Postgame Quotes – UCLA vs. Long Beach State
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 100, Long Beach State 79
November 15, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
opening remarks
“First of all, I’ve got to give congratulations to Murray and Slater. Those guys played great. Give them a lot of credit. I’ve been doing this long enough, you’ve got to give other people credit. So good for those kids. That’s not going to ease my pain of (our) horrendous defense. You’ve got to give those guys credit well.”
on what worked on defense in the second half
“Not a whole lot. I would say they ran out of a bit of gas. Right now, my opinion defensively – I don’t know one thing we’re good at. On the ball, off the ball, our talk in transition. That’s my opinion.”
on averaging 93.7 points
“We better. We better. If I had a pair of sneakers, I think I could have scored on some of our guys tonight. I turn 50 this summer, just to remind you.”
on Jules Bernard performance
“He’s a really good player. Right now, I don’t need contribution. I need some leadership, some accountability in our locker room. I know everybody’s happy we beat Villanova, but the game was at home. So, to me, that game shouldn’t even come down the way it came down. We’ve got a lot of room for improvement.”
on stopping Murray and Slater
“When you let good players get started, giving them layups, the basket gets better. We don’t have a lot of great one-one-one players. We have to play team defense. The answer is team defense.”
on how sustainable winning is with defense like tonight
“Completely unsustainable. Completely. You can’t win on the road if you don’t defend.”
on message to the team after the game
“They know I’m extremely upset. There’s three options. You try to teach and coach. When that don’t work, you go to option two and scream and yell. Then option three: run in practice or sit in the game. So, we’re on option three. … I’ve got a lot of issues, but being convicted to what I believe in is not a problem for me. So right now, I’m just trying to search for somebody who can guard the ball, help when they’re supposed to help and follow the scouring report.
junior guard Johnny Juzang
on what they have to do better
“Game plan, they had two very talented guards. We just didn’t follow the scouting report well. We made it too easy for them. We’ve just got to take away those things.”
on the disconnect of winning the game and having coach be upset
“We have a team where everyone is returning, so we know the level that we’re capable of playing at, so just winning a game isn’t always satisfy us. It’s how you performed, how you won the game or lost the game. You know when you’ve made too many mistakes.”
senior guard Jules Bernard
on what they have to do better
“We gave up 57 points to two players, and that’s obviously unacceptable, especially for us, where the standard of defense is set at a high bar. So there’s definitely a lot to work on and a lot to watch from this game into our next game and learn from this.”
on what Long Beach State was doing to be efficient in making shots
“When you let players like that who have talent and are good players – when you let them get going early, and they have the juices flowing and you let the water start flowing, they’re just going to keep hitting shots, whether they’re tough, or they find ways to get open shots. I think we let them get going way too early offensively in the game.”
on if they felt like they needed to match what Murray and Slater were doing
“No, we’re just out there playing, just doing what we’re supposed to on the offensive end and playing together. But regardless of that, in the game, we’re not thinking let’s go bucket for bucket; we’re thinking how do we stop these guys. They’re on fire. They’re the two main guys who are scoring for them and keeping them in the game. We have to figure out a way to stop them, and unfortunately we did a poor job of that tonight.”
Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson
on the team’s overall performance
“I give us about a B-plus. I give us a C-minus offensively, a B-plus for rebound. Well, maybe I’ll give us an A for rebounding. Going in, we were concerned about our rebounding because UCLA had outrebounded their opponents, but we held our own. The rebounding didn’t really cost us the game.”
on the play of Murray and Slater
“As the kids would say, they were cookin’. I just wish we could have fed them more. We just have to keep doing what was working for us. We came out and we went to zone to try to keep them off-balance, but as the game went on, they looked more comfortable in the second half, and they started rolling after that.”
on where the team goes from here
“We just have to get better. We showed that we could compete against good teams for stretches, but the game is 40 minutes. We competed well in large stretches, but we just have to put it all together.”
