Postgame Quotes – UCLA at California
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 61, California 57
January 21, 2021 (Berkeley, Calif.)
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on the heart the team showed at the end
“Our defense won the game for us, obviously. We stopped turning the ball over long enough. My dad in Cincinnati right now, I just hope he’s not being rushed to the hospital with some internal … I can hear him right now, ‘You might want to stop turning it over.’ But we hung in there, we kept defending. That’s the character that I want to see from our team. The only nickname I’m interested in, I gave you it at my press conference, if you remember – ‘winners’. W-I-N. That’s how you spell fun. So we found a way to win tonight despite 14 turnovers, which is very uncharacteristic. Four for Tyger [Campbell], three for Cody [Riley]. We made some adjustments defensively, and the kids did a great job with it. And we got the lead there late, tried to get our best defensive lineup in, and we kept them off the foul line. It was an advantage down the stretch. We knew we had fouls to give with the way we were trying to play defense, so that helped us.”
on Cody Riley’s play and grittiness down the stretch
“They were giving him one on one coverage, and to be honest with you, he should have had the ball a lot more than he did throughout the game. I think that would have been our best offense when he was in there. I thought he got a little tired a few times. He walked, he traveled, he got in a little bit of a hurry, got off-balance a few times. When you get in those grinders, threes aren’t falling, you’ve got to get layups, and you’ve got to have a guy who can get you a tough basket around the rim. I was trying to get him and Jaime [Jaquez Jr.] around the rim as much as possible to get us some points in the paint. I think it was 28 and 18, plus-10 in that category. That was probably the difference in the game right there.”
on Jalen Hill’s effort defensively
“Right now, Jalen’s trying to get back to being our best defender. He’s trying to get back to being an anchor for us, trying to be an elite defender in college basketball. That’s what’s going to give a chance at playing after college, is being an elite defensive player. Big, strong, athletic guy who can move his feet and give us a tremendous weapon on the defensive end. Plus, he rebounded the ball well tonight. Once again, we got 19 and 14 from the center spot, so their production has been great.”
on defending the perimeter
“They [Cal] have really improved offensively as the season has gone on. They won by 10 at Utah in their last game. They’ve become a really good team in half-court execution. They don’t over-dribble, they create help and find the open man. Mark and I are friendly. He’s a great coach. They had a lot of issues when he got the job, and he made them competitive regardless of record when you watch how they play. So credit to their passing in the first half. Their passing was great in the first half. We tried to make some adjustments at halftime so we wouldn’t have to rotate off of [Grant] Anticevich and then get back to him. We changed our pick and roll coverage where we stayed glued to him. But we still lost him a few times.”
Mark Fox, California Head Coach
on his initial reaction to the game against UCLA
“Really, was a hard fought and good college basketball game. And I was proud of the competitive effort that we made, but against a great team, we just made too many mistakes. We didn’t make a lot, but in a high-level game to beat a high-level opponent, you have to play a little more mistake-free than we did today. I’m certainly disappointed that we leave here without a win.”
on the performance of Cal’s Grant Anticevich
“Well, I think I’d mentioned in Salt Lake City that Grant had a really hard time coming back from his surgery. I felt like in the second half of Utah, that he had finally returned to form. He had lost weight, strength, conditioning, confidence, and it took a while to get all that back. I thought tonight, he was terrific on the offensive end. We just needed to get him a little more help. Grant was certainly, really effective tonight.
on the difference in the game’s final four minutes
“I think with the four-minute timeout, what, we were down two and ended up losing by four. You know, the real key to the game is our team needs to get to the free throw line some. We’ve got to score, especially without Matt [Bradley]. We’ve got to get to the free throw line some to get some cheap points. And we didn’t get there at all in the second half. It was hard for us, even though we were playing hard, we didn’t rebound it great in the second half. We really got out-rebounded in the second half. We just didn’t get to the foul line to be able to get us a couple of easy points when the ball wasn’t going in, but give them credit. They’ve got a terrific team.”
on what he believed was the difference between the first half and the second half
“I mean, we didn’t rebound it great. We didn’t rebound the ball in the second half well. They outscored us by eight in the second half. We just had a harder time scoring. We only shot around 30 percent in the second half. When we shoot like that, we’ve got to be able to get some trips to the free throw line. And either you’ve got to make your field goals or you’ve got to get to the line, and we didn’t do either one in the second half. It was a slugfest and we only got 21 points in the second half.”
on whether he’d like to emphasize getting out on the fast break more often
“When we are healthy, we want to play a little faster. We’ve got to be selective right now, without Matt, and we have some young guys who we are putting in some really tough situations. But we want to find as many easy baskets as we can, and I thought that Andre [Kelly] made a great pass there.”
on UCLA capitalizing on second-chance points
“Yeah, we didn’t rebound the ball. That really hurt us in the second half.”
