Postgame Quotes – UCLA 65, USC 50
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 65, USC 50
Los Angeles, Calif. (Galen Center)
Jan. 27, 2024
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on switching to a zone defense midway through the first half
“To be honest with you, I thought – although they didn’t play that much – Aday [Mara] and Devin [Williams] really changed they rhythm of the game. They got in there. Devin got a couple putbacks. Aday as well. They do some things with their zone where they go man, so it takes a while to get comfortable with that. Then they do it late in the possession. I used to do it. It’s hard when you got [inaudible] in the high post and they go man late. I really thought those two did a really good job. Our guys got a little more comfortable. Dylan [Andrews] has been struggling, but today, offensively, he gave us a massive lift.”
on Adem Bona’s double-double
“Yeah. And he didn’t even play as good as he can play, to be honest with you. We’ve got to work on his face-up game when he’s off the post. We’ve got to give him some more room to operate. Too much power back down. His energy and effort is always – I went to rest him. You saw I had Kenny [Nwuba] at the table, but then the TV timeout came. He played the whole second half pretty much.”
on UCLA being the smarter and tougher team today
“We did what we needed to do. We just keep focusing on trying to get better. Obviously, we feel that we should have won four in a row. It is where it’s at. If we were sitting at 5-4 [in conference play], we’d be a game out of first. But we let Oregon slip away. We definitely let Arizona get away from us. Although, the stripes had a lot to do with them.”
on Devin Williams and Aday Mara’s contributions
“I think Devin – he hasn’t played a lot. Berke [Buyuktuncel] got hurt early in the week, so he knew he was going to play. I told him don’t hesitate. Shoot the ball when you’re open. That’s been the theme we’ve been really working hard on. And Aday did the same thing. I was concerned, obviously, playing Aday with them putting him in a lot of pick-and-rolls with Boogie Ellis. After the first two shots [Ellis] made, I thought it was going to be a long day. I was thinking about getting home. He made two 37-footers. He looked like Damian Lillard on the first two shots. We tried to eliminate his touches and deny him.”
on winning the offensive rebound battle in the first half, 10-0
“Hard to lose. At halftime, I believe we had 14 or 15 more shots than USC. Hard to lose. You ought to be up. And the truth of it is, look, in the second half we didn’t get the ball in the basket very well. We had a stretch of missed free throws and missed shots or we really could have got away from them. But, Andy [Enfield] is a great coach. Obviously, losing [Isaiah] Collier threw everything off for them. They got too many guys in and out. Too many guys hurt, not hurt. They’ll find a way to right the ship. He always has since I’ve been in L.A.”
on if his first win in the Galen Center feels good
“It’s going to feel good in about – I don’t know how traffic is – when I’m in that backyard smoking a Cohiba [cigar], it’s going to feel real good.”
on if there are any similarities between this young team and his young UCLA team in 2019-20
“That team was bigger and stronger and older. Because even Jalen [Hill] and Cody [Riley], they were older because they had to sit that one year. So, they were a little more physical. But, look, we lost our five leading scorers from last year and replaced them Lazar Stefanovic. We’re figuring it out. I’ve been telling the guys that cover us the most, we got great kids on the team, so they listen and they try. It’s my job to get them in position to have success. The staff can continue to try to make adjustments. We dealt with Berke being out this week. He’s day-to-day. He banged his wrist. Hopefully he’ll be back for our next game. I don’t even know who it is.”
on both this team and his first team in 2019-20 learning how to win
“You see, these guys haven’t played together. They don’t even know each other. You’ve got to go through some things together. But again, you find out who you are when times are tough. When you have great kids and you make it about them and them trying to get better and not what people are saying and all the stuff people want to say, that you struggle. The world is predictable. Someone makes a mistake nowadays they want to ruin their life. You lose a game, you struggle a little bit, everybody wants to say your team stinks. I’m worried about their development, not just teaching them how to win. When you play better, you give yourself a chance to win. But we are handling late-game stuff better.”
on if he feels the team starting to turn a corner
“Yeah, when that scoreboard changes. No, but in practice more so. We’re still young, though, to be honest with you. I feel like a fifth-grade teacher at times. ‘Everybody listen. Hold hands so we’re all listening going over the scouting report and walkthrough.’ It’s just life and inexperienced guys.”
on Berke Buyuktuncel’s return
“The sooner, the better. We need him.”
