Postgame Quotes – California 66, UCLA 57
POSTGAME QUOTES
California 66, UCLA 57
Los Angeles, Calif. (Pauley Pavilion)
January 6, 2024
UCLA assistant coach Rod Palmer
on why Mick Cronin did not attend the postgame press conference
“He’s still talking to the team, and we didn’t want to keep you guys waiting too long. I don’t know how long he’s going to be. So I’m here instead.”
on the message to the team in a series of a tough losses
“It’s the message that Coach Cronin has always given to the team. You have to play hard if you want a different result. You have to do things different if you want a different result and we haven’t been doing those different things. We’ve been stressing it in practice, but for some reason, whatever it is. It could be youth. It could be inexperience. We’re just not getting the job done.”
on sticking with the gameplan
“Everyday. They’re sticking with it. You have to put yourself in their shoes. It’s hard to play Division I basketball. It’s hard to play, especially, at UCLA coming off the success we’ve had in the past and you come in and everybody’s gunning at you and everybody’s shooting for you and [you’re] every other team’s biggest game of the year. Our guys with their youth, they don’t realize the extent of that. We just have to work every day to try to get them to understand how important it is to pay attention to detail, how important it is to play as hard as you can, how important it is to not make mistakes, because every mistake that we make with our inexperience is magnified. You just have to keep pounding that message into them.”
on if it’s hard to get head coach Mick Cronin’s standard across to a younger team
“Yeah, it’s harder compared to talking to Jaime [Jaquez] Jr., Tyger [Campbell], Dave [Singleton] and all those guys who have been through it with Coach Cronin. It’s a little difficult. Their heads are a little harder. In high school or wherever they come from, they haven’t experienced the things they’re experiencing now. Things are hard and college basketball is hard. And for a freshman coming in, playing a lot of minutes against 23, 24, 25-year-old guys, it’s hard. But Coach Cronin is still preaching the same message. Is it getting through the way he wants it to? No. But in time it will.”
on what the team has to do to win low-scoring games
“Like I said earlier, we don’t have margin for error. So, if we turn the ball over and get out-rebounded, that’s going to limit our chances even more. We have to stop doing those things, first of all. Coach is trying to get the ball in people’s hands to score – our guys who can score. And a lot of times they just think it’s for them to score, when in actuality it’s for them to score if they can, but find the open guy if they can’t. And that’s the disconnect right there. We just have to stress using each other, sharing the ball with each other and hope for things to get better.”
on what Aday Mara has to do to be better offensively
“He hasn’t used the strength he has. He hasn’t realized that it’s is a game – and I hope this doesn’t get lost in translation – it’s a game, but it’s not a game. And he’s treating it like as just another game I have to play, when in fact it’s not that way. He has to buckle down. He has to use his skills that he has, that he uses in practice, and he has to apply them to the game. And again, that’s where he’s been coming up a little short. He’s young and this is new to him, so he’s just going to have to work at it.”
on how Aday Mara is handling going through the struggles in his early career
“Like all the guys, it’s a struggle for them. It’s a serious struggle for these guys. His attitude hasn’t changed. He’s still enjoying his time here. He’s still working hard in practice, but a lot of people expect things to happen overnight when in fact it’s not that way. He’s just going to have to put more time in, work a little harder.”
on why the Bruins outrebounded by California
“Physicality, that’s what it comes down to. Either you’re going to hit someone, or you’re going to get hit. And we’ve been getting hit a lot. When you get hit a lot, it ends up minus 10 in rebounds. We have to throw our bodies around – not only our bigs, but our guards as well. We need our guards to get in there and get two, three, four, five rebounds and our guards haven’t been doing that. It’s just the physicality that we haven’t been playing with. It’s something we’re going to have to work at and get better at.”
on rotating the guards’ minutes
“When you think of playing guard, you think of someone who can make plays for himself and also other people. Our point guards were trying to make plays for themselves and that was creating problems. When you dribble, dribble, dribble with your head down only looking for you, you don’t see four other guys on the floor and five other defenders on the floor. And that’s what our point guards were doing. Everything they were doing was bounce the ball and try to get to the rim and try to score myself when that’s not how we practiced this week. These two days before Cal. That’s not what Coach Cronin wanted, but that’s what they did. Therefore, the result was you have to sit out.”
on Lazar Stefanovic’s lower minutes and tinkering with the rotation
“There’s some tinkering for sure. Coach Cronin doesn’t go into the game thinking, ‘This guy is going to play this amount of minutes. That guy is going to play a certain amount of minutes.’ He goes with the guys who are making the least mistakes and the guys who are getting something done offensively. So, whatever the minutes are at the end of the game, that’s what the minutes are. But he doesn’t have a set amount of minutes a guy is going to play. In Lazar’s case, he made some mistakes. He had a hard guard and trying to guard [Jaylon] Tyson and that didn’t go well to start. We had to try to put somebody else in who could do the job a little bit better.”
California head coach Mark Madsen
on what he told his team after they went up by nine points at halftime
“I told our guys to just play defense and don’t have a lot of turnovers. UCLA was all over us, they were getting steals. Their full-court pressure really sped us up.”
on the rebuilding of the program
“It’s going to be up and down along the way. We tried not to get caught up with the highs and lows. When you try to build a program, it’s a long process.”
on the overall performance of the team
“We moved the ball really well. As I said, UCLA really sped us up. I give [Adem] Bona credit. He was getting in the passing lanes and making steals. He’s a great leader for their team. He is really special.”
on Rodney Brown Jr.’s performance
“The sky’s the limit for Rodney Brown. He’s going to be a great player. He’s also a great person.”
on where they go from here
“We’re just going to try and sustain it. We need another game where we have eight to eleven turnovers, play defense and rebound.”
