Postgame Quotes – Utah 70, UCLA 69
POSTGAME QUOTES
Utah 70, UCLA 69
Los Angeles, Calif. (Pauley Pavilion)
February 18, 2024
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men's Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Obviously a hard-fought game. Disappointed in the outcome. Defensively, we’ve had some slippage lately. I know everybody else looks at the result, but statistically during our winning streak, teams have been shooting too high of a percentage against us. The difference had been we were turning people over. When somebody doesn’t turn the ball over, my concern was our field goal percentage defense. So that got us tonight. Adem’s fourth foul really changed the game in a horrendous way. We don’t foul jump shooters. We were up six when that happened. Anytime we had a chance to go on a run, we shot ourselves in the foot. I haven’t seen the film, so from Sebastian’s foul to Aday had a bad foul pushing a guy. Berke had one in the first half as well, pushing a guy. The reason we were winning was we stopped doing dumb stuff – dumb fouls, in particular, and they were back tonight. And then at the end of the day, [Deivon] Smith was fast, and we failed miserably in our game plan to back up and make him shoot. All the way up until the last play, the goal was to back up and make him shoot. The last two plays. He got it to the rim on the last two plays. Our whole game plan was to back up and make him shoot. We didn’t get the job done. That falls on me. So, disappointing.”
on playing down a starter after Sebastian Mack was ejected
“Excuses are for losers. It was still five-on-five. I mean, it’s five-on-five. It’s not hockey. They weren’t in a penalty. We got to sub somebody in. We didn’t get the job done. That’s on me. Sure, we would have liked to have him.”
on what the team can learn from a loss like this
“We’ve learned enough. We’ve got enough losses. Simple – scouting report. Two things I already said – too many bad fouls, egregiously. Unintelligent fouls, and terrible scouting report defense against Deivon Smith. Terrible, not keeping him out of the paint, all the way to the end. It’s not like we didn’t know that he’s been starting at the point since we played them, since [Rollie] Worster got hurt.”
on if he had any thoughts to not call a timeout after Dylan Andrews’ shot with six seconds left
“I was too worried he was going to sprint it down and get fouled, especially with Berke in the game. I was trying to get Brandon Williams in the game. I mean, the clock stops on a made bucket, so they can just let it bounce. It’s not like they can’t get organized. At the end of the day, we had two guys, and he split them both. We had two guys there to stop him, and he got right down the middle of Will [McClendon] and Lazar [Stefanovic]. But that I mean, that is six one way, half a dozen the other. I’m sure I’m going to go home and be mad that I called timeout. But I wanted to set my defense so I could slow him down, but we failed. That’s why I did it.”
on if they wanted to set a limit on how many three-pointers Utah took
“I can go over the film, they shot 32 percent from three. The bottom line is, I am upset at a lot of our defensive stuff, we had some bad fouls. We missed a plethora of wide open shots, I mean unguarded shots. And when we play a team like Utah, which is going to make you beat them from the outside, double Adem at all costs, sometimes tripling Adem at times, pack the paint in and make you drive, you have got to make some shots. We didn’t make enough shots. It’s a whole different game if we shoot the ball better. That aside, we still should have won the game, in my opinion. Bad fouls. Our defense against Smith. But this game, you guys, I’m coaching, you guys are watching. The game gets real hard when guys are missing wide-open shots. But that happens, you know, it’s basketball.”
on Lazar Stefanovic’s productive night
“Yep. He gave us offense, but we only had two guys in double figures. That’s the problem.”
on if the team is mature enough to bounce back from this loss
“We’ll see. I mean, if you are haven’t matured by now, we have played 20-something games. It is what it is. It’s not like we have never lost before this year. My opinion of it would be, that as wins pile up, teams start to forget why they are winning. People start to tell them that they’re good, and I can’t put them in a bubble, no coach can. I’ve seen slipping in our defense. I saw it against Colorado we had a 14-point lead, and we were giving up backdoor layups. So it is not a shock to me. And in our winning streak, we gave up 48 percent from the field, we were forcing a lot of turnovers, and getting a lot of offensive rebounds, which has made up for that. But that is way too high of a number, way too high. We are no juggernaut. The guys are competing, I’m proud of that. But we are about winning at UCLA, so we have to play a lot smarter, there were too many bad fouls.”
