Postgame Quotes – UCLA vs. Chico State
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 100, Chico State 61
Exhibition Game
November 4, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Obviously, it’s good to be back in front of the fans and that’s my biggest takeaway tonight. Hopefully our fans feel the same way. Having you guys here, everybody here. The ushers in the back hall, I told them. Our officers over here. I told those guys. It’s good to seem them. I haven’t seen these guys in two years. The other thing was a ‘thank you’ to our students. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many students at an exhibition game. That was awesome. Chico State, we played them because Greg (Clink) is a very good coach. They execute and pass the ball and have a lot of shooters. They put a lot of pressure on the defense to defend the whole floor. Regardless of the final score, they came out of the second half and they took care of the ball and got off 33 shots. We had to defend. It was good practice for us and obviously we didn’t shoot it well in the first half, but we’ve got a lot of guys who can shoot. We just got to keep shooting. Really happy with our defensive effort. Obviously, you guys saw Peyton (Watson) can do a lot of things for us. He had nine deflections, which for us, if you get nine deflections in 21 minutes of play, that’s extremely hard to do. He’s a problem defensively.”
on Jaime Jaquez Jr.’s offensive performance tonight
“He’s worked hard on his free throws. He’s such a good shooter. Jaime is a really hard guy to defend for other teams because they play him as a point forward and he tends to have a bigger, slower guy on him and obviously we use that to our advantage. … Because he can finish and he’s developing as a passer in that point forward spot, it’s hard to defend because he and Peyton are so big. They’re going to finish down the lane without help, and if you do (help), they’re going to find shooters. We recruit to the style. It doesn’t surprise me, that’s just who he is.”
on what Myles Johnson contributes to the Bruins’ offensively and defensively
“Statistically, almost a double-double in fifteen minutes. It’s the most obvious thing out there, size wise. His size is something we need. It just adds to (our offense). We needed two things. We needed a great athlete that happens to be a great player which happens to be Peyton, and we needed a guy with some size that happens to be a veteran and effective defensive player. Those two guys have taken us to another level.”
Chico State head coach Greg Clink
opening comments
“We’re really excited to play. We hadn’t had a contest in 608 days. Our season was canceled due to COVID last year, so we just wanted to play anybody. It was truly a pleasure and a blessing just to get out there.”
on skill set of UCLA
“To play a team of this caliber is very exciting. So, I would say the word ‘exciting’ describes this whole experience.”
takeaways from the game
“When you play against a team like this, they expose your weaknesses. There’s a lot of things we can take away from this experience. The film will let us know what we need to work on. I initially noticed we had a lot of turnovers, so we have to clean that up,”
where do you go from here
“We play Azusa Pacific in the Conference Crossover Challenge. We go back to Chico and prepare for work and get ready for conference.”
UCLA 100, Chico State 61
Exhibition Game
November 4, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Obviously, it’s good to be back in front of the fans and that’s my biggest takeaway tonight. Hopefully our fans feel the same way. Having you guys here, everybody here. The ushers in the back hall, I told them. Our officers over here. I told those guys. It’s good to seem them. I haven’t seen these guys in two years. The other thing was a ‘thank you’ to our students. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many students at an exhibition game. That was awesome. Chico State, we played them because Greg (Clink) is a very good coach. They execute and pass the ball and have a lot of shooters. They put a lot of pressure on the defense to defend the whole floor. Regardless of the final score, they came out of the second half and they took care of the ball and got off 33 shots. We had to defend. It was good practice for us and obviously we didn’t shoot it well in the first half, but we’ve got a lot of guys who can shoot. We just got to keep shooting. Really happy with our defensive effort. Obviously, you guys saw Peyton (Watson) can do a lot of things for us. He had nine deflections, which for us, if you get nine deflections in 21 minutes of play, that’s extremely hard to do. He’s a problem defensively.”
on Jaime Jaquez Jr.’s offensive performance tonight
“He’s worked hard on his free throws. He’s such a good shooter. Jaime is a really hard guy to defend for other teams because they play him as a point forward and he tends to have a bigger, slower guy on him and obviously we use that to our advantage. … Because he can finish and he’s developing as a passer in that point forward spot, it’s hard to defend because he and Peyton are so big. They’re going to finish down the lane without help, and if you do (help), they’re going to find shooters. We recruit to the style. It doesn’t surprise me, that’s just who he is.”
on what Myles Johnson contributes to the Bruins’ offensively and defensively
“Statistically, almost a double-double in fifteen minutes. It’s the most obvious thing out there, size wise. His size is something we need. It just adds to (our offense). We needed two things. We needed a great athlete that happens to be a great player which happens to be Peyton, and we needed a guy with some size that happens to be a veteran and effective defensive player. Those two guys have taken us to another level.”
Chico State head coach Greg Clink
opening comments
“We’re really excited to play. We hadn’t had a contest in 608 days. Our season was canceled due to COVID last year, so we just wanted to play anybody. It was truly a pleasure and a blessing just to get out there.”
on skill set of UCLA
“To play a team of this caliber is very exciting. So, I would say the word ‘exciting’ describes this whole experience.”
takeaways from the game
“When you play against a team like this, they expose your weaknesses. There’s a lot of things we can take away from this experience. The film will let us know what we need to work on. I initially noticed we had a lot of turnovers, so we have to clean that up,”
where do you go from here
“We play Azusa Pacific in the Conference Crossover Challenge. We go back to Chico and prepare for work and get ready for conference.”