UCLA’S QUOTES – BIG TEN MEN’S BASKETBALL MEDIA DAY
Chicago, Illinois – Thursday, October 8
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on the Los Angeles Dodgers beating the Atlanta Braves and moving onto the NLCS
“I texted Dave [Roberts], ‘Quit make me nervous.’ I really did. Quit making me nervous. We’ve got to get [Shohei] Ohtani going, but with the lineup that we have it could be something like the two guys at the bottom of our lineup who hit a couple home runs and you win. But yeah, the Brewers are a big problem. I’ll just start following baseball later in the year. I’ve been following, trying to pay attention, and getting ready for the playoffs. The Brewers don’t ever lose, like literally, I wonder how if you take the last 30 games, I bet they don’t have five losses. Seriously, I bet they’re like 25-5 and or better in their last 30 games. You’d probably agree with me.”
on Bruins’ sophomore Jaylen Petty, who played at Texas Tech last season
“He’s a huge pickup for us. I like getting younger guys out of the portal so that they can be a part of your program. He’s back at home on the West Coast. Getting him back on the West Coast, that alone can help a guy with his comfort zone, plus he’s closer to his family. But an advantage with him, he’s gone through one year of high-major basketball playing on a top-20 team, a winning team. That experience is invaluable. You can tell that he is not a freshman. He’s a high-level player. I would say that he is a guy who Big Ten fans, and who people don’t know because they didn’t see Texas Tech, they’ll be shocked. He’s a really good player.”
on Jaylen Petty’s usage as a guard and potentially playing on the ball
“Basketball, everybody plays with the ball. Everybody plays with the ball. Jaylen Petty is a guard, so he’s going to have the ball plenty. I like when he has the ball and shoots the ball. I’m a big fan of that. And you’ll know why when we play.”
on the NCAA instituting eligibility of a fifth year for student-athletes (five for five)
“The institution of the fifth year, the rule starts next year with the ’23 class, and it totally changes everything. Initially, it changes it the most in the first year of the implementation. Just from a sheer numbers standpoint. I mean, say that Eric Dailey and Xavier Booker came back to UCLA for the 2027-28 season, that group would be in their fifth year. You’d have guys matriculating out and getting attorneys, trying to stay, but with this first year, this coming spring, it will be the year with the fewest amount of seniors in the history of college basketball. That’s of the finishing seniors, as in, your eligibility is up. Just from a mathematical standpoint, there will be more players returning to college basketball. You’d have more guys returning for 2027-28 than ever in the history of the game, ever. So, it will change the pool of players who are available in the portal. Going forward, it does, but the most in the first year. The only guys who will be done are guys who played five years.”
on his coaching staff being able to retain players and how that’s a positive in roster construction
“Well look, Tony Petitti and I have talked about this a while ago, and I try to not get caught up in any of the details with that bill – but to me, we should have a Larry Bird rights situation, with revenue sharing, and you can spend over your 20 million, where UCLA would be able to go over the 20 million in order to retain your own players. So a kid such as Trent Perry shouldn’t have to leave UCLA with one, I mean he’s got three years left right now, but let’s just say here that a player has one year remaining. And he doesn’t want to leave his school, so he shouldn’t have to leave to get more money because your program is out of money. You should be able to go above your rev share in order to retain your own players. That alone would up the graduation rates, and eliminate massive player movement or at least to curtail some of the player movement. And most importantly, it’s something that we could do to raise the graduation rates. The numbers are not out yet, since the portal became an every year thing. It’s a five-year window before the numbers come out on the graduation rates. It’ll be hard with football and basketball, talking about a drop in the graduation rates.”
