University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics
UCLA Participates in Pac-12 Media Day
October 15, 2015 | Men's Basketball
SAN FRANCISCO - Head coach Steve Alford and junior guard Bryce Alford represented the UCLA men's basketball program at Pac-12 Media Day on Thursday, hosted at the Pac-12's office and network studios.
Both Steve and Bryce Alford participated in various interviews with members of the print and broadcast media, in addition to taping promotional videos to be used by various national television networks and at the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas next March.
“We're excited to be here,” Coach Alford said. “It's a neat year for UCLA because we're celebrating 100 years of the Pac-12 and then 50 years of having played in Pauley Pavilion, a very special building for us. We're excited about the season and things have gone pretty well. Like a lot of coaches, you love your team at this time of year, and I'm no different. We have some depth for the first time in three years, so hopefully we can stay healthy as we move forward.”
The Bruins posted a 22-14 overall record last season, advancing to the NCAA Tournament's Sweet 16 for the second straight season. Bryce Alford, a 6-foot-3 junior guard, enters the 2015-16 campaign as UCLA's top returning scorer (15.4 points per game last year). He's the only returning player in the Pac-12 who has averaged at least 10 points per game and logged a 2-to-1 or better assist-turnover ratio in his career.
Earlier on Thursday, UCLA was selected fifth in the Pac-12 preseason media poll. Arizona was picked to finish in first place, followed by California, Utah, Oregon and UCLA, respectively. The remaining seven teams in the poll, in order, were Oregon State, Colorado, Arizona State, Stanford, USC, Washington and Washington State.
UCLA will host an exhibition game against Cal State Los Angeles on Friday, Oct. 30, in Pauley Pavilion. Game time is 7:30 p.m.
The Bruins are set to open their regular season schedule versus Monmouth on Friday, Nov. 13. Game time in Pauley Pavilion will be 8 p.m.
Below is a transcript of the question-and-answer media session with UCLA during Pac-12 Media Day.
opening remarks
Steve Alford: "We're excited to be here. Obviously 100 years of a great basketball conference and 50 years at Pauley Pavilion, the most historic building in college basketball. So it's kind of a neat year for UCLA to be celebrating 100 and then 50 years of a very special building for us. So we're excited about the season, and things have gone pretty well. Like a lot of coaches, you love your team probably this time of year, and I'm no different. We're very excited about this team, and we have some depth for the first time in three years Hopefully we can stay healthy and keep it moving forward."
on replacing the void left by Norman Powell's departure
Steve Alford: "That is going to be one of our questions that we have to get answered because with Norman, you look at what he did as a freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, statistically he developed very nicely. But there were some of intangibles which you didn't see, his leadership ability, his personality, growing from a young man to a man. The development was right there for us every year, and in my two years with him, I could see that. Last year he was a great leader for us. He was our leading scorer. He was a go-to guy for us. And then having a guy like Kevon and losing him, a double-double guy for us. In year one, we had Kyle Anderson as a double-double guy. Year two, we had Kevon Looney. And now we go into year three, the question mark of who's going to be that guy. Now, we are entering a season where our guys can go up against some strong subs in practice because we have that depth. So, I think we can continue to improve and not get beat up. [Last season] It's a credit to Tony [Parker] that he was playing very well. He had some back spasms in mid-January, and he missed our Oregon trip. We lost both games on the trip to Oregon, and then he came back and was playing well again and then played well in March. He has got to carry that forward. Anytime that you're a senior, just like Norman, you'd probably say the same thing about Norman's first three years that there were inconsistencies. There were some inconsistencies in shooting or scoring. As a senior, he was very consistent. When you have that urgency knowing that this is your last year, hopefully that'll propel you to have a very good year. We would like to see that out of Tony. He's ready for it. Now, he's just got to go out and do it."
on managing the team's roster composition and depth chart
Steve Alford: "I haven't had to deal with that much. I've been very blessed and fortunate with the stops I've had, Manchester College, Missouri State, Iowa and New Mexico. [At New Mexico] Tony Snell was, really, my first player that left early. [At UCLA], We've had seven guys go to the NBA in two years and four of those guys have left early."
