Postgame Quotes – UCLA at Washington
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 64, Washington 61
February 13, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on Johnny Juzang
“The truth of it is Johnny’s ability to move without the ball is a real strength of his. That comes into play when a team’s trying to play matchup zone. I played it at Cincinnati so I’m aware of it. You gotta have a guy that understands, for lack of a better way of explaining it, you’ve gotta learn to misdirect and figure out where the overload is. You see the zone shifting so you slide out to the weak side, you see the zone shifting so you run to the corner, you read the forward coming up and slide behind him. He’s really alert, he’s very effective moving without the ball against that type of defense, which allowed for him to get a lot of open looks.”
on recording the win
“It’s huge. It’s hard to win games. It’s February, ya know, obviously we’re far from full-strength with no Chris [Smith], no Jalen Hill, Cody [Riley’s] not himself clearly. You can see that Cody’s rhythm is really off, his balance is off, he’s had some travels. To be able to win the way we won is what I’m happy about. The biggest thing for me to coming to UCLA was to build a culture – you have to have competitive toughness to defend and do the uncomfortable things that go into winning. That’s what the Lakers do, that’s why they won a title. They’re an elite defense in the playoffs. Adversity, it either kills you or makes you better, makes you stronger. Not that we want to miss every free throw, and you don’t want to have guys missing. Obviously we hope Jalen Hill is doing better and is okay, Chris is gonna rebab, Cody’s gonna get back to full strength. We grinded, ultimate win. When you can’t make free throws, especially in the second half – Martin Jarmond just told me we were 3-for-13 at one point. Some of those are front ends of a 1-and-1. It puts unbelievable pressure on your defense, and really tests your character and your resolve to continue to compete. You compete, that takes care of everything. You can build a program from there, you can get a win from there, and then you build on it.”
on the team’s defense
“I would say ‘defense much better tonight’ is the understatement of your career, Ben [Bolch, LA Times Writer], compared to the other day. I mean, wow. All you gotta do is – I show the guys here’s all our Pac-12 wins in the last two years. I think we’ve won two games – Utah this year and Arizona State last year – we gave up 70 and 72. We’re holding teams in our wins around 60, 61 a game. That’s what you gotta do to win college basketball games. Especially in conference play, you’ve gotta play defense. Really proud of our effort. Proud of the way our guys competed, the way we practiced yesterday I thought this was going to happen. Sometimes the basketball gods aren’t on your side, [Washington guard Marcus] Tsohonis made some shots, we can’t make a free throw. But Jules Bernard made some big free throws, a couple big shots, big-time fortitude on his part.”
on three-point defending
“The truth of it is, I’m not gonna give away any secrets because our league already knows it, but we play a lot of shooters. David [Singleton], Jake [Kyman], and Johnny. They’re not lockdown, athletic defenders, they’re shooters. We’re challenged at times defending 22 feet away from the basket. Give Tsohonis credit, but we needed to get a little bit closer. We did basic, solid, normal closeouts, and the thing about Washington is they don’t care, they’re just gonna shoot it. So you gotta get out, get your feet outside the three [point line] and force them to drive baseline, and we were just too conservative defensively, and they just shot it right in our face. That was the one thing – it almost cost us the game – that I’m going to show on film.”
on Jaime Jaquez Jr.
“Jaime’s pressing a little bit, I’d say, but he’s pressing a lot at the foul line. I look it at like this, all I’m concerned with is his 10 rebounds, his defense was much better today, he had four assists. Gotta get him back on the foul line. They’re playing matchup zone, so it’s really weird, what I don’t want him doing is driving in and taking wild shots at the rim, which he didn’t do, which is why he had four assists, he had some big passes for us. We just gotta keep working, I’m not worried about Jaime.”
on the road trip split
“At this point in the year, you’re just trying to win. This was a really important win for us, with Jalen out and Cody’s not himself. They got hot, we had every reason to fold up. I’ve never seen a team win a game 6-of-18 from the foul line, conference game on the road, I’ve never even heard of it. I’m just proud of the way our guys battled, I’m a big believer that 75% of this is the way you compete. You’ve gotta teach your kids what championship effort is. There’s a different between effort, winning effort, championship effort. You can give effort, but there’s NIT effort. What I’m trying to teach these guys is championship effort. That’s gonna be the staple of what we’re about, and that’s what our focus was from the time we talked after the game after the Washington State game. We didn’t give a championship effort against Washington State until the last six minutes of the game. That’s what our concern’s gotta be. We’ve gotta challenge each other, it can’t just be me, it’s got to be them as well.”