on Oregon coach Dana Altman retiring
“I’m very, very happy for Dana – very smart of him to do it the day he did it, why fly to Chicago and do all of this? He saved himself a trip. Just, I’m happy for him. I think that everybody knows when their time has come. It’s not easy. He’s got a million people, so I am going to talk to him, hopefully, by the end of the next three of four days. We have talked about it. I’ll miss seeing him on the road. He’s got an invitation to come down and play golf in L.A. whenever he wants. Just really happy for him. When I came to the Pac-12, going against his Oregon teams was the toughest thing we had to do, when I first got here. I think it was the Payton Pritchard era when I first got to UCLA. But my respect for Dana is not what he accomplished, but it’s how he did it. True to himself and a good, good man, a really good man. He’s a real credit to our profession in a time where we need more of that.”
on what Big Ten basketball means to him, now in his third year in the league
“Big Ten basketball, hard, very hard. It’s hard to win. Great players, great coaches and great road environments. Hard. The actual games are hard. Guys play hard. It’s a bunch of big, strong, tough and hard guys. It’s not for the weak. Big Ten basketball, it’s the depth of our conference. In our conference, teams from eight through 13 could play in the tournament. It’s not easy to get a win, but it’s really easy to get off the tracks in this league. You play in a league that’s this good, that’s this deep, it’s hard to find an easy week where you might have three games that you can win and get your confidence back. It’s really easy to get knocked off track, and you’ve seen it happen the last couple of years.”
on teams who are retaining their players (roster management)
“Recruiting and retention, as far as player acquisition, is all about money. It’s easier for some people who have more money. It’s harder for those that don’t. But look, there are people out there, I mean our team retained all five guys. Now you could say, ‘Well you are in Westwood and you’ve got UCLA and the tradition’ – no, no, we paid them, we paid the five guys who we retained. Those were the five guys who had eligibility left on our team, and we paid them. Some kids, they’d stay at their school. This is where everybody gets this wrong. There are some kids who would not have left if they could have gotten paid where they were at. This is the reality of the small market ball versus the big market ball. It’s like baseball. We had all been talking about the playoffs before, but it’s just the truth. Guys leave predominantly in this era, for more money. Some leave for more opportunity, and more money. Of course relationships matter, and you have to have relationships – that’s never been more important. You have to have relationship. But what I am trying to tell you is there are coaches, some in this league, who have great relationships with their players and they still had to leave. They got four times the amount of money. Now, I won’t name names, but they are great coaches. You’d say, ‘Well this guy, he does a great job.’ It’s a comedy show when a kid commits to the show and he says that he really bonded with the staff and he met his coaches two weeks ago. Nobody wants to say that. It’s OK. That is how free agency goes, and there is nothing wrong with it, but we do need to talk about the truth. The reason a guy left a team at the bottom of the power five and he was their best player, it’s because he got three times more money to go to the best team. That’s just the facts. Some guys have got no chance and they can’t retain their players. It’s tough. It’s hard on them. Fortunately, I am not in that situation or I’d be selling hamburgers down on Santa Monica Boulevard. I can grill. We are getting ready to have our team grill-out soon. Our dining room at UCLA, it’s a recruiting pitch that doesn’t matter since it has nothing to do with money, but we eat outside after practice every day. The only school in the country that eats outside after practice, a catered meal, or coming soon, it’s my cheeseburger day. After practice, I’ll go straight out there and I’ll start grilling. It’s unbelievable, these guys eat them. Bona used to eat six cheeseburgers. And you know, you’ll get a nice hot grill going, you and I would have one or two at a cookout but these guys will have six. Then the athletic department people start to show up because they smelled the grill. I’m like, ‘No, I’m done. I have been sweating out here for an hour.’ So that’s coming, but that does help our recruiting. It’s cool, Coach Cronin is out there grilling for the players.”
on his impressions of Tim Harris, The Alice and Nahum Lainer Family CEO and Director of Athletics
“Great guy. Great hairdo. Great guy, regular guy. I just have asked him how I can help you. He’s got enough people calling him, telling him what to do, that they need this or they need that. We’re getting ready to start our season, so let me know if I can help you. All we talk about is what matters – how do we generate more revenue for the program and the school? How do we raise more money? What is our plan going forward? That’s it. We don’t have time right now for, in my opinion, for new locker rooms. We don’t have time to talk about stuff that doesn’t matter. It’s a critical time right now. If you want to win, how do we generate more revenue and how do we pack Pauley Pavilion, as that helps you to win games. How do we generate more revenue for the school and the program through acquiring players? Everything else is so far down the list, for me, the way that I look at it. But everyone is different.”
