Postgame Quotes – UCLA 59, Arizona State 47
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 59, Arizona State 47
Los Angeles, Calif. (Pauley Pavilion)
March 9, 2024
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men's Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Our guys, we are just so young and so fragile. Bobby [Hurley] did a good job of taking Adem [Bona] away from us in the second half. When Adem got his second foul, the whole game changes. I’ve never spent this much time yelling at guys to shoot. Literally taking Sebastian Mack out, you have to shoot the ball. Like they are not going to let you shoot, drive the ball, I don’t care if you miss. It’s a hell of a deal when a coach says that to you, it’s a pretty good deal now. You have to shoot the ball now, it’s not like you can’t shoot. But, you know, young kid out there, a lot of people in the stands, you know, it’s not easy. Lazar [Stefanovic] and Dylan [Andrews] did not have good nights. I watched some games today, a lot of teams are tired. Dylan played a lot of minutes, in the last couple weeks. He needs some rest for sure. But obviously we really appreciate the crowd today for coming back and supporting us. The guys showed a lot of fortitude. Like I said, I told Sebastian Mack in there, anybody can make shots when you are up 20, a guy making shots when your losing, that shows me something. Anybody can make shots when your team is rolling; you put a team in a game, and then you see if they can make shots. Those were big, big, buckets by him [Mack]. But our passing improved. We did pass it, we just were not shooting the ball. We just weren’t shooting it.”
on the run they went on in the second half
We started the game down nine. I told you this when you asked me the problem, who is responsible, it’s me. They are good kids, I’m trying to get stuff out of guys that they are probably not ready to give me yet, which is hard. It’s not their fault. It hasn’t been their effort, it hasn’t been their issue, it’s their inexperience. We don’t have the junior or senior anchor, like if Jaylen Clark would not have gotten hurt and say would have came back this year. Somebody like that, our [Pelle] Larsson type guy. We have been battling that all year, it’s a fragile team. Obviously, I would have liked to have gone up 10 [points], and Will [McClendon] not taken a bad three, and Berke [Buyuktuncel] shoot the open three Dylan [Andrews] passed one up. Will took a bad one and Adem was wide open. We are still learning.
on the three’s made during the run in the second half
“You have to be willing to take it. You can sit there and say you only had one assist, well if I’m passing the ball and you wont shoot, it’s hard for me to get an assist. We just have to keep playing, keep grinding, keep digging. It’s just what I preach to our guys, they [Arizona State] left the door open with the missed free throws, but our deflections were dormant for a long time, then they picked up on that run. We, I think, had 10 deflections in that 19-1 run, we had 10 deflections. Still not rebounding the ball, today, other than Adem [Bona], we have to rebound the ball better. Brandon [Williams] has a sprained ankle, Berke [Buyuktuncel] is going to be a good player but you have to rebound when your 6 foot 9.”
on the Bruins’ defense through the final minutes
“That I was most impressed with. During that run my staff told me that we had 10 deflections during that run. But our defensive intensity changed the game. I used to coach a guy who is like my younger brother, I love him dearly, he is getting ready to retire, Sean Kilpatrick, scored over 2,000 points at Cincinnati, that’s more than anybody except Oscar Robertson. I used to have to tell him all the time that he was so hard on himself, that you have to get lost in the game, worry about defense, worry about rebounding, worry about sprinting up and down, don’t worry about whether the ball goes in. You are a scorer. You are going to have those types of flows. That’s what I have been telling our guys all year. It just seems like if I miss, you feel the pressure on your shot because I missed. We feel collective pressure. I thought we finally just got focused on our defensive effort, and I think that is what changed things, that and we stopped fouling.