UCLA guard Lazar Stefanovic
on losing a close, emotional game
"It feels horrible. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but it feels horrible. We had the game in our hand before that, so it doesn’t always work. It came down to the last play, but you can count 20 plays down the stretch that we didn’t make, that we could have made, that would have made a difference. We’ve got to learn from it, we’ve got to get better, but yeah, it feels horrible.”
on problems with the execution of the game
“Every possession matters, every play matters. We didn’t make enough of them today, and that’s what happened.”
on losing Sebastian Mack in the first half and playing a physical game
“It was a physical game, it’s two physical teams. They beat us pretty badly the first time, so we came in, we knew we had to be tough. They outrebounded us, that was the biggest reason why we lost the first game, so we knew what we had to do. They are also a physical team, so it’s nothing crazy. It happens every game that teams are physical. I don’t know what happened to Sebastian, I didn’t see exactly what happened, but that’s what happens sometimes with physical teams.”
on the team’s maturity since losing to Utah in January
“We’re definitely a more mature team. I don’t know how, you just have to. The season’s not over, we know the position we’re in. Win every game that’s left and go one by one. It does hurt, as I said before. We have to learn from it, get better, understand why we lost, and keep going from there, try to win the next one.”
UCLA guard Will McClendon
on the defensive breakdown in the final few seconds and guarding Deivon Smith
“We know he’s really fast, we should have done a better job of staying in front of him. That’s really what happened. I mean, things are going so fast, you know, you don’t want to get a foul or anything, it’s just how it played out. We should have just stayed in front of the ball, and hopefully the outcome would have changed.”
on the defensive scouting report
“They’re huge. They’re the answers to the test. When you have a scouting report like that, and the coaches do a great job letting us know, preparing us, we’ve got to meet them halfway. We didn’t do that to the best of our ability today.”
on the game plan for the final sequence
“Stay in front of the ball, stop the ball. The rebound, we should have got the rebound as well. Bona did a great job of forcing a tough shot, and usually when your 5 man goes to stop the ball or block a shot, there’s a mismatch for the guards and the bigs. We didn’t do our part in blocking out and getting the rebound.”
Utah head coach Craig Smith
on the final play where Utah scored to take a 70-69 lead
“I’m really proud of our guys. We really played with a lot of poise and composure. It could have been a lot different. We’ve had three of our last four games that have come down to the last possession. Our guys, I felt tonight, got over the hump. This was huge. UCLA has really been playing the best basketball in the conference lately, so this was a huge win for us on the road.”
on UCLA’s Dylan Andrews
“(Dylan) Andrews has been playing at such a high level. He’s been averaging 17 points per game in his last five contests. We did a good job on him until UCLA’s last play when he stuck it.”
on Utah’s last play
“We ran a play called world’s greatest play, and our guys ran it to perfection. We just had such poise.”
on Utah’s 3-point shooting
“We just really stuck with it. The first half, B.C. [Branden Carlson] really stuck with it. This was also a big game for Cole [Bajema]. For him, he really needed this. This was big for him. He’s been hanging his head lately and has been really hard on himself ever since the Arizona game. He’s a fifth-year guy and he knows the tradition of UCLA, so that was big for him. He really hit some big ones and that was huge for us.”
on the play of Deivon Smith
“He really took a big step forward tonight. We only had nine turnovers. For us, free throw shooting and unforced turnovers have been problems on the road. His decision making was really important and our team needs it right now. He made lots of the right reads and understood when to penetrate and when to kick out the ball.”
on where this team goes from here
“It’s really hard to say. I know that most people use the cliché and say they have six more games, but I like to say we are playing one game, six more times. We can’t worry about Arizona and other teams in the league. All we can do is worry about ourselves and be at our very best.”
