Postgame Quotes – UCLA vs. Cal State Fullerton
POSTGAME QUOTES
Cal State Fullerton 77, UCLA 74
December 28, 2019
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Congratulations to Dedrique (Taylor). Great guy. His team played excellent today. I apologize to our fans for our defensive effort, once again. We’re coming into the game, one of you guys had asked me in the press conference about our defense and I told you this, our metrics are horrible. You can’t defend, you can’t win. We give up 51 percent from the field, 58 from the 3-point line. You give them credit, they had a lot of guys make shots today that hadn’t made shots. They took care of the ball, they passed the ball, they found the open man. If you hold the ball long enough, we’ll break down. We’re not good enough to win with offense. We’ve got to win with defense and it’s a new thing for these guys. We don’t have hardened defenders and I’ve got to figure it out. Like I said, I apologize to people who took their time out of their Saturday over the holidays and paid to come and watch this, our defensive efforts. It’s beyond sickening. It’s beyond sickening. Sickening at the highest level. I don’t know how else to describe it to you.”
on effort in practice leading up to today
“Effort’s overrated. Everybody puts out effort. You’ve got to get the job done. We don’t get the job done. Everybody puts out effort. Effort’s way overrated. You’ve got to execute the defensive game plan. You’ve got to know who can shoot, who’s going to drive, all the way down to the last player. No. 10’s (Austen Awosika) going to drive and take a floater, Coach (Michael) Lewis showed them for three days.”
on message to team after game
“The message is really irrelevant. I’ve given them the same—I didn’t change. I didn’t change when I got here as a coach. It’s not like I forgot how to coach defense. At some point, you’ve got to keep five guys out there. Problem is, you’re playing guys who play. You’ve got try to find five guys that can get a stop. My message to them was it’s the same that it’s been: I knew this was coming. People just think, well, you’re on the road, or it’s your opponent. Our execution—here’s our problem in a nutshell: until we realize that the only reason teams do things like defend, really execute their plays, is because they have humility. You have humility. I’ve talked about it before and I talked about it over the holiday break. We need to get some humility, is my opinion. Some of its youth, but some of it is arrogance for no reason. Or ego for no reason. I told them our fate isn’t going to change until we get some humility. Cool does not win. You’ve got to be willing to do the uncomfortable things that go into winning and if all you’re worried about is getting 12 points regardless of the outcome for our team, it’s going to continue. My message to them in the locker room is at what point are they going to challenge each other. You can only do so much. I’m going to call Chip Kelly and see if he’ll loan me a couple guys, because our post defense, he’d just get wiped out, turn and lay it in. Stuff I’ve never seen happen before. We grabbed the rim on a guy who got fouled on a layup, we grabbed the rim and gave them two points on a goaltend. I’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s a shame that it’s at this point. You can only build a culture with guys that are going to be about what you’re asking them to be about.”
UCLA junior guard Chris Smith
on what is happening with the team
“We’re not holding each other accountable. Nobody is getting on anybody. We’re playing soft at the moment; it’s that simple. And we’re not holding each other accountable. We’ve got to change both of those things.”
on what the team needs to do to hold each other accountable
“We know what we should be doing, and we know the answers. On defense we know what positions we’re supposed to be in. Coach drills it. At moments we have lapses, and we don’t do it. If a teammate sees another teammate doing that, we’ve got to get on him, and we’ve got to tell him, ‘hey, man, we can’t rock with that.’ We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do, and it starts with defense.”
on how to rally the team and get ready for Pac-12 play
“We know it’s a long season, and the Pac-12 is better than last year and better than any year I’ve been here. We know we’ve got a long season, we’ve got good competition coming up, and we’ve got to take it one game at a time. We start on the road, so nothing will be in our favor, so it’s going to show our true colors, and it’s going to test us. We’ve got to take it one game at a time, and we’ve got to come together.”
UCLA freshman guard/forward Jaime Jaquez Jr.
on what was going wrong with the 3-point defense
“They shot the ball really well. Off drives, people were helping a little bit too much, and that left shooters open. When you get wide open shots in Division I basketball, they’re going to hit open shots. I think just helping too much, trying to stop drives was the biggest thing with leaving 3-point shooters open.”
Cal State Fullerton head coach Dedrique Taylor
opening statement
“We stayed consistent and stayed to our principles. This is no disrespect for UCLA. They have great coaching over there. I really feel great right now, but I’m most proud of those guys on the floor. They really bought into the game plan and stayed consistent. Since they bought in, it really gave us a chance.”
on if they changed their strategy when UCLA took the lead
“We stayed the course. We wanted to get paint-touch scores. It’s not necessarily a shot, but what kind of shot we can get. We also said ‘stay consistent and rebound.’ Our message never changed.”
on where they go from here
“We take the small steps. We pick up our right foot, put it down, then we pick up our left foot and put it down. The main thing is that we are trying to get healthy. We haven’t had all our guys, so this is the first game we have those injured guys back.”
Cal State Fullerton senior guard Austen Awosika
on their overall performance
“This is a turning point in our season. This is the first game we’ve had everybody back healthy.”
on his performance
“I think I did well at spurts. I feel like I could have gotten more assists and more rebounds, but I’m just glad we got the win.”
on where they go from here
“We have one more game before conference play, but we will stay consistent. We want to take this momentum into conference play.”