on the defense throughout the game
“It’s the only way we are going to win, that’s just the way it is right now. That’s not what I want, but with this team that is our reality, we have to defend to win. It’s just the way we have to do it. We are not beating anyone 85-80. They [Arizona State] shot 5-22 in the second half. Once we stopped fouling, they weren’t making shots. There are so many things that go on in basketball games. Jaylen Clark was here today, he was working out, he was at our shoot around. We were taking about him his freshman year versus his junior year. I didn’t have to say things to him, he saw them coming, but as a freshman or sophomore I have to point everything out. But his junior year he saw everything before it happened. It’s just been a hard year because I have to point everything out, at all times to our guys… They were taking coaching and applying it better than we have and that is what helped our defense. You have to play smart to give yourself a chance. Neal hit some really hard shots early, like I told Lazar [Stefanovic] you can’t worry about that, we can’t worry about that. What we can’t do is get up there and foul and give guys layups. A guy hits a hard pull up, we don’t care. It’s not like I invented analytics, but teams can’t win if that is all they take. But if you get beat and they are kicking it out and shooting threes, that’s what happened the last seven minutes of the first half to our defense. We kept getting beat, bang, three.”
UCLA guard Lazar Stefanovic
on what sparked the 19-1 run with five three-pointers
"Just keep playing. Keep playing, keep believing. Not everything went our way throughout the game, but we stuck together and made the shots when it was most important, made our run. 19-1? I didn’t know that. That is pretty good. We kept believing, trusting each other, sharing the ball. If I’m not wrong, we had 16 assists, and when we pass the ball, we shoot the ball well. That’s been the key for our offense so far this year, so if we keep believing, the ball is going in.”
on holding Arizona State to five points in the final nine minutes
“It’s pretty good. It’s the reason why we won the game because they couldn’t score. Dylan mentioned it before, but our main focus was on defense. When they shoot, make sure you box out and get a rebound, and don’t let them have multiple chances to score. That was the key, it was what carried us throughout the year, and the last five games, the defense wasn’t played as well, and that was a big focus in practice yesterday; how we were going to defend them, what we need to do better. We came out, and when it was the most important, we did the job.”
on building from the confidence of a successful defensive game going into next week’s Pac-12 tournament
“It’s much better that we are going [to the tournament] with a win, and we’re playing Oregon State, and we secured the fifth spot. That’s what we wanted tonight. Some of the other scores helped us with that, but we secured that spot. We built a little bit of momentum, and you mentioned the defense and not letting the team score more than 50 points. You are probably going to win the game if that happens. That’s what we need to focus on, as you said, it has to bring the guys together. It’s one and done, you win or you go home. We don’t want to go home, so we’ve got to stick together and go one-by-one, but try to win them all.”
UCLA forward/center Adem Bona
on snapping a five-game losing streak and ending the regular season with a win
“It’s really amazing. We understood what this game weighs, both for the team and for the Pac-12 Tournament. It’s the last home game of the Pac-12, so we knew what the game meant for the people who came before us, and also for the team going forward to the Pac-12 tournament. We needed to give the game our whole effort.”
on having 100 former UCLA players in attendance
“We knew what it meant for the guys who played here before us and made history in the Pac-12, and in college basketball in general. We knew what it meant to them, and we knew that they were coming to the game, we all talked about it, and we knew we needed to come out blazing. We knew what we needed to do, and we stuck to it, we stuck to the process, and we finished off well.”
UCLA guard Dylan Andrews
on him and Lazar building off one another’s energy at the end of the game
“For sure, yeah, it’s just momentum building on and building on, I feel like we used that well. Our main focus was just getting stops, and making sure that this one shot and out, and I feel like we did a pretty good job with that as well. But yeah, those three shots, man, you can hear the crowd, shout out to them. Big credit to the crowd for that, that’s just momentum for us, to play harder.”
on playing through tough times throughout the season and learning through adversity
“I mean, yeah, you’re going to have times throughout the game where the shot’s not falling, or the ball’s rolling out of the rim, or you just can’t make a bucket. But you can’t let that affect how you’re going to play throughout the whole entire game. You have to worry about other things, you have to figure out how you’re going to affect the game other than scoring. It's basically like today; in the first half, I didn’t shoot the ball too well, but I knew for a fact that I couldn’t let that bring down my confidence. I knew I had to get stops on defense, and I know my team always trusts me. Laz and Bona always trust me, and they let me shoot my shot. I felt good when I shot the three, and them coming up to congratulate me, talk me up, hype me up.”
Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley
on what went wrong during UCLA’s 25-4 run in the final nine-plus minutes
“We didn’t hit foul shots … we were up nine points, and we missed seven out of eight foul shots. You have a chance to get to a double-figure lead, and we opened the door and allowed them to get back into the game.”
on ASU’s nine-point lead in the second half
“We were getting stops. We had one charted, we had seven straight possessions on defense. We stopped them from scoring, and then we were able to get out into the open floor and score some. Not against their set defense, but when they had their defense set, it was a struggle for us to get a quality shot. But, once we did get those stops, we ran, we got to the basket, we scored. We just couldn't make any foul shots.”
on Arizona State’s Jose Perez
“Jose is not going to be with the team moving forward. He's decided to take a position overseas, so he'll be playing overseas the remainder of the season.”
on his message to the team following Jose Perez’s departure
“We have to reinvent ourselves. It's hard to do that in one day. So we’ve got a couple of days before the Pac-12 Tournament to try and figure out a way to generate more offense. But we certainly were on a better pace to score more than 47 points and to have more than 16 in the second half. We were so inept at shooting free throws and that snowballed into other things, and things got unraveled quickly.”
on the upcoming Pac-12 Tournament
“It's all or nothing at this point. You're just playing through your season for your basketball life. We have to do better. We can't have stretches like we did in the first half where we had a good lead early, and then we were stuck on 43 forever. You can't be stuck on 43 forever. You can't afford to miss foul shots. You can't start doing something that you do well and turn that into a disadvantage. We don't usually turn the ball over. We had 15 turnovers – we had 10 at halftime. That may be part of the reason why we didn't have a better lead going into the half, so we have to clean up a lot of things to even have a shot.”
UCLA 59, Arizona State 47
Los Angeles, Calif. (Pauley Pavilion)
March 9, 2024
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men's Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“Our guys, we are just so young and so fragile. Bobby [Hurley] did a good job of taking Adem [Bona] away from us in the second half. When Adem got his second foul, the whole game changes. I’ve never spent this much time yelling at guys to shoot. Literally taking Sebastian Mack out, you have to shoot the ball. Like they are not going to let you shoot, drive the ball, I don’t care if you miss. It’s a hell of a deal when a coach says that to you, it’s a pretty good deal now. You have to shoot the ball now, it’s not like you can’t shoot. But, you know, young kid out there, a lot of people in the stands, you know, it’s not easy. Lazar [Stefanovic] and Dylan [Andrews] did not have good nights. I watched some games today, a lot of teams are tired. Dylan played a lot of minutes, in the last couple weeks. He needs some rest for sure. But obviously we really appreciate the crowd today for coming back and supporting us. The guys showed a lot of fortitude. Like I said, I told Sebastian Mack in there, anybody can make shots when you are up 20, a guy making shots when your losing, that shows me something. Anybody can make shots when your team is rolling; you put a team in a game, and then you see if they can make shots. Those were big, big, buckets by him [Mack]. But our passing improved. We did pass it, we just were not shooting the ball. We just weren’t shooting it.”
on the run they went on in the second half
We started the game down nine. I told you this when you asked me the problem, who is responsible, it’s me. They are good kids, I’m trying to get stuff out of guys that they are probably not ready to give me yet, which is hard. It’s not their fault. It hasn’t been their effort, it hasn’t been their issue, it’s their inexperience. We don’t have the junior or senior anchor, like if Jaylen Clark would not have gotten hurt and say would have came back this year. Somebody like that, our [Pelle] Larsson type guy. We have been battling that all year, it’s a fragile team. Obviously, I would have liked to have gone up 10 [points], and Will [McClendon] not taken a bad three, and Berke [Buyuktuncel] shoot the open three Dylan [Andrews] passed one up. Will took a bad one and Adem was wide open. We are still learning.
