Postgame Quotes - UCLA at Oregon
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 87, Oregon 84 (OT)
Eugene, Ore. (Matthew Knight Arena)
January 10, 2019
UCLA interim head coach Murry Bartow
on the overtime session
“I think that they [Oregon] scored the first four points in overtime, if I’m not mistaken, and so I think that we scored the last seven points of the game. It was just a lot of guys who stepped up and made big plays, a lot of big plays.”
on what keyed UCLA’s comeback
“I’m not sure if it was one individual think, you know, we changed our pressure and what we’d been doing, defensively. That helped us a little bit. Offensively, our guys just made a bunch of plays. I mean in those last four or five minutes, it was one guy after another, from Prince to Jules to Jaylen Hands. You’ve got Chris Smith with the three that he made and the putback at the buzzer. That free throw that Moses made was huge. So, it was one play after another by all of our guys. When you kind of steal one like that, which is kind of what you do when you’re down 14 with four [minutes] to play, those can really give you some momentum when you kind of feel like you stole one.”
on UCLA getting possession of the ball with under one second left
“I don’t know. You are talking about with two tenths of a second left there? They just said it off the film. They saw it off film.”
on Chris Smith getting the loose ball on a missed Jaylen Hands free throw at the end of regulation
“Well it was a huge play off the intentional miss. Jaylen goes to the line and he makes the first one, which is huge. And intentionally misses the second one, obviously. We had our two best offensive rebounders on the lane with Jalen Hill and Moses [Brown]. Fortunately they tipped it. And then here comes Chris Smith and he made a big play at the buzzer.”
on what he told his team after the game
“Oh my, I’m not sure. My head’s spinning right now, so I’m not even sure what I said. I’m just really proud of them. When you are 14 [points] down, four minutes to play, and things don’t look good, it just shows a little bit of the character and the spirit of our guys right now. They’re continuing to fight and battle. It is just a credit to them. They have continued to battle.”
on if he sensed, through the players’ body language, that a comeback could be possible
“Not really. Not really. We just made a bunch of plays down the stretch. I never sensed a give-up or a quit in us, which is good. When you’re down 14, you guys watch a lot of basketball, that can quickly go to 18 or 20. And so to get it from 14, I kept telling them, ‘If we can just get it to nine, if we can just get it to nine, just get it to nine,’ and then we did. Guys just made a lot of plays. We didn’t run a lot of stuff. It isn’t anything that was miraculous that I did or that we did. We just made a lot of plays.”
on UCLA’s turnovers during a difficult first half
“It was bad. We were just very careless. We didn’t handle the ball well, didn’t catch it well, didn’t dribble it well, and we were very stagnant in the first half. That’s a credit to Oregon. I thought they had a very hard defense to figure out. They were sometimes in man and sometimes in zone. So that was hard to figure out. And it’s them. It isn’t so much us, but they made us very stagnant.”
on how he will handle the Bruins’ next two days before Sunday’s game at Oregon State
“Tomorrow will be a very light day. Incredibly light. We’ll have a clean-up day, and we’ll come back with a lot of energy on Saturday. We need to get ready for Sunday.”
on the early scouting report on Oregon State
“I’ll know a lot in the next 24 hours. And I’ve said this before, but right now we are trying to almost completely focus on us. We have so much to improve on and to get better. So, I have told the team over and over that it’s 95 percent about us. And then we’ll look at five percent, with the other team. I mean I know about their personnel a little bit. The Thompson brothers, and Tinkle and so obviously I know about their team a little bit. They play a very hard defense to figure out. It’s kind of a matchup zone. We have to be more prepared for that than we were tonight. I thought we were pretty stagnant against the zone.”
on how much fun he is having, leading this team
“Well, I just love the spirit of this team right now. We played pretty well against Stanford, scoring 92, and we played pretty well against Cal, scoring 98. Tonight, it was ugly in a lot of ways. But again, I think it shows the spirit of these guys. It shows the spirit about them. Again, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and when you are down 14 with four minutes to play on the road, you can pack it in pretty quickly and easily. They just kept digging in. We cut it down to nine, our guys made some plays, and we got some steals and then I didn’t think we were very good on the offensive glass tonight. They had 17 offensive rebounds. I thought that it was pretty big that [Payton] Pritchard did not have a field goal in the game. He is their best player. So that was good. Anyway, I think that it shows the spirit of this team.”