on the leadership of key players and managing egos, personalities
“Well with Trent [Perry] and Eric [Dailey], I’m a big believer in how you’ve got to show me, don’t tell me. Trent and Eric live in the gym, so their leadership is mostly in the offseason – showing you what someone who is really dedicated looks like. Really looks like. They don’t shoot after practice because a coach told them, ‘Hey, you need to start spending time shooting after practice.’ They do it every day because they are trying to get better, not because I told them to. So with Trent and Eric’s leadership, aside from what they bring to the table in our program, for everybody else in our program to see, ‘Do I do what they do every day?’ Because if you just do what they do every day, you will get a lot better, before they say a word. But we are still working on that. Each team kind of has a hierarchy, and I think that you’ve got to teach guys how to treat each other. That is something we are going through right now, because you have to hold each other accountable. But there is a way to do it, player to player, as that is different from coach to player. You have to do it, and they are all different, everybody learns at a different pace. So I would just tell you, when people say that we have got great chemistry, well everybody does. We haven’t played yet. There is no stat sheet, and your mom has not called you and asked you why you only took two shots. So everybody has great chemistry right now, but we’ll see. We’ll see when the games start. Then you find out the truth.”
on freshman Nikola Kusturica wanting to be coached, particularly given his youth
“Because I only got to speak to him on Zoom, there was no reticence in recruiting him because every NBA person who I talked to said, ‘He’s unbelievable. It’s unbelievable.’ The talent level of someone with his size. I was concerned with the maturity because I didn’t know him. Like, I didn’t know him at all. Obviously, with Zoom, you don’t know anybody. Now if you believe what you read, everybody bonds and they love the coaches, and they committed for two weeks in the portal because they bonded – but anyway. I can’t help it. So I really didn’t know him until he got to UCLA and I could really be around him. He has great parents. Every kid is different. He’s extremely mature. I’m sure that going to Barcelona at age 14 helped him grow up and prepared him for this. It’s not his first time away from home. He has been away from home since he was 14. That is a big advantage. The second thing, he is from Serbia and their culture is different. He does not come from an entitled culture that anoints players in the ninth grade. It wasn’t until recently, I mean people say stuff like, ‘Oh, we knew about him.’ But when did you guys start to hear about him? Spring? Ok, well, we can’t say names but there are already ninth graders and 10th graders, a lot of guys who are tragic stories, as they were the next LeBron James. The media overhypes them at such a young age, and that’s just the way it is. So, he didn’t have that to answer your question. It isn’t part of their culture. Their culture is to embrace toughness and hard work. Not Nikola, but everybody – because Yogi [Jovanovic] is on my staff – but everybody from Serbia over 40 years old, they saw and they’ve seen war personally. Death, war, first-hand. He’s just from a different place. Very, very different for him than an American kid. I’d like to be able to take our kids over there and see how they would do for a year. He’s just a special guy, I mean, his instincts. When you coach basketball, there are certain players that do things you can’t teach. Delivering the ball, or seeing a pass that the other guys don’t see. And then to have the size and the athleticism, too. There are a lot of great 5-7 players who used to be from Cincinnati, that very few who are 6-10 and can play the point guard and can shoot and pass and jump. Very few at 6-10. So, he’s still growing. By the time he gets to the NBA, I bet he’s around 6-10 or 6-11.”
on Bruins’ sophomore Filip Jovic, who played at Auburn last season
“Filip is a tough, explosive dunking machine. He’s trying to rip the rim off in practice. He’s a just a tough and hard worker, a guy who has great quickness for a guy at 6-foot-8 and a half, around 245 or 250 pounds. He’s going to be ahuge addition for our team, and I just love Filip. Our fans are going to love Filip and the intensity he brings. The effort that he gives on the court will totally energize Pauley Pavilion.”