on the three’s made during the run in the second half
“You have to be willing to take it. You can sit there and say you only had one assist, well if I’m passing the ball and you wont shoot, it’s hard for me to get an assist. We just have to keep playing, keep grinding, keep digging. It’s just what I preach to our guys, they [Arizona State] left the door open with the missed free throws, but our deflections were dormant for a long time, then they picked up on that run. We, I think, had 10 deflections in that 19-1 run, we had 10 deflections. Still not rebounding the ball, today, other than Adem [Bona], we have to rebound the ball better. Brandon [Williams] has a sprained ankle, Berke [Buyuktuncel] is going to be a good player but you have to rebound when your 6 foot 9.”
on the Bruins’ defense through the final minutes
“That I was most impressed with. During that run my staff told me that we had 10 deflections during that run. But our defensive intensity changed the game. I used to coach a guy who is like my younger brother, I love him dearly, he is getting ready to retire, Sean Kilpatrick, scored over 2,000 points at Cincinnati, that’s more than anybody except Oscar Robertson. I used to have to tell him all the time that he was so hard on himself, that you have to get lost in the game, worry about defense, worry about rebounding, worry about sprinting up and down, don’t worry about whether the ball goes in. You are a scorer. You are going to have those types of flows. That’s what I have been telling our guys all year. It just seems like if I miss, you feel the pressure on your shot because I missed. We feel collective pressure. I thought we finally just got focused on our defensive effort, and I think that is what changed things, that and we stopped fouling.
on the defense throughout the game
“It’s the only way we are going to win, that’s just the way it is right now. That’s not what I want, but with this team that is our reality, we have to defend to win. It’s just the way we have to do it. We are not beating anyone 85-80. They [Arizona State] shot 5-22 in the second half. Once we stopped fouling, they weren’t making shots. There are so many things that go on in basketball games. Jaylen Clark was here today, he was working out, he was at our shoot around. We were taking about him his freshman year versus his junior year. I didn’t have to say things to him, he saw them coming, but as a freshman or sophomore I have to point everything out. But his junior year he saw everything before it happened. It’s just been a hard year because I have to point everything out, at all times to our guys… They were taking coaching and applying it better than we have and that is what helped our defense. You have to play smart to give yourself a chance. Neal hit some really hard shots early, like I told Lazar [Stefanovic] you can’t worry about that, we can’t worry about that. What we can’t do is get up there and foul and give guys layups. A guy hits a hard pull up, we don’t care. It’s not like I invented analytics, but teams can’t win if that is all they take. But if you get beat and they are kicking it out and shooting threes, that’s what happened the last seven minutes of the first half to our defense. We kept getting beat, bang, three.”
UCLA guard Lazar Stefanovic
on what sparked the 19-1 run with five three-pointers
"Just keep playing. Keep playing, keep believing. Not everything went our way throughout the game, but we stuck together and made the shots when it was most important, made our run. 19-1? I didn’t know that. That is pretty good. We kept believing, trusting each other, sharing the ball. If I’m not wrong, we had 16 assists, and when we pass the ball, we shoot the ball well. That’s been the key for our offense so far this year, so if we keep believing, the ball is going in.”
on holding Arizona State to five points in the final nine minutes
“It’s pretty good. It’s the reason why we won the game because they couldn’t score. Dylan mentioned it before, but our main focus was on defense. When they shoot, make sure you box out and get a rebound, and don’t let them have multiple chances to score. That was the key, it was what carried us throughout the year, and the last five games, the defense wasn’t played as well, and that was a big focus in practice yesterday; how we were going to defend them, what we need to do better. We came out, and when it was the most important, we did the job.”
on building from the confidence of a successful defensive game going into next week’s Pac-12 tournament
“It’s much better that we are going [to the tournament] with a win, and we’re playing Oregon State, and we secured the fifth spot. That’s what we wanted tonight. Some of the other scores helped us with that, but we secured that spot. We built a little bit of momentum, and you mentioned the defense and not letting the team score more than 50 points. You are probably going to win the game if that happens. That’s what we need to focus on, as you said, it has to bring the guys together. It’s one and done, you win or you go home. We don’t want to go home, so we’ve got to stick together and go one-by-one, but try to win them all.”