on his 2019-20 UCLA team having a locked-in factor that the current UCLA team is experiencing
“Yeah. That’s why I kept those guys out there. They seem to have a nice – defensively, they were on the same page. I knew we were tired. That’s why we were missing shots. We had a defensive rhythm with that group.”
on what he’s learned about this team as the season has gone on
“Not a lot has shocked me, to be honest with you. I knew they were good kids. I knew I was going to have to put them in a position to win. We don’t have overwhelming talent. We don’t have a player of the year. So, we are going to have to figure out ways to do things. But I also have to make sure I give them some confidence. There was a stretch where they lost their confidence and they were feeling the pressure of playing at UCLA. My [focus] was to eliminate all of that. This is about you and your career. You’re a good kid. Let’s try to make you become a better player. If we all become better players, the results will change. We can’t worry about the result.”
UCLA sophomore guard Dylan Andrews
on his 20 points and 3-point shooting
“My teammates were trusting me every day in practice – just getting in rhythm. I haven’t shot the ball that good these last couple of games, so I just have to stay confident. Just come into this game being positive. My teammates trusted me. It just felt good to see the ball go in the basket today.”
on Devin Williams and Aday Mara’s impact opening up his offensive game
“I was happiest for Devin to get in the game. I was happy for Aday to get in the game. The flow of the game, it didn’t go down. It kept going up more and more – credit to them. They came in ready to play. Aday came in and got a big rebound for us. And Devin came in and I hit him on a pocket pass to get an and-one. Those boys came ready today.”
on blocking out the media
“I think, really our whole team, we don’t look into the social media part of it. We just come into practice, come into the games ready to play and give it our all, 110 percent when we come on the court.”
on the team playing with joy
“We just knew from the jump how big this game was for our fans and just for anybody that goes to UCLA, our UCLA fanbase. To get this game, we knew that Coach Cronin hasn’t won at the Galen Center yet. So, I for sure wanted to get this one for him, especially because I didn’t play last year.”
on his fastbreak layup in the first half and thinking about going for the dunk
“I really wanted to dunk it because I remember we had that conversation at Mo Ostin. I ended up – I slipped on a dead spot on the court, so I was just hoping I could make the layup and finish it. Two points is two points, right?”
on if he feels that the team has turned a corner over the last four games
“Yeah, for sure. I feel like we’re getting one percent better every day. Throughout the season we’re going to have our ups and downs. … We just got to keep going [and] keep pushing heading into the next game.”
on Bronny James’ technical foul after his block on Andrews and if it invigorated the team
“I feel like it helped us go on a run for sure. We capitalized on the free throws and got the ball back. I feel like that helped out a lot.”
UCLA junior guard/forward Lazar Stefanovic
on Devin Williams and Aday Mara’s impact opening up his offensive game
“It helped a lot because they’re able to score. Aday got a big rebound. Devin, I think, tipped one. … It helped us a lot. It gave a good energy to the team and switched things around and we made our run. So, you’re right about that. That was a big run for us.”
on UCLA’s 24-4 run to end the first half
“We were just trying to make the right play, and that’s our gameplan all the time – try to make the right play and have the open guy shoot the ball. That’s what happened. We got open shots and we knocked them down. And that’s why we made that run.”
on UCLA winning the offensive rebound in the first half, 10-0
“It was huge. We knew that was one of the keys to this game. They started the game with two centers, so it was pretty clear what they wanted to do. We made a clear point that we need to box out and we got to rebound and we got to crash the glass on offense. It was one of the keys to the game coming in. We knew that and we did a great job.”
on sophomore Dylan Andrews’ performance
“He was amazing. When he goes out there, he’s confident. We trust him to make the right play. He’s amazing for us. We need him for the rest of the year to play like that.”
UCLA sophomore forward/center Adem Bona
on his assessment of UCLA’s performance against USC
“Amazing. Our freshman started to go. Aday. Devin had the big block and went down and got points. … Thanks to the freshmen that started the run. We kept on pushing from there. Obviously, it was an amazing game. Everyone was 100 percent locked in today. It was amazing to see.”
on dominating offensive rebounds
“We knew that was going to be huge for us because they had size. They started the game with two bigs, and we were focused on rebounding. We knew that was going to be an advantage for us if we could win the rebounding battle. And we won down low. Glad to see the team come together and just came to play.”
on countering USC’s blocks
“We knew that we were taking tough shots. We were trying drive into them and they were big and they were blocking the shots. We kind of realized: take the open shot [and] take the first shot. We started making threes from the outside, so we spread them out and we got the ball into the paint after that. Once we started making threes, it helped us get more points in the paint.”