Note: CTTO
Pre-Game: Bruin Gameday Live- UCLA Men's Basketball vs Utah
Postgame Quotes – UCLA vs. Utah
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 72, Utah 70
December 31, 2020
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on if he liked UCLA defense on final play
“A little bit, Ben. I thought we wanted to pick them up and try to disrupt them. He turned the corner on Johnny (Juzang), but Johnny did a good job of recovering and getting in front of him. And that was the key to the play. I wish he wouldn’t have turned the corner, but Johnny’s recovery was the key to the play. And, obviously, Jules (Bernard) [getting in] the passing lane. That’s probably the only defensive thing I’m happy with tonight, buddy.”
on if it was a gut-check win
“Yeah. Well, we have a better offensive team than we had a year ago. Obviously, we’re 10 of 20 from three, we have 16 assists. We got multiple guys that can score; we almost had five guys in double figures. That’s with Jake (Kyman) missing some shots that he never misses. I thought all four of his threes – I know all four of his threes were wide open. But that being said, we’ve got to, as a coaching staff, as a team, we’ve got to look in the mirror, buddy, and become a better defensive team. Now, I’m going to give Utah a lot of credit. For you guys, I just said this on the radio, I thought they were hard to defend. They took us late in the clock. They didn’t take bad shots. They really, really kept us on defense for 25 seconds many, many times. And we didn’t have enough toughness to finish a lot of those possessions. And we gave up an offensive rebound on a free throw. Unacceptable. Our toughness level’s nowhere near where it needs to be for us to reach our potential as a team.”
on his team’s slow start to game
“Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not sure on that one. I would give (Alfonso) Plummer a lot of credit for the way that game started. He looked like World B. Free to start the game.”
on 3-point shooting, particularly from Johnny Juzang and Jules Bernard
“Well, when we pass the ball and we execute and move the ball, we’ve got guys that can make shots… like I said, Jake missed three wide-open ones that our whole team would love for him to get at all times. That’s not our weakness, at all. All we have to do is pass the ball, execute, screen, find the open man and keep the ball moving. We’ve got guys that can make shots on this team.”
on improvements team needs to make, particularly on defense
“Everything. Everything. Right now, our biggest weakness is – we just talked about it [on radio], Tracy (Murray) asked a question – if you’re guarding the ball, you’ve got to stay between your man and the basket. We’ve just got to have a better commitment to that. Because if your defense is based off of constantly bailing your teammate out, teams are going to find the open man [if] you’re playing good teams. We’ve got to have a different mindset. My opinion on that, to answer your question, is this group of guys is trying to outscore their opponents because we shoot the ball better. And I think they believe in what we’re doing on offense. To me, that’s the mindset of the players. That’s why we’re not where we need to be, defensively.”
Utah Head Coach Larry Krystowiak
on what Larry Krystkowiak told the team during the timeout after UCLA responded with a 14-0 run at the start of the game
“Well, I thought, UCLA is level of physicality on with their man defensive kind of got us out of sorts, sped us up . We had three out of four possessions where we turned it over. We took some ill-advised shots. It’s good defensive team. UCLA is a big strong defensive team and I thought, you know, made a few adjustments and spaced the floor, started making some plays for each other in the second half. Just proud of our guys for battling and holding that team to 31 second half points. I thought we guarded really well, and we outrebounded them in the second half and played together and just, you know, think about Fonz’s three at the end of the game that could have put us up six, the wide open one off the offensive rebound. Instead, we go down and give up three points and they tie it so it's just, it's one of those college basketball games. It was a one possession game and was there for the taking. And, we've got to just, you know, keep building. But we've had a good week of practice and made some improvements. Short of the fact that we didn't win the basketball game our team’s improving and I like what we did here tonight.”
on the plan at the end of the game when Pelle Larsson turned it over and what the ideal situation would’ve been
“We need to shoot it, it probably could have driven downhill and got to the rim. But that's, you know, one of our bigger guards that you jump up and you give yourself a chance to tie the game or even when it with a three. So, that was the plan from the beginning, and you know. What can we do, we put a pretty good player in a position to make a play and we've got to move on from it and will, you know, spend a little bit more time on and the game situations. It's a little bit different when Rylan fouled out. Had kind of a little bit of a funky lineup but still we were presented with an opportunity to win the game and didn't make the play that we needed to.”
Up next: Colorado (7-2, 1-1) Jan 2, 2021 at Pauley
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