Davis Is One Bruin Who Is Excelling

Baron Davis isn’t ready to say for sure--”I think my senior year of high school, I was a terror”--but Coach Steve Lavin said the UCLA point guard is in the midst of the most impressive stretch of his basketball career.

That with Davis only about 90% recovered from the reconstructive knee surgery that cost him the end of last season and the start of this one. Even so, he has scored 20 or more points five times in the last seven games and is shooting 56.6% for those seven outings.

“Baron, over the last month, has played the best basketball of his career and the best basketball of his life,” said Lavin, who also watched Davis as a senior at Santa Monica Crossroads. “I’d say he’s playing as well as any guard in the country the last three or four weeks.

“What’s happened is, in some ways he’s slowed his game down [because of the knee injury] so he’s doing more. It’s addition by subtraction.”

Specifically, Lavin said, Davis is showing greater patience on offense and playing better without the ball by getting open on more precise cuts and setting screens for teammates.

“It’s the complete game,” Lavin said.

Said Davis, who scored a career-high 27 points Saturday in the loss at California, “I definitely feel I’m stepping my game up to a whole other level.”

Coming up: Wednesday versus USC, Sunday versus Syracuse.