Utah 70, UCLA 69
Los Angeles, Calif. (Pauley Pavilion)
February 18, 2024
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men's Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Obviously a hard-fought game. Disappointed in the outcome. Defensively, we’ve had some slippage lately. I know everybody else looks at the result, but statistically during our winning streak, teams have been shooting too high of a percentage against us. The difference had been we were turning people over. When somebody doesn’t turn the ball over, my concern was our field goal percentage defense. So that got us tonight. Adem’s fourth foul really changed the game in a horrendous way. We don’t foul jump shooters. We were up six when that happened. Anytime we had a chance to go on a run, we shot ourselves in the foot. I haven’t seen the film, so from Sebastian’s foul to Aday had a bad foul pushing a guy. Berke had one in the first half as well, pushing a guy. The reason we were winning was we stopped doing dumb stuff – dumb fouls, in particular, and they were back tonight. And then at the end of the day, [Deivon] Smith was fast, and we failed miserably in our game plan to back up and make him shoot. All the way up until the last play, the goal was to back up and make him shoot. The last two plays. He got it to the rim on the last two plays. Our whole game plan was to back up and make him shoot. We didn’t get the job done. That falls on me. So, disappointing.”
on playing down a starter after Sebastian Mack was ejected
“Excuses are for losers. It was still five-on-five. I mean, it’s five-on-five. It’s not hockey. They weren’t in a penalty. We got to sub somebody in. We didn’t get the job done. That’s on me. Sure, we would have liked to have him.”
on what the team can learn from a loss like this
“We’ve learned enough. We’ve got enough losses. Simple – scouting report. Two things I already said – too many bad fouls, egregiously. Unintelligent fouls, and terrible scouting report defense against Deivon Smith. Terrible, not keeping him out of the paint, all the way to the end. It’s not like we didn’t know that he’s been starting at the point since we played them, since [Rollie] Worster got hurt.”
on if he had any thoughts to not call a timeout after Dylan Andrews’ shot with six seconds left
“I was too worried he was going to sprint it down and get fouled, especially with Berke in the game. I was trying to get Brandon Williams in the game. I mean, the clock stops on a made bucket, so they can just let it bounce. It’s not like they can’t get organized. At the end of the day, we had two guys, and he split them both. We had two guys there to stop him, and he got right down the middle of Will [McClendon] and Lazar [Stefanovic]. But that I mean, that is six one way, half a dozen the other. I’m sure I’m going to go home and be mad that I called timeout. But I wanted to set my defense so I could slow him down, but we failed. That’s why I did it.”
on if they wanted to set a limit on how many three-pointers Utah took
“I can go over the film, they shot 32 percent from three. The bottom line is, I am upset at a lot of our defensive stuff, we had some bad fouls. We missed a plethora of wide open shots, I mean unguarded shots. And when we play a team like Utah, which is going to make you beat them from the outside, double Adem at all costs, sometimes tripling Adem at times, pack the paint in and make you drive, you have got to make some shots. We didn’t make enough shots. It’s a whole different game if we shoot the ball better. That aside, we still should have won the game, in my opinion. Bad fouls. Our defense against Smith. But this game, you guys, I’m coaching, you guys are watching. The game gets real hard when guys are missing wide-open shots. But that happens, you know, it’s basketball.”
on Lazar Stefanovic’s productive night
“Yep. He gave us offense, but we only had two guys in double figures. That’s the problem.”
on if the team is mature enough to bounce back from this loss
“We’ll see. I mean, if you are haven’t matured by now, we have played 20-something games. It is what it is. It’s not like we have never lost before this year. My opinion of it would be, that as wins pile up, teams start to forget why they are winning. People start to tell them that they’re good, and I can’t put them in a bubble, no coach can. I’ve seen slipping in our defense. I saw it against Colorado we had a 14-point lead, and we were giving up backdoor layups. So it is not a shock to me. And in our winning streak, we gave up 48 percent from the field, we were forcing a lot of turnovers, and getting a lot of offensive rebounds, which has made up for that. But that is way too high of a number, way too high. We are no juggernaut. The guys are competing, I’m proud of that. But we are about winning at UCLA, so we have to play a lot smarter, there were too many bad fouls.”
