POSTGAME QUOTES
Colorado 70, UCLA 61
February 27, 2021

Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on if team sped itself up down the stretch, causing turnovers
“Candidly, I thought we tried to play too much individual basketball down the stretch. Therefore, we had guys out of control and that’s why we had turnovers.”

on McKinley Wright IV of Colorado
“Well, we did a bad job defending him, but he is a great player. He made a lot of tough shots… We had an eight-point lead [in the first half] and he just said, ‘You know what, we’re not losing on my senior night.’ From that point on, he took the game over. But that being said, we had some massive breakdowns, defensively.”

on Cody Riley’s performance
“Well, two of his three shots he had to get on the perimeter. Now, he posted up and they’re fouling him and grabbing him, it’s a physical game. So, it’s hard to get him the ball sometimes when things are going a certain way, but we have got to get him the ball more. He cannot have three shot attempts. We’re not going to win a lot of games if he only gets three shot attempts.”

on if he was happy with first 34 minutes of game
“You know, Ben, let me tell you about games like this, in just my opinion. I’d say you’re right, but the problem was we should’ve been up six or eight – but we weren’t – because of our turnovers and some guys not finding the open man on the break. We just had some really bad defensive plays, Ben. Like you’re saying, the game was around tied at that point. But we should’ve had a lead. They’re just too good, we just had too many defensive breakdowns. Just egregious defensive things that we went over and over yesterday, last night, this morning. Some guys just weren’t ready to play, defensively. Really, I’ll tell you guys the story of the game, in my opinion of this. I told the guys, ‘We’re going to find out, in the next week, what we’re made of. Are we a year away or are we ready for this… are we going to get better through each one of these trials?’ Are we going to be tougher at winning time, like you talked about, Ben, on Wednesday at Oregon? Because it’s hard to win these games. Look, man, they’re a hell of a team. McKinley played great. I told them this is going to be brutal, to get this win. And we started doing individual things, we got out of sorts, defensively, and we just had too many mistakes.”

on Jaylen Clark
“Well, I thought other than the fast break in the first half where he ran McKinley over and had Jules (Bernard) for a layup – of course it would help if Jules would tell him there’s a trailer – I thought he played great, though. For a freshman, I thought he was awesome. He had some unbelievable effort plays on the glass. Defensively, he did really well. Almost all positive. He played about as well as you could ask him to play.”
 
Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
on Colorado’s defense, down the stretch
“Absolutely. We showed great discipline and great patience. You know, they got good players. I mean, Tyger Campbell's good. Jaime Jaquez is really good, Jules Bernard is playing at a high level, Johnny Juzang shoots as good as anybody in the country. Getting Cody Riley in foul trouble was a key to this game. We had talked about it as a staff and to our team. You know, before the game, we talked about it at halftime because he's so important to them. But I thought just our depth and our ability to close the game out by making plays and, you know, we played them in L.A. back in early January. They made the plays down the stretch. They got the stops down the stretch and they made the shots down the stretch. Tonight, we did that and our guys played with great toughness, great belief and great heart. And that's what you have to do against UCLA. UCLA is a good basketball team. You have to beat them. They don't beat themselves. We were dialed in there down the stretch”
 
on his team’s discipline
“Yeah, because they’re physical and they get out in passing lanes, they try to blow up ball handoffs and they switch ball screens. We had zero at halftime. So all six of those came in the second half, I didn't even talk to our team about it at halftime. That was one of the reasons we were only down one at half, is because we took such good care of the basketball. At halftime they were shooting 50% from the field and they were plus four rebounding. I haven't had chance to look at the stat sheet. They beat us five on the boards, but they only shot 41% im the second half. And again, UCLA is a good team. They got good players, they run good stuff. Great, great win for our program and our team. On senior night, to have seven guys that are so articulate and well-spoken and just wonderful human beings to see them have success. You know, UCLA came in here last year for those that don't remember and ruined our senior night. That’s the risk that you have of having it after the game, but I wanted these guys to get a chance to thank their teammates, their families, and their fans personally. And with seven seniors, you can't do that before the game, so kudos to our guys.”
 