UCLA 61, California 57
January 21, 2021 (Berkeley, Calif.)
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on the heart the team showed at the end
“Our defense won the game for us, obviously. We stopped turning the ball over long enough. My dad in Cincinnati right now, I just hope he’s not being rushed to the hospital with some internal … I can hear him right now, ‘You might want to stop turning it over.’ But we hung in there, we kept defending. That’s the character that I want to see from our team. The only nickname I’m interested in, I gave you it at my press conference, if you remember – ‘winners’. W-I-N. That’s how you spell fun. So we found a way to win tonight despite 14 turnovers, which is very uncharacteristic. Four for Tyger [Campbell], three for Cody [Riley]. We made some adjustments defensively, and the kids did a great job with it. And we got the lead there late, tried to get our best defensive lineup in, and we kept them off the foul line. It was an advantage down the stretch. We knew we had fouls to give with the way we were trying to play defense, so that helped us.”
on Cody Riley’s play and grittiness down the stretch
“They were giving him one on one coverage, and to be honest with you, he should have had the ball a lot more than he did throughout the game. I think that would have been our best offense when he was in there. I thought he got a little tired a few times. He walked, he traveled, he got in a little bit of a hurry, got off-balance a few times. When you get in those grinders, threes aren’t falling, you’ve got to get layups, and you’ve got to have a guy who can get you a tough basket around the rim. I was trying to get him and Jaime [Jaquez Jr.] around the rim as much as possible to get us some points in the paint. I think it was 28 and 18, plus-10 in that category. That was probably the difference in the game right there.”
on Jalen Hill’s effort defensively
“Right now, Jalen’s trying to get back to being our best defender. He’s trying to get back to being an anchor for us, trying to be an elite defender in college basketball. That’s what’s going to give a chance at playing after college, is being an elite defensive player. Big, strong, athletic guy who can move his feet and give us a tremendous weapon on the defensive end. Plus, he rebounded the ball well tonight. Once again, we got 19 and 14 from the center spot, so their production has been great.”
on defending the perimeter
“They [Cal] have really improved offensively as the season has gone on. They won by 10 at Utah in their last game. They’ve become a really good team in half-court execution. They don’t over-dribble, they create help and find the open man. Mark and I are friendly. He’s a great coach. They had a lot of issues when he got the job, and he made them competitive regardless of record when you watch how they play. So credit to their passing in the first half. Their passing was great in the first half. We tried to make some adjustments at halftime so we wouldn’t have to rotate off of [Grant] Anticevich and then get back to him. We changed our pick and roll coverage where we stayed glued to him. But we still lost him a few times.”
Mark Fox, California Head Coach
on his initial reaction to the game against UCLA
“Really, was a hard fought and good college basketball game. And I was proud of the competitive effort that we made, but against a great team, we just made too many mistakes. We didn’t make a lot, but in a high-level game to beat a high-level opponent, you have to play a little more mistake-free than we did today. I’m certainly disappointed that we leave here without a win.”
on the performance of Cal’s Grant Anticevich
“Well, I think I’d mentioned in Salt Lake City that Grant had a really hard time coming back from his surgery. I felt like in the second half of Utah, that he had finally returned to form. He had lost weight, strength, conditioning, confidence, and it took a while to get all that back. I thought tonight, he was terrific on the offensive end. We just needed to get him a little more help. Grant was certainly, really effective tonight.
on the difference in the game’s final four minutes
“I think with the four-minute timeout, what, we were down two and ended up losing by four. You know, the real key to the game is our team needs to get to the free throw line some. We’ve got to score, especially without Matt [Bradley]. We’ve got to get to the free throw line some to get some cheap points. And we didn’t get there at all in the second half. It was hard for us, even though we were playing hard, we didn’t rebound it great in the second half. We really got out-rebounded in the second half. We just didn’t get to the foul line to be able to get us a couple of easy points when the ball wasn’t going in, but give them credit. They’ve got a terrific team.”
on what he believed was the difference between the first half and the second half
“I mean, we didn’t rebound it great. We didn’t rebound the ball in the second half well. They outscored us by eight in the second half. We just had a harder time scoring. We only shot around 30 percent in the second half. When we shoot like that, we’ve got to be able to get some trips to the free throw line. And either you’ve got to make your field goals or you’ve got to get to the line, and we didn’t do either one in the second half. It was a slugfest and we only got 21 points in the second half.”
on whether he’d like to emphasize getting out on the fast break more often
“When we are healthy, we want to play a little faster. We’ve got to be selective right now, without Matt, and we have some young guys who we are putting in some really tough situations. But we want to find as many easy baskets as we can, and I thought that Andre [Kelly] made a great pass there.”
on UCLA capitalizing on second-chance points
“Yeah, we didn’t rebound the ball. That really hurt us in the second half.”