UCLA guard Prince Ali
on how much fun he had in the comeback victory
“It was amazing. It was very fun, you know, being down nine [points] with 58 seconds left and pulling out the ‘W.’ That’s some good stuff. You can’t be at home, losing when it’s nine [points] with 58 seconds left. I don’t know what else to call it.”
on what helped key the turnaround for UCLA
“Jaylen Hands made some big free throws. He made three in a row. Chris Smith made a big shot and had a huge play at the end of the game. He made some huge plays. Everybody chipped in and made big plays. I mean, it was a collective effort. Everybody did what they had to do.”
on what people were saying to each other on the court during the comeback
“Our overall message was that it’s not over until it’s over, until the clock hits zero. So until then, it’s not over. Until then, you have to keep pushing and pushing and just trying to cut away at it. We were able to do it.”
on getting hot from 3-point territory
“You know, I made a few shots but it’s a credit to my teammates, as we they were looking for me.”
on his reaction when Chris Smith grabbed the late rebound in regulation and had a game-tying putback
“I was ecstatic for him. That was bigtime. That was probably the biggest play of the game. That was great.”
on Coach Bartow saying that a win like this could help to springboard a team
“Yeah, we’ve got to keep going and take this one game at a time. We need to try to get better every day.”
on where this win ranks in the comebacks in his career
“This one is right up there. I was just telling them [our radio crew] out there, this is probably number one. We were down nine with 58 seconds left, I mean, when I watch the tape, I’ll be like, ‘Wow.’ “
on the mood in UCLA’s locker room after the game
“It was just a moment where you can appreciate the game that we get to play. It’s about appreciating that opportunity.”
UCLA 87, Oregon 84 (OT)
Eugene, Ore. (Matthew Knight Arena)
January 10, 2019
UCLA interim head coach Murry Bartow
on the overtime session
“I think that they [Oregon] scored the first four points in overtime, if I’m not mistaken, and so I think that we scored the last seven points of the game. It was just a lot of guys who stepped up and made big plays, a lot of big plays.”
on what keyed UCLA’s comeback
“I’m not sure if it was one individual think, you know, we changed our pressure and what we’d been doing, defensively. That helped us a little bit. Offensively, our guys just made a bunch of plays. I mean in those last four or five minutes, it was one guy after another, from Prince to Jules to Jaylen Hands. You’ve got Chris Smith with the three that he made and the putback at the buzzer. That free throw that Moses made was huge. So, it was one play after another by all of our guys. When you kind of steal one like that, which is kind of what you do when you’re down 14 with four [minutes] to play, those can really give you some momentum when you kind of feel like you stole one.”
on UCLA getting possession of the ball with under one second left
“I don’t know. You are talking about with two tenths of a second left there? They just said it off the film. They saw it off film.”
on Chris Smith getting the loose ball on a missed Jaylen Hands free throw at the end of regulation
“Well it was a huge play off the intentional miss. Jaylen goes to the line and he makes the first one, which is huge. And intentionally misses the second one, obviously. We had our two best offensive rebounders on the lane with Jalen Hill and Moses [Brown]. Fortunately they tipped it. And then here comes Chris Smith and he made a big play at the buzzer.”
on what he told his team after the game
“Oh my, I’m not sure. My head’s spinning right now, so I’m not even sure what I said. I’m just really proud of them. When you are 14 [points] down, four minutes to play, and things don’t look good, it just shows a little bit of the character and the spirit of our guys right now. They’re continuing to fight and battle. It is just a credit to them. They have continued to battle.”