UCLA guard Lazar Stefanovic
on losing a close, emotional game
"It feels horrible. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, but it feels horrible. We had the game in our hand before that, so it doesn’t always work. It came down to the last play, but you can count 20 plays down the stretch that we didn’t make, that we could have made, that would have made a difference. We’ve got to learn from it, we’ve got to get better, but yeah, it feels horrible.”
on problems with the execution of the game
“Every possession matters, every play matters. We didn’t make enough of them today, and that’s what happened.”
on losing Sebastian Mack in the first half and playing a physical game
“It was a physical game, it’s two physical teams. They beat us pretty badly the first time, so we came in, we knew we had to be tough. They outrebounded us, that was the biggest reason why we lost the first game, so we knew what we had to do. They are also a physical team, so it’s nothing crazy. It happens every game that teams are physical. I don’t know what happened to Sebastian, I didn’t see exactly what happened, but that’s what happens sometimes with physical teams.”
on the team’s maturity since losing to Utah in January
“We’re definitely a more mature team. I don’t know how, you just have to. The season’s not over, we know the position we’re in. Win every game that’s left and go one by one. It does hurt, as I said before. We have to learn from it, get better, understand why we lost, and keep going from there, try to win the next one.”
UCLA guard Will McClendon
on the defensive breakdown in the final few seconds and guarding Deivon Smith
“We know he’s really fast, we should have done a better job of staying in front of him. That’s really what happened. I mean, things are going so fast, you know, you don’t want to get a foul or anything, it’s just how it played out. We should have just stayed in front of the ball, and hopefully the outcome would have changed.”
on the defensive scouting report
“They’re huge. They’re the answers to the test. When you have a scouting report like that, and the coaches do a great job letting us know, preparing us, we’ve got to meet them halfway. We didn’t do that to the best of our ability today.”
on the game plan for the final sequence
“Stay in front of the ball, stop the ball. The rebound, we should have got the rebound as well. Bona did a great job of forcing a tough shot, and usually when your 5 man goes to stop the ball or block a shot, there’s a mismatch for the guards and the bigs. We didn’t do our part in blocking out and getting the rebound.”
Utah head coach Craig Smith
on the final play where Utah scored to take a 70-69 lead
“I’m really proud of our guys. We really played with a lot of poise and composure. It could have been a lot different. We’ve had three of our last four games that have come down to the last possession. Our guys, I felt tonight, got over the hump. This was huge. UCLA has really been playing the best basketball in the conference lately, so this was a huge win for us on the road.”
on UCLA’s Dylan Andrews
“(Dylan) Andrews has been playing at such a high level. He’s been averaging 17 points per game in his last five contests. We did a good job on him until UCLA’s last play when he stuck it.”
on Utah’s last play
“We ran a play called world’s greatest play, and our guys ran it to perfection. We just had such poise.”
on Utah’s 3-point shooting
“We just really stuck with it. The first half, B.C. [Branden Carlson] really stuck with it. This was also a big game for Cole [Bajema]. For him, he really needed this. This was big for him. He’s been hanging his head lately and has been really hard on himself ever since the Arizona game. He’s a fifth-year guy and he knows the tradition of UCLA, so that was big for him. He really hit some big ones and that was huge for us.”
on the play of Deivon Smith
“He really took a big step forward tonight. We only had nine turnovers. For us, free throw shooting and unforced turnovers have been problems on the road. His decision making was really important and our team needs it right now. He made lots of the right reads and understood when to penetrate and when to kick out the ball.”
on where this team goes from here
“It’s really hard to say. I know that most people use the cliché and say they have six more games, but I like to say we are playing one game, six more times. We can’t worry about Arizona and other teams in the league. All we can do is worry about ourselves and be at our very best.”