UCLA 100, Long Beach State 79
November 15, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
opening remarks
“First of all, I’ve got to give congratulations to Murray and Slater. Those guys played great. Give them a lot of credit. I’ve been doing this long enough, you’ve got to give other people credit. So good for those kids. That’s not going to ease my pain of (our) horrendous defense. You’ve got to give those guys credit well.”
on what worked on defense in the second half
“Not a whole lot. I would say they ran out of a bit of gas. Right now, my opinion defensively – I don’t know one thing we’re good at. On the ball, off the ball, our talk in transition. That’s my opinion.”
on averaging 93.7 points
“We better. We better. If I had a pair of sneakers, I think I could have scored on some of our guys tonight. I turn 50 this summer, just to remind you.”
on Jules Bernard performance
“He’s a really good player. Right now, I don’t need contribution. I need some leadership, some accountability in our locker room. I know everybody’s happy we beat Villanova, but the game was at home. So, to me, that game shouldn’t even come down the way it came down. We’ve got a lot of room for improvement.”
on stopping Murray and Slater
“When you let good players get started, giving them layups, the basket gets better. We don’t have a lot of great one-one-one players. We have to play team defense. The answer is team defense.”
on how sustainable winning is with defense like tonight
“Completely unsustainable. Completely. You can’t win on the road if you don’t defend.”
on message to the team after the game
“They know I’m extremely upset. There’s three options. You try to teach and coach. When that don’t work, you go to option two and scream and yell. Then option three: run in practice or sit in the game. So, we’re on option three. … I’ve got a lot of issues, but being convicted to what I believe in is not a problem for me. So right now, I’m just trying to search for somebody who can guard the ball, help when they’re supposed to help and follow the scouring report.
junior guard Johnny Juzang
on what they have to do better
“Game plan, they had two very talented guards. We just didn’t follow the scouting report well. We made it too easy for them. We’ve just got to take away those things.”
on the disconnect of winning the game and having coach be upset
“We have a team where everyone is returning, so we know the level that we’re capable of playing at, so just winning a game isn’t always satisfy us. It’s how you performed, how you won the game or lost the game. You know when you’ve made too many mistakes.”
senior guard Jules Bernard
on what they have to do better
“We gave up 57 points to two players, and that’s obviously unacceptable, especially for us, where the standard of defense is set at a high bar. So there’s definitely a lot to work on and a lot to watch from this game into our next game and learn from this.”
on what Long Beach State was doing to be efficient in making shots
“When you let players like that who have talent and are good players – when you let them get going early, and they have the juices flowing and you let the water start flowing, they’re just going to keep hitting shots, whether they’re tough, or they find ways to get open shots. I think we let them get going way too early offensively in the game.”
on if they felt like they needed to match what Murray and Slater were doing
“No, we’re just out there playing, just doing what we’re supposed to on the offensive end and playing together. But regardless of that, in the game, we’re not thinking let’s go bucket for bucket; we’re thinking how do we stop these guys. They’re on fire. They’re the two main guys who are scoring for them and keeping them in the game. We have to figure out a way to stop them, and unfortunately we did a poor job of that tonight.”
Long Beach State head coach Dan Monson
on the team’s overall performance
“I give us about a B-plus. I give us a C-minus offensively, a B-plus for rebound. Well, maybe I’ll give us an A for rebounding. Going in, we were concerned about our rebounding because UCLA had outrebounded their opponents, but we held our own. The rebounding didn’t really cost us the game.”
on the play of Murray and Slater
“As the kids would say, they were cookin’. I just wish we could have fed them more. We just have to keep doing what was working for us. We came out and we went to zone to try to keep them off-balance, but as the game went on, they looked more comfortable in the second half, and they started rolling after that.”
on where the team goes from here
“We just have to get better. We showed that we could compete against good teams for stretches, but the game is 40 minutes. We competed well in large stretches, but we just have to put it all together.”