on if he sensed, through the players’ body language, that a comeback could be possible
“Not really. Not really. We just made a bunch of plays down the stretch. I never sensed a give-up or a quit in us, which is good. When you’re down 14, you guys watch a lot of basketball, that can quickly go to 18 or 20. And so to get it from 14, I kept telling them, ‘If we can just get it to nine, if we can just get it to nine, just get it to nine,’ and then we did. Guys just made a lot of plays. We didn’t run a lot of stuff. It isn’t anything that was miraculous that I did or that we did. We just made a lot of plays.”
on UCLA’s turnovers during a difficult first half
“It was bad. We were just very careless. We didn’t handle the ball well, didn’t catch it well, didn’t dribble it well, and we were very stagnant in the first half. That’s a credit to Oregon. I thought they had a very hard defense to figure out. They were sometimes in man and sometimes in zone. So that was hard to figure out. And it’s them. It isn’t so much us, but they made us very stagnant.”
on how he will handle the Bruins’ next two days before Sunday’s game at Oregon State
“Tomorrow will be a very light day. Incredibly light. We’ll have a clean-up day, and we’ll come back with a lot of energy on Saturday. We need to get ready for Sunday.”
on the early scouting report on Oregon State
“I’ll know a lot in the next 24 hours. And I’ve said this before, but right now we are trying to almost completely focus on us. We have so much to improve on and to get better. So, I have told the team over and over that it’s 95 percent about us. And then we’ll look at five percent, with the other team. I mean I know about their personnel a little bit. The Thompson brothers, and Tinkle and so obviously I know about their team a little bit. They play a very hard defense to figure out. It’s kind of a matchup zone. We have to be more prepared for that than we were tonight. I thought we were pretty stagnant against the zone.”
on how much fun he is having, leading this team
“Well, I just love the spirit of this team right now. We played pretty well against Stanford, scoring 92, and we played pretty well against Cal, scoring 98. Tonight, it was ugly in a lot of ways. But again, I think it shows the spirit of these guys. It shows the spirit about them. Again, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and when you are down 14 with four minutes to play on the road, you can pack it in pretty quickly and easily. They just kept digging in. We cut it down to nine, our guys made some plays, and we got some steals and then I didn’t think we were very good on the offensive glass tonight. They had 17 offensive rebounds. I thought that it was pretty big that [Payton] Pritchard did not have a field goal in the game. He is their best player. So that was good. Anyway, I think that it shows the spirit of this team.”
UCLA guard Prince Ali
on how much fun he had in the comeback victory
“It was amazing. It was very fun, you know, being down nine [points] with 58 seconds left and pulling out the ‘W.’ That’s some good stuff. You can’t be at home, losing when it’s nine [points] with 58 seconds left. I don’t know what else to call it.”
on what helped key the turnaround for UCLA
“Jaylen Hands made some big free throws. He made three in a row. Chris Smith made a big shot and had a huge play at the end of the game. He made some huge plays. Everybody chipped in and made big plays. I mean, it was a collective effort. Everybody did what they had to do.”
on what people were saying to each other on the court during the comeback
“Our overall message was that it’s not over until it’s over, until the clock hits zero. So until then, it’s not over. Until then, you have to keep pushing and pushing and just trying to cut away at it. We were able to do it.”
on getting hot from 3-point territory
“You know, I made a few shots but it’s a credit to my teammates, as we they were looking for me.”
on his reaction when Chris Smith grabbed the late rebound in regulation and had a game-tying putback
“I was ecstatic for him. That was bigtime. That was probably the biggest play of the game. That was great.”
on Coach Bartow saying that a win like this could help to springboard a team
“Yeah, we’ve got to keep going and take this one game at a time. We need to try to get better every day.”
on where this win ranks in the comebacks in his career
“This one is right up there. I was just telling them [our radio crew] out there, this is probably number one. We were down nine with 58 seconds left, I mean, when I watch the tape, I’ll be like, ‘Wow.’ “
on the mood in UCLA’s locker room after the game
“It was just a moment where you can appreciate the game that we get to play. It’s about appreciating that opportunity.”