on a scoring run by Colorado late in the first half to keep the game close
“Really important. McKinley Wright, he stepped up, I think he scored all seven points, you know, cut that thing to one. Yeah, we lost our cool a little bit in that first half and you know, our guys are playing with emotion and I want them to, we just got to keep it in check, but McKinley was really good getting us back in that game and once we did, I felt like our guys had belief then. Like okay we can score on these guys, it's not gonna be easy, we have to work. I thought we stood around a little bit that first half and they switched ball screens, which sometimes gives us problems, but I thought in the second half, especially tonight, we did a great job of attacking that. Our bigs did a great job. Jeriah (Horne) slipped a ball screen in the middle of the floor and McKinley found him for an and one. I mean, plays like that are our key.
 
on getting contributions from multiple players
“We did. Eli (Parquet) made a really tough finish in the lane. Evan (Battey) made some finishes. That dive on the floor for the loose ball and maintaining possession was a key play in that game. That was just all heart and toughness. McKinley (Wright) did a good job of playing off two feet in the lane because they were really sagging in and they were really concerned with his penetration. He found Jeriah (Horne) for a big time three. That was a big play in the game. Maddox (Daniels) missed a three, came down the next possession or two later, made a three. The guys, they have a belief in themselves and they have a belief in each other that is really special. And I've coached a long time and not every team has it. They fake it sometimes, they act like it sometimes, but this team really does love and believe in each other and they played like it tonight offensively and then defensively. The last 10 possessions, what my staff told me, we got stops, 8 of the last 10 possessions down the stretch. That's what broke the game open. So it really, again, I don't know how many assists we had, we only had nine, but I thought we shared the ball better than that. But our guys made plays.
 
on guarding UCLA
“They run a lot of iso stuff. They have guys that are really good driving the ball. Johnny Juzang is a great shooter, but he's gotten better putting the ball on the floor. Jules Bernard put the ball on the floor. Obviously Tyger Campbell is really good in the pick and roll and he can attack. We talked about really shrinking the floor and getting into gaps, and understanding where Juzang was because he is a knock down three point shooter, not that the other guys can't make them. But our discipline defensively in the second half with shrinking the floor, helping out on spins, staying down on Jaime Jaquez’s shot fakes at the end. We didn't do it every time but we did it most of the time. Those stops are what won us the game, there's no doubt about it. The iso drives hurt us in the first half. Part of it was just challenging our guys. It was part of the game plan to start with one-on-one. We work on guarding the ball a lot in practice one-on-one and there's no help. The reality is when you play against really good teams and really good players, you have to help each other sometimes. You have to play with your hands off and when guys get downhill you have to shrink the floor. We did a really good job of that in the second half.”
 
on the possibility of winning the Pac-12 regular-season title
“Every time I start rooting for another team that I want to lose, they win. I quit that a long time ago. We can control what we can control which is the next game. For us, now it's Arizona State. We need help for that to happen (winning the Pac-12). We tricked off a couple losses earlier this year. We know that. Our fans know that. We have to live with that and accept that. There's a lot of basketball ahead for this team. We have one more regular season game. We've got to take care of business. It's not going to be easy. Arizona State's a talented group. They can get it rolling. And then we have the Pac-12 tournament, which I don't know of anybody or another team in a conference that wants to play Colorado right now. We're playing pretty good. We're going to go to Las Vegas with the idea that we have another opportunity to win a championship. We probably won't do it in the regular season, unless you know everything falls our way. We get a chance to do it in Las Vegas. This team is a team that can win some games in the NCAA Tournament. We're going to have to play well and that's down the road. We have to worry about Arizona State and that's what our focus is going to be.”
 
on staying sharp between the conclusion of the regular season and the postseason
“I do because we have mature guys. If you heard them speak on senior night tonight, they're an articulate, smart bunch of guys. This is a team that rises to challenges. Every time they've been challenged they've risen to it. The challenge now is to get healthy. We have some guys that are nicked and bruised. We expended a lot of energy these last two games. We're going to take a couple days off, get our bodies right, get a couple sharp practices, and with Arizona State we have to take that seriously. Then we get another week to practice and prepare ourselves for the Pac-12 Tournament. We'll find out who we play as that last weekend kind of unfolds. I love the way the schedule kind of sets up for us. Our guys did such a good job throughout the season.  Most of our opponents did too of staying healthy. We were able to play our games and that allows us now towards the end to get a little bit of rest, get some quality practice time in and stay sharp. We have to stay sharp, and I have no reason to believe that this team won't.”