California 66, UCLA 57
Los Angeles, Calif. (Pauley Pavilion)
January 6, 2024
UCLA assistant coach Rod Palmer
on why Mick Cronin did not attend the postgame press conference
“He’s still talking to the team, and we didn’t want to keep you guys waiting too long. I don’t know how long he’s going to be. So I’m here instead.”
on the message to the team in a series of a tough losses
“It’s the message that Coach Cronin has always given to the team. You have to play hard if you want a different result. You have to do things different if you want a different result and we haven’t been doing those different things. We’ve been stressing it in practice, but for some reason, whatever it is. It could be youth. It could be inexperience. We’re just not getting the job done.”
on sticking with the gameplan
“Everyday. They’re sticking with it. You have to put yourself in their shoes. It’s hard to play Division I basketball. It’s hard to play, especially, at UCLA coming off the success we’ve had in the past and you come in and everybody’s gunning at you and everybody’s shooting for you and [you’re] every other team’s biggest game of the year. Our guys with their youth, they don’t realize the extent of that. We just have to work every day to try to get them to understand how important it is to pay attention to detail, how important it is to play as hard as you can, how important it is to not make mistakes, because every mistake that we make with our inexperience is magnified. You just have to keep pounding that message into them.”
on if it’s hard to get head coach Mick Cronin’s standard across to a younger team
“Yeah, it’s harder compared to talking to Jaime [Jaquez] Jr., Tyger [Campbell], Dave [Singleton] and all those guys who have been through it with Coach Cronin. It’s a little difficult. Their heads are a little harder. In high school or wherever they come from, they haven’t experienced the things they’re experiencing now. Things are hard and college basketball is hard. And for a freshman coming in, playing a lot of minutes against 23, 24, 25-year-old guys, it’s hard. But Coach Cronin is still preaching the same message. Is it getting through the way he wants it to? No. But in time it will.”
on what the team has to do to win low-scoring games
“Like I said earlier, we don’t have margin for error. So, if we turn the ball over and get out-rebounded, that’s going to limit our chances even more. We have to stop doing those things, first of all. Coach is trying to get the ball in people’s hands to score – our guys who can score. And a lot of times they just think it’s for them to score, when in actuality it’s for them to score if they can, but find the open guy if they can’t. And that’s the disconnect right there. We just have to stress using each other, sharing the ball with each other and hope for things to get better.”
on what Aday Mara has to do to be better offensively
“He hasn’t used the strength he has. He hasn’t realized that it’s is a game – and I hope this doesn’t get lost in translation – it’s a game, but it’s not a game. And he’s treating it like as just another game I have to play, when in fact it’s not that way. He has to buckle down. He has to use his skills that he has, that he uses in practice, and he has to apply them to the game. And again, that’s where he’s been coming up a little short. He’s young and this is new to him, so he’s just going to have to work at it.”
on how Aday Mara is handling going through the struggles in his early career
“Like all the guys, it’s a struggle for them. It’s a serious struggle for these guys. His attitude hasn’t changed. He’s still enjoying his time here. He’s still working hard in practice, but a lot of people expect things to happen overnight when in fact it’s not that way. He’s just going to have to put more time in, work a little harder.”
on why the Bruins outrebounded by California
“Physicality, that’s what it comes down to. Either you’re going to hit someone, or you’re going to get hit. And we’ve been getting hit a lot. When you get hit a lot, it ends up minus 10 in rebounds. We have to throw our bodies around – not only our bigs, but our guards as well. We need our guards to get in there and get two, three, four, five rebounds and our guards haven’t been doing that. It’s just the physicality that we haven’t been playing with. It’s something we’re going to have to work at and get better at.”
on rotating the guards’ minutes
“When you think of playing guard, you think of someone who can make plays for himself and also other people. Our point guards were trying to make plays for themselves and that was creating problems. When you dribble, dribble, dribble with your head down only looking for you, you don’t see four other guys on the floor and five other defenders on the floor. And that’s what our point guards were doing. Everything they were doing was bounce the ball and try to get to the rim and try to score myself when that’s not how we practiced this week. These two days before Cal. That’s not what Coach Cronin wanted, but that’s what they did. Therefore, the result was you have to sit out.”
on Lazar Stefanovic’s lower minutes and tinkering with the rotation
“There’s some tinkering for sure. Coach Cronin doesn’t go into the game thinking, ‘This guy is going to play this amount of minutes. That guy is going to play a certain amount of minutes.’ He goes with the guys who are making the least mistakes and the guys who are getting something done offensively. So, whatever the minutes are at the end of the game, that’s what the minutes are. But he doesn’t have a set amount of minutes a guy is going to play. In Lazar’s case, he made some mistakes. He had a hard guard and trying to guard [Jaylon] Tyson and that didn’t go well to start. We had to try to put somebody else in who could do the job a little bit better.”
California head coach Mark Madsen
on what he told his team after they went up by nine points at halftime
“I told our guys to just play defense and don’t have a lot of turnovers. UCLA was all over us, they were getting steals. Their full-court pressure really sped us up.”
on the rebuilding of the program
“It’s going to be up and down along the way. We tried not to get caught up with the highs and lows. When you try to build a program, it’s a long process.”
on the overall performance of the team
“We moved the ball really well. As I said, UCLA really sped us up. I give [Adem] Bona credit. He was getting in the passing lanes and making steals. He’s a great leader for their team. He is really special.”
on Rodney Brown Jr.’s performance
“The sky’s the limit for Rodney Brown. He’s going to be a great player. He’s also a great person.”
on where they go from here
“We’re just going to try and sustain it. We need another game where we have eight to eleven turnovers, play defense and rebound.”