Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Cincinnati

POSTGAME QUOTES
Cincinnati 93, UCLA 64
December 19, 2018

Steve Alford, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
on UCLA’s 17-9 start and what happened after that
“Yeah, I liked our start. I thought that the flow of the game was really good, because you had two teams that were coming off losses. You are always anxious to see how your team will respond and, obviously, you want to see how your opponent responds like that. Obviously, it’s an advantage to be at home. I liked how we started. I liked our energy, how we were executing, the shots that we were getting. We had a couple of lapses, defensively, but I thought that we started the game the way that we’d wanted. And then from about eight minutes in, I thought we really struggled for the rest of the half. It’s a tough deal. It’s a long season. We have got to keep grinding. Six of the 10 guys we played, this was their first road game. Some of that showed. Some of those players showed that today. They’ve got to learn, and they’ve got to go through these experiences to learn how you need to prepare and how you’ll handle a loss at home. You almost have to go through that experience because it’s just different. This [Cincinnati] team is experienced with a lot of big bodies. They’ve very physical. We tried to tell them how physical the game would be, but until you get out there, you really don’t know that. I think we got a lot of young guys who’ll rebound from this and will be better. I hope that we will be better on Saturday, now that we’ve experienced some kind of a road game.”

on players getting rattled in a road environment
“Yeah, but it’s lessons, like I had told them afterward. I think this was [Cincinnati’s] ninth home game, maybe their 10th home game, and yet today was the grand opening of their building. And I tried telling them, that is what UCLA across your chest does. So, you’ll get everybody’s best. That’s just way that it is, and that’s the beauty of playing at a place like UCLA. You’ll always get everybody’s best shot, and you’ve got to prepare that way. If you lose, you have to get in the gym on your day off and you figure things out. It’s not, wait and get in the gym when we meet with you, it’s that you have to do things as a player to figure those things out. It’s not an AAU game where you’ll get beat and then you get to play again at night or you get to play a game the next day. This is a totally different animal. You’ve got guys who’re going through this for the first time and they’ll learn that. With Alex [Olesinski] out, Prince [Ali] is the only upperclassman right now. So, searching for a leader who can lead this group. That is something that I do think has been missing and hurting right now. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get somebody to really step up and provide that. We needed that tonight when things started to go south.”

on whether the guys aren’t putting in extra work
“No, I’m not saying that. I’ve got to give them mandatory days off. So, when I give them a mandatory day off, that’s what they do. You know, all I can do is that I know what I did [as a player]. And it might have been 35 years ago, but the game has changed and technology has changed, music changes, movies change, there are a lot of things that have changed. But one thing that does not change is that, what should take place when you lose and what should take place when you win. Whether you win or lose, in my mind, you get back in the gym and you go to work. I’ve always said, ‘Ball don’t lie.’ And when you love it and you put in the effort and the time, the ball will usually respond that way. When you don’t, sometimes it doesn’t treat you the way you need to treat it.”

on what Cincinnati did to UCLA during a 28-4 run in the first half
“They made a lot of shots. I thought that as bad as we’d played against Belmont, I thought defensively we still did some decent things. They came into that game averaging around 93 [points], and they scored around 74. We had some lapses, but I didn’t think that we lost that game because of anything we did defensively. Our offense was just so bad. Tonight, I thought that we’d been making progressive defensively and our efficiency had been good, with a lot of good red-zone defense. But tonight, about eight minutes into the game, defensively, we were very poor. We’ve got to figure that out, playing against a very good Ohio State team that is great with spacing. They’ve already won in this building, and that’s our next opponent.”

on how confident he is that this team can correct some errors and improve
“Yeah, I like this team. They’re together. I thought that their energy tonight on the bench was so much better than what it was against Belmont. I thought that they’d learned some lessons, moving forward. It’s a tough opponent. I mean, I thought that they played really well. I’ve got to give Cincinnati a lot of credit. I thought they played really well. From what I have seen on tape, and I don’t know how Mick [Cronin] feels, but this had to have been one of their better performances of the year. I think that they’d been 12 of 48 or 49 from 3-point range, coming into this game over their last 50 threes, and at one point in this game, they were 12 of 16. With two or three banks. It was one of those nights where they shot it very well, got into a good rhythm and a good flow. Cumberland is a really good player. I just thought that some days you have got to give them credit, too. I mean, I wish we could have played a little better but I thought they played really well.”