"It is a different dynamic that you're juggling in recruiting. We have been very fortunate that things have worked out well. The southern California area has been very fruitful of late, and that's helping us. The '15 class that we just brought in is tremendous. You look at Alex Olesinski, at 6-10. He can really shoot the basketball, and Aaron Holiday and Prince Ali have been tremendous and are going to be great guards in our backcourt, mirroring Isaac and Bryce. Ike [Okwarabizie], coming out of junior college, has given us some looks with a big presence inside. Jonah Bolden is a new player who sat out last year and is a 6-9 swing guy.
"Those guys fill in and then a '16 class that could potentially be [ranked] top five in the nation. And our '17 class is moving very nice, as well. We got a new practice facility we're moving into in 2017. That's going to bolster things. We've got some momentum. We just want to get that momentum going in the right way. Managing your roster does get tricky when, one, you do have guys leaving. And two, you never really know at the start of the year who that might be. Some of them are clear-cut. Kyle Anderson told me when I got the job, this is it, 'Coach, I'm here one year.' I'd rather have that that have the guessing game, but then there are players who are going to end up having some breakout years that end up going. I will tell you this, statistically, if you look at it, at UCLA it's not like you have to put up huge numbers to be able to be drafted in the first round, or even the second round. Looking at Zach LaVine, he averaged nine points and a couple assists a game, and he was a lottery pick. You don't have to be somebody that scores 15, 20 points to have that opportunity coming out of UCLA and Los Angeles. That's a dynamic, too, that you've got to look at from a coaching standpoint. Sometimes you can see, okay, this guy is potentially going to be a double-double guy or he could average 18, 20 points and then we've got to think about replacing this guy. At UCLA, we've got Aaron Holiday, who I think is going to be special. His brother [Jrue] averaged eight points a game [in 2008-09], and a year later he's in the NBA. That does not happen at a lot of places, but it does at UCLA."
on the dynamic of having his father serve as his team's head coach
Bryce Alford: "Well, he has always done a really good job of that, of separating it. Growing up, I've always played basketball and have always had that ingrained in me. He has always been at all of my games, but he takes the time out to be dad and to get basketball out of the way. That is always something that we have cherished because we love the game of basketball. It's something that we talk about every single day. There's not a whole lot that we do that doesn't involve basketball, but we try to separate it sometimes and just be father-son and have those moments, as well."
on whether UCLA circles the game against Kentucky any more than any other game
Steve Alford: "That was obviously a tough game for us [last December]. It was a very tough first half. I'd never experienced any of that, as a coach or as a player. But that game had an awful lot to do, I think, with our success later in the season in February and March. It wasn't just Kentucky, we lost five games in a row in December and early January. We lost our first two conference games at Colorado and at Utah to start 0-2. And then to break it, we beat Stanford in one or two overtimes at home, to break the streak. I just give the players an awful lot of credit because there are a lot of teams and a lot of players, when you go through – it was almost a month. It was almost four weeks of losing, let alone doing that at UCLA, there were a lot of players that would just tank it, and our guys didn't do that. Our guys got stronger, they got better, they stayed together, and I give that group an awful lot of credit for doing that because they turned a negative into a very big season-ending positive, and I think those are the experiences now going into this year that's really going to help kind of our vets coming back that can lead these younger guys, and we have these same games.
"We've got Kentucky at home, we've got [North] Carolina, we have some polls coming out that have got them sharing No. 1. That's just great – we're playing both of them. We're playing Kentucky at home and North Carolina in Brooklyn. We've got Gonzaga at Gonzaga. We're in the Maui Invitational, which is arguably one of the toughest fields they've had. This is going to be a very demanding non-league schedule for us. But, I do think if we can stay healthy, we've got a chance to grow a little bit quicker than what we did last year because we do have depth."