UCLA forward/center Adem Bona
on snapping a five-game losing streak and ending the regular season with a win
“It’s really amazing. We understood what this game weighs, both for the team and for the Pac-12 Tournament. It’s the last home game of the Pac-12, so we knew what the game meant for the people who came before us, and also for the team going forward to the Pac-12 tournament. We needed to give the game our whole effort.”
on having 100 former UCLA players in attendance
“We knew what it meant for the guys who played here before us and made history in the Pac-12, and in college basketball in general. We knew what it meant to them, and we knew that they were coming to the game, we all talked about it, and we knew we needed to come out blazing. We knew what we needed to do, and we stuck to it, we stuck to the process, and we finished off well.”
UCLA guard Dylan Andrews
on him and Lazar building off one another’s energy at the end of the game
“For sure, yeah, it’s just momentum building on and building on, I feel like we used that well. Our main focus was just getting stops, and making sure that this one shot and out, and I feel like we did a pretty good job with that as well. But yeah, those three shots, man, you can hear the crowd, shout out to them. Big credit to the crowd for that, that’s just momentum for us, to play harder.”
on playing through tough times throughout the season and learning through adversity
“I mean, yeah, you’re going to have times throughout the game where the shot’s not falling, or the ball’s rolling out of the rim, or you just can’t make a bucket. But you can’t let that affect how you’re going to play throughout the whole entire game. You have to worry about other things, you have to figure out how you’re going to affect the game other than scoring. It's basically like today; in the first half, I didn’t shoot the ball too well, but I knew for a fact that I couldn’t let that bring down my confidence. I knew I had to get stops on defense, and I know my team always trusts me. Laz and Bona always trust me, and they let me shoot my shot. I felt good when I shot the three, and them coming up to congratulate me, talk me up, hype me up.”
Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley
on what went wrong during UCLA’s 25-4 run in the final nine-plus minutes
“We didn’t hit foul shots … we were up nine points, and we missed seven out of eight foul shots. You have a chance to get to a double-figure lead, and we opened the door and allowed them to get back into the game.”
on ASU’s nine-point lead in the second half
“We were getting stops. We had one charted, we had seven straight possessions on defense. We stopped them from scoring, and then we were able to get out into the open floor and score some. Not against their set defense, but when they had their defense set, it was a struggle for us to get a quality shot. But, once we did get those stops, we ran, we got to the basket, we scored. We just couldn't make any foul shots.”
on Arizona State’s Jose Perez
“Jose is not going to be with the team moving forward. He's decided to take a position overseas, so he'll be playing overseas the remainder of the season.”
on his message to the team following Jose Perez’s departure
“We have to reinvent ourselves. It's hard to do that in one day. So we’ve got a couple of days before the Pac-12 Tournament to try and figure out a way to generate more offense. But we certainly were on a better pace to score more than 47 points and to have more than 16 in the second half. We were so inept at shooting free throws and that snowballed into other things, and things got unraveled quickly.”
on the upcoming Pac-12 Tournament
“It's all or nothing at this point. You're just playing through your season for your basketball life. We have to do better. We can't have stretches like we did in the first half where we had a good lead early, and then we were stuck on 43 forever. You can't be stuck on 43 forever. You can't afford to miss foul shots. You can't start doing something that you do well and turn that into a disadvantage. We don't usually turn the ball over. We had 15 turnovers – we had 10 at halftime. That may be part of the reason why we didn't have a better lead going into the half, so we have to clean up a lot of things to even have a shot.”