dive team competing in the Winter Nationals this week in Austin. Those are your Monday Bruin Bites. Fire away with your thoughts and comments as we make it through another Monday and await more Bruin football to end the year.

GO BRUINS