Postgame Quotes - Rutgers 75, UCLA 68
POSTGAME QUOTES
Rutgers 75, UCLA 68
Jersey Mike’s Arena (Piscataway, N.J.)
January 13, 2025
Mick Cronin, The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach
opening statement
“We’re missing wide open shots. We go on the road and took care of the ball, we only got nine turnovers. Obviously, Tyler had a tough night. Their physicality clearly bothered him, but he missed some open looks too. We had a lot of open looks. Lazar off of a play we ran, unguarded. Eric Dailey, unguarded at the top of the key, he was 0-for-3 from three. We had a lot of open looks. You can’t give up 45 points in the second half and win a conference game, period. I don’t care what the name of your team is, and where the game’s being played, you’re not going to win. Layups and free throws, getting beat off of the dribble, we really struggled to guard the ball. Our decision-making with not being able to guard the ball, late in the clock, they were just driving and fouling. Horrible late clock defense by us.”
comparing the Bruins’ first half versus the team’s second half
“We never trailed in the first half. Maybe we could have gotten up 10 or so. [Kobe Johnson] made a really bad decision with his fouling in the backcourt – 75 feet from the basket, he just whacked a guy. It was a bad decision and it didn’t help. We could have maybe extended the lead a little. That being said, he played the whole second half, and our defense with him in there was pretty bad. Teams don’t miss layups and free throws. For the game, they made 21 free throws and 16 layups.”
on Rutgers’ freshman Ace Bailey
“He’s a good player, a very good player.”
on the state of UCLA’s team after this loss
“We’re struggling, it’s pretty obvious. We went from a great defensive team, a team that held Arizona to 54, who’s really good, and they’re playing like it right now. Gonzaga probably doesn’t lose the rest of the year, we held them to 62. The guys’ minds are on other things now. They start thinking we were winning because of who we are and our talent level. We were winning because of our defense. We were always winning because of our defense. In this league, if you can’t stop somebody and you give up 45 points, you’re not going to win. It doesn’t matter who they are. Maybe some teams shoot the lights out, but we have to play defense. We were minus eight on the glass, you can’t stop them when you’re minus eight on the glass. The game is pretty simple. There are three phases to the game – defense, rebounding and execution on offense.”
on whether the team can get back to its defensive identity
“We better.”
on Rutgers’ freshman Dylan Harper and what makes him so dynamic
“He’s got great size, he’s got great ball skill. I knew he was a great player. I saw him play and said ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ and he was a sophomore in high school. He’s a long-time NBA player and he’s got a chance to be an All-Star.”
on tonight’s changes to the starting lineup
“Dylan [Andrews] was sick, but it was probably going to change anyway. We’re just trying to get some shooting, try to get off to a good start, try to make a shot. And analytics, we’re trying to look at our lineups from an analytical standpoint.”
on the wildfires in Los Angeles
“I’ve got no words. I just want to get home to my family. It’s tough when this is all going on and you’re not around your family. My family evacuated previously, but they went back. We’re on the edge of Encino. But there are a lot of people who have lost everything, it’s horrible. I was telling Coach Pikiell, it’s like something from a movie. It’s hard to even describe, hard to process.”
UCLA forward Eric Dailey Jr.
on the team’s offensive struggles
“We’ve got to get back to ourselves, our flow. Shots were a part of it, but at the end of the day, our defense is our offense. We have to get back to being ourselves on defense. It’s tough right now, but we have to get ourselves out of this slump.”
on the team’s defensive in the second half
“We just have to play a complete game. A 40-minute game of straight defense and making the right plays on offense. As a team, we’ve got to come together and stay strong and fight through the moments like this. Every team is going to go through something similar to this, and we’ve got to find a way to get out of this.”
on getting back to the team’s performance in December
“We can get back to the team we are, we just have to have everybody collective minded and focused on winning. We have to do things that make sense and help winning. It can’t just be two or three people, it has to be everybody from the top down, the whole staff, everybody. The whole collective group.”
on practice leading up to this game
“We most definitely practiced hard, we looked pretty good in practice, we just can’t have mental lapses like this in games. Especially away, I know they’re calling a lot of fouls, and we have to be smarter with the foul calls, smarter with the turnovers. Offensively, we have to get our sets going, and we can’t let anybody stop us. We have experienced guys and we need to show that we are made for this conference.”
on Tyler Bilodeau’s performance
“Sometimes the shot’s not going to fall. He went 0-for-7, but there have been games where he hasn’t scored and we’ve still won. We have to find a way to still win through the tough times. That’s really it.”
UCLA guard Sebastian Mack
on the team’s defense
“We’ve got to come together and lock in as a team. I don’t think much has changed, we’ve just got to change our mental focus, to think about it and be able to produce every day.”
on how to return to the team’s defensive performance in December
“All the little things, all the little details on the defensive end. We need to get involved, talk to each other, call out screens, everything. Early on, we were talking a lot, and now we fell out of it. We’re not going to be able to go for it if we don’t get back to where we were defensively.”
on the team’s offensive performance
“We were all thinking too much. We need to listen more and try to fight on both ends of the floor. I feel like that’s our only problem.”
on the team’s mental state during a four-game losing streak
“It’s hard, but you have to stay together. It’s a long season and it’s not over right now. We’ve got to go into practice and try to evaluate and fix this issue quickly before it gets out of hand.”
on if the fires in Los Angeles have impacted the team
“We can’t control that. We can only control what we work on on the court and in practice.”