WOW, 91!!! Bruins still undefeated and atop the Pac-12 conference.
CTTO
Pre-Game warm-ups
Postgame Quotes – UCLA vs. Washington State
POSTGAME QUOTES
UCLA 91, Washington State 61
January 14, 2021
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on the team’s ball movement
“Great passing leads to great shooting. We came off feeding Cody [Riley] down low … with our team, we’ve got to recognize when he gets single coverage we’ve got to just play through him in the low post. He just delivers over and over. Once that happened, I think it opened up the perimeter for guys. I loved Jake [Kyman] and Johnny [Juzang]’s mindset today, no hesitation at all. I think eight of our first nine assists were from eight different guys. Everybody was moving the ball, and on this team we try to really preach ball movement. I thought this game was out there for us. We’ve been moving the ball really well most of the season, but some of our younger shooters – Johnny and Jake in particular – the ball wasn’t going in for them. Tyger’s been shooting great numbers in practice in his 3-point drills. Today, the ball went in for us. It made it awfully hard to cover us.”
on the defensive effort
“They shot 57 percent. I base it off the shots that we’re forcing the other team to take, or are we giving them lay-ups and shots they want? Man, Washington St., we forced them to take one-on-one shots and we did an excellent job with our game plan. Coach Palmer did a great job this week. But [WSU’s Isaac] Bonton hit some really hard shots, and so did Noah Williams, even [TJ] Bamba hit a 3 and he’s not a shooter at all. We told the guys at halftime, just talked about a few things I thought would help us with our adjustments, as far as our vision and anticipating what’s coming from the other team after they run their play and we defend it. We were forcing them to take tough shots, they were just making them.”
on the team’s mentality
“We play with no seniors, so leadership is still growing on this team. We’re still developing an attitude where we have pride in getting stops, and we have individual pride that ‘I’m a good defender, I’m not a liability defensively.’ Today’s player is so much harder to guard, so many guys can make the 3, they allow guys to carry the ball in a way they didn’t allow a guy like Tyus Edney in his era. It’s not easy to play good defense. If you’re not an elite, elite offensive player, you’ve got to be able to guard somebody. I think it’s the fallacy of basketball, people don’t realize, you’re never going to make a lot of money playing the game if you can’t play defense. You better be Dirk Nowitzki, you better be one of the best offensive players in the world. We preach that to our guys. I think we’re growing still, we’re young, we’re learning as a coaching staff – we made some adjustments strategically today with how we played the pick-and-roll and some of our post defense. We’ve tried to make some adjustments in practice this week to our defense, and we’re going to continue to do that. Getting upset with players is a waste of time, you have to make them better, you have to make adjustments, you have to teach them better, maybe adjust your strategy a little bit. I thought Coach Palmer did a great job with the scouting report this week.”
on Jake Kyman
“Jake [Kyman] and I had a little talk – I’m trying to teach him, it’s an evolution. I’m trying to teach him to play off the shot fake, but I think I had him too gun shy, so I told him I fired myself and now my new attitude is don’t pass up shots. You’re gonna probably force one now and then, but don’t worry about it. Your job is to make shots, it’s who you are. If you decide to shot fake and drive, that’s on you. Just trying to give our guys confidence. I just think passing is the key to shooting. We did a great job of finding the open man.”
on Johnny Juzang and if their upcoming UW matchup is a trap game
“I think Johnny [Juzang] is still getting comfortable. All I really care about today is he took a finger roll. We dunk the ball. Unless George Gervin comes back and joins our team, you’re not allowed to finger roll on this team, it doesn’t work. But he’s getting comfortable out there. Like I said, we don’t have any seniors, I think everybody’s improving. I’m most happy to see he’s got five rebounds. We’re a small team, we’re potent if you can play Jake and Johnny together offensively, it’s really tough to guard us, but we gotta be able to rebound. We were plus-15 on the glass and we played those guys together a lot today. All I know is we play Washington Saturday, all I care about is what they’re good at. Our record doesn’t matter because, whatever it is, if you look at the next game, you’re miserable. I know we haven’t lost in the league, I don’t know how many games we’ve played, I don’t know our overall record, it’s not even on the stat sheet so I don’t know. I know Washington is trouble. One thing when you coach in Power Five conferences, everybody’s got good players and everybody’s capable. The thing about basketball – Alabama is not losing to the last place team in an SEC football game, it’s just not happening because the physical size is so different – basketball is so different. With the 3-point shot, they have enough talent, they’re going to beat somebody. We won’t even talk about that. Hopefully I got my guys to the point – it’s not even about them, they just happen to be the team we play. We’re going to figure out what they’re good at and what we’ve got to do to beat them. Their record is irrelevant, and if it is, we’re still really immature. I understand that it could look that way, but we don’t even talk about stuff like that. We’ll just focus on what we got to do to beat Washington.”
Washington State head coach Kyle Smith
opening remarks
“Hopefully we learned a lesson tonight. They’re a good team. We knew that coming in, but we really struggled to take anything away from them. They played really well. I’d like to think we are better than that. We need to play with more effort, more energy, to compete with a team like that on the road.”
on the efficiency of guard Isaac Bonton
“You know, absolutely. And more importantly, I thought that Isaac really competed well. He kept his head up. He didn’t get discouraged and he had every right to be because we showed our inexperience and our youth. Some guys were hanging their heads. We just weren’t in sync, and he kept competing so I am proud of him. I think 12 months ago, he wouldn’t have been, wouldn’t have responded the same way. We need to regroup. He’s a big part of it, of keeping his teammates together and getting right.”
on Carlos Rosario coming off the bench a bit earlier for the Cougars
“You know what, Carlos has been practicing well. The way they play, they really play four guards out there, so it is a tough cover. It’s like, Tony [Miller] played really well but we have Tony guarding [Jake] Kyman, but those are tough covers for anyone. We tried zone. It wasn’t working. So, Jazz and Carlos give us a little better chance of keeping those guys in front, of guarding the three, but we really had no answer. But Carlos is an even keeled guy and I thought he did some good things out there.”
on Fox Sports broadcaster Steve Lavin mentioning UCLA as a national title contender
“You know, they’re just really complete. I’m not even qualified to speak on that. But they are very, you know, sound and very solid, really efficient. They’ve got good depth. And they seem to really play together well. The ydon’t play with any ego, and hopefully they’ve taught us a lesson today and hopefully we can grow from it.”
on how his rookies played on Thursday, versus some of the other Pac-12 games
“I couldn’t tell you. There are some preparation things that I will take account for, myself. Maybe we did a poor job getting our guys ready for the physicality. On the road, you’ve got to bring the effort. Efe [Abogidi] was guarding out on the floor, starting on Bernard, like I had said that is a tough matchup. I think that put him on his heels a little bit. Dishon [Jackson] struggled on [Cody] Riley early. He came out of the gates and kind of put him on his heels. I thought TJ [Bamba] played well in the first half. He competed hard. He saved a couple baskets with a couple of blocked shots. He got a couple of tough loose balls, took a charge, so I was pleased with him. And Carlos was steady. Carlos was solid. He made some mistakes but I thought he did a nice job.”
on what UCLA did that was most difficult for Washington State
“I think that their ball-sharing, they can shoot it from deep and they are really skilled and they play at a good pace. There is no one rushing anything. They exposed some of our ball screen coverage badly. We were bad in the ball screen. Campbell was able to get in the paint deep, then kick out for easy threes. Transition, we couldn’t sort out. We just, we were disjointed and they kept us on our heels the whole game.”
Team Stats post-WSU game
No comments:
Post a Comment