UCLA 64, Washington 61
February 13, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on Johnny Juzang
“The truth of it is Johnny’s ability to move without the ball is a real strength of his. That comes into play when a team’s trying to play matchup zone. I played it at Cincinnati so I’m aware of it. You gotta have a guy that understands, for lack of a better way of explaining it, you’ve gotta learn to misdirect and figure out where the overload is. You see the zone shifting so you slide out to the weak side, you see the zone shifting so you run to the corner, you read the forward coming up and slide behind him. He’s really alert, he’s very effective moving without the ball against that type of defense, which allowed for him to get a lot of open looks.”
on recording the win
“It’s huge. It’s hard to win games. It’s February, ya know, obviously we’re far from full-strength with no Chris [Smith], no Jalen Hill, Cody [Riley’s] not himself clearly. You can see that Cody’s rhythm is really off, his balance is off, he’s had some travels. To be able to win the way we won is what I’m happy about. The biggest thing for me to coming to UCLA was to build a culture – you have to have competitive toughness to defend and do the uncomfortable things that go into winning. That’s what the Lakers do, that’s why they won a title. They’re an elite defense in the playoffs. Adversity, it either kills you or makes you better, makes you stronger. Not that we want to miss every free throw, and you don’t want to have guys missing. Obviously we hope Jalen Hill is doing better and is okay, Chris is gonna rebab, Cody’s gonna get back to full strength. We grinded, ultimate win. When you can’t make free throws, especially in the second half – Martin Jarmond just told me we were 3-for-13 at one point. Some of those are front ends of a 1-and-1. It puts unbelievable pressure on your defense, and really tests your character and your resolve to continue to compete. You compete, that takes care of everything. You can build a program from there, you can get a win from there, and then you build on it.”
on the team’s defense
“I would say ‘defense much better tonight’ is the understatement of your career, Ben [Bolch, LA Times Writer], compared to the other day. I mean, wow. All you gotta do is – I show the guys here’s all our Pac-12 wins in the last two years. I think we’ve won two games – Utah this year and Arizona State last year – we gave up 70 and 72. We’re holding teams in our wins around 60, 61 a game. That’s what you gotta do to win college basketball games. Especially in conference play, you’ve gotta play defense. Really proud of our effort. Proud of the way our guys competed, the way we practiced yesterday I thought this was going to happen. Sometimes the basketball gods aren’t on your side, [Washington guard Marcus] Tsohonis made some shots, we can’t make a free throw. But Jules Bernard made some big free throws, a couple big shots, big-time fortitude on his part.”
on three-point defending
“The truth of it is, I’m not gonna give away any secrets because our league already knows it, but we play a lot of shooters. David [Singleton], Jake [Kyman], and Johnny. They’re not lockdown, athletic defenders, they’re shooters. We’re challenged at times defending 22 feet away from the basket. Give Tsohonis credit, but we needed to get a little bit closer. We did basic, solid, normal closeouts, and the thing about Washington is they don’t care, they’re just gonna shoot it. So you gotta get out, get your feet outside the three [point line] and force them to drive baseline, and we were just too conservative defensively, and they just shot it right in our face. That was the one thing – it almost cost us the game – that I’m going to show on film.”
on Jaime Jaquez Jr.
“Jaime’s pressing a little bit, I’d say, but he’s pressing a lot at the foul line. I look it at like this, all I’m concerned with is his 10 rebounds, his defense was much better today, he had four assists. Gotta get him back on the foul line. They’re playing matchup zone, so it’s really weird, what I don’t want him doing is driving in and taking wild shots at the rim, which he didn’t do, which is why he had four assists, he had some big passes for us. We just gotta keep working, I’m not worried about Jaime.”
on the road trip split
“At this point in the year, you’re just trying to win. This was a really important win for us, with Jalen out and Cody’s not himself. They got hot, we had every reason to fold up. I’ve never seen a team win a game 6-of-18 from the foul line, conference game on the road, I’ve never even heard of it. I’m just proud of the way our guys battled, I’m a big believer that 75% of this is the way you compete. You’ve gotta teach your kids what championship effort is. There’s a different between effort, winning effort, championship effort. You can give effort, but there’s NIT effort. What I’m trying to teach these guys is championship effort. That’s gonna be the staple of what we’re about, and that’s what our focus was from the time we talked after the game after the Washington State game. We didn’t give a championship effort against Washington State until the last six minutes of the game. That’s what our concern’s gotta be. We’ve gotta challenge each other, it can’t just be me, it’s got to be them as well.”