on how much this game could magnify the importance of UCLA’s game versus Ohio State
“Well, this is a big road trip. It’s a huge road trip for us because we are trying to build our resume and build some energy and momentum as we go into conference play. And now we’re down to two games before we enter conference play. We knew that this trip was going to be huge, and it didn’t start the way that we wanted. We have one more opportunity. It’s obviously a huge opportunity, one that we have to make the most of on Saturday.”

on being able to succeed in Pac-12 play
“Yeah, it’s similar to last year. Our league did not have a very good [showing] in non-conference last year. And then what happened – I think that our league has gone through a couple of years here with a lot of turnover with players. So you’ll get a lot of young players where it takes them 10 of 12 games, maybe even more than that, for them to figure it out and for them to get better. Our league really didn’t have a very good non-conference, maybe other than a couple of teams. But then once you got into conference play, teams were getting healthier, teams were getting better. You’ll beat up on each other and you only get a couple of teams in the Tournament because of what had happened in the non-league. And unfortunately, you’re kind of looking at that same thing this year. It has been a bad non-conference for our league. I do think by the time that January and February roll around, there will be a lot of teams who have gotten better. They’ll get healthier. We’ll get Olesinski back here hopefully by late next week. He has progressed very well. That’s somebody who could help us from a leadership standpoint, too. Other teams will get healthy. Other teams that are young will continue to get better. We’ve just got to continue to make sure that we are one of those.”

UCLA guard Kris Wilkes
on his reaction to the loss
“It’s never fun losing a game, especially on national television in somebody else’s home, by 30.”

on what changed when Cincinnati had a 28-4 scoring run (first half)
“We just, as a whole team, we have to be more focused. I’m not saying that the bench came in, you know, lackadaisical, but a lot of these guys haven’t played a road game. Just coming in, they’ve got to bring the same energy that everybody else has been bringing. And it’s always tough to play a game away, especially a good team like this. I don’t think we all came to play. It showed up.”

on how difficult this game was, coming on the heels of a loss to Belmont
“You know, after that Belmont game, I thought that we were really together as a unit. I thought that we’d made some strides, you know with leadership, and I thought that we were going to do really well. And we did well for those first couple of minutes, but then we just stopped putting our foot on the pedal. We let it up, and we got down. It’s really tough to come back from a 15-plus point [deficit] at their home, with their crowd and everything. So, you can never let a team do that.”

on what UCLA must do to get back in the win column
“As players, we’ve got to meet up more and just discuss the things that our coaches are saying. Most of the negative things that hurt us a lot were because we just didn’t follow the scouting report. I think there were a lot of key things that our coaches told us to do that we didn’t do, and for us to improve, we have to do exactly what they’ve said. And even if that doesn’t work, they’re going to make adjustments. But as players, we have got to do exactly as they’ve said. You know, this loss is a lot on the players rather than the coaches. They prepared us well. We just didn’t do it.”

on how players need to put in extra work and whether he thinks players are doing that
“I can’t speak for everybody. I think that for the most part, a lot of guys are getting in extra work. But losses like this, losses like Belmont, maybe we have to get in the gym more. Maybe we have to have more team meetings, and discuss what is really going on. It’s not anything with our coaches. We’ve just got to understand the game more, get into our notebooks and look at what theey’re saying and do what they say.”

on keeping his teammates engaged and active in the second half
“I mean, as a whole unit, I want to see us still get up and get hyped for the team. I mean, we were getting whooped, but we cannot look down and depressed on the bench. Just because we’re losing, we’ve still got to be into the game. That is what I’m trying to tell our guys. OK, so yeah we are losing, but we’ve got to keep the energy up.”

on him showing some excitement in the second half after sinking a 3-pointer
“Yeah, it’s just little things like that. We hit the shots, c’mon, we’ve got to keep working harder and get this lead down. Sometimes it’ll happen, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

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Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Cincinnati

University of California, Los Angeles, Athletics

Postgame Quotes - UCLA vs. Cincinnati