Gophers notes: Travis Wear has some smack talk for Trevor Mbakwe

The Gophers' rebounding attack – led by Trevor Mbakwe – has been widely discussed as the thorn in UCLA's side. The Bruins' interior is much weaker, and their effectiveness on the boards ranks just 228th in the nation, while the Gophers sit at No. 8 (and No. 1 in offensive rebounding).

But Trevor Wear, the player who will be in charge of stopping Mbakwe, doesn't sound concerned.

At all.

"We have some pretty good bigs that we have played against in this league, some big teams," Wear said of the matchup. "Mbakwe, he's big, he's going to be a challenge, but if I force him off the block, I don't think it will pose that big of a problem compared to some of the other guys I played against in the PAC-12."

Told about the comments afterward in the locker room, Mbakwe just shook his head.

"I don't need any extra motivation," he said. "Whatever he has to say, it really doesn't matter to me. It's a good chance for me to go out and play against him and his brother. I'm not really putting that much into it, I could care less. Hopefully they don't trap – that will be the real test to see how they feel about me."

How fun. Some good old fashioned smack talk as we head into the Gophers first-round game of their first NCAA tournament in three years.

Said Rodney Williams of the comments by Wear:

"We'll see what he has to say about it after the game tomorrow."

Some thoughts from UCLA:

Bruins coach Ben Howland on adjusting to life without Jordan Adams (broken foot). He's moved Kyle Anderson over to small forward after the freshman has spent more of the season at the 4:

"Going into the Oregon game, that was our third game in three days. And we finished our game against Arizona at 8 o'clock the night before and had a game in 24 hours. So there's not a lot of time in that sort of time period to make a lot of adjustments. We took off Sunday and Monday, so we have had three practices to prepare for this game. And it's obviously been very helpful because the key guy that it affects is Kyle. Kyle's played the vast majority of his minutes since November as a four. And now he's got to come back and play half his minutes minimally as a three. So what he has to do defensively and offensively, transition defense-wise is very different."

Some other notes from today's media access: