Watch: Mick Cronin Recaps UCLA's Exhibition Win Against Chico State, Return to Normal

MICK CRONIN

Opening statement

Obviously, it’s good to be back in front of the fans, I would say that’s my biggest takeaway of the game tonight. Hopefully, our fans feel the same way, having you guys here, having everybody here, I told ushers in the back hall, I told our officers over here, it’s good to see them—I haven’t seen these guys in two years. Be careful, Ben, they’re strapped and they protect me. But anyway, onto the game, and the other thing I’ll say thank you to our students—I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many students at an exhibition game, so that was awesome. Chico State, we played them because Greg’s a really good coach, they execute and pass the ball, they have a lot of shooters, a lot of older guys, they put a lot of pressure on your defense to defend the whole floor because of their ability to make the three-point shot. They made eight and they made 15 a few years ago against Arizona, so you try to get somebody in that can put offensive pressure on your defense—that’s what you want in an exhibition game, which they did that for us, so regardless of the final score, they came out in the second half and they took care of the ball and got off 33 shots and only had four turnovers, we had to defend, so that was good practice for us and obviously we didn’t shoot it well in the first half but we’ve got a lot of guys that can shoot, so on this team that worm will turn, we’ve just got to keep shooting, so our big thing was don’t turn it over, if we don’t turn it over we have a good chance the ball might go in. The other thing I’ve got to do a better job of is our offensive rebounding, which is hard because we play four out and we have spacing, but I’ve got to get Johnny, Jaime, Jules, Peyton—those four guys, in particular—it hurts not having Jaylen Clark because he’s by far the best offensive rebounder, so hopefully he’ll be back tomorrow. I think he’ll be back tomorrow, but we miss his offensive rebounding, that’s really the only area of concern for me today. We shot free throws today much better than in the scrimmage, so, I’m really happy with our defensive effort. Obviously, you know, you guys saw, Peyton can do a lot of things, he had four assists and eight rebounds but for us he had nine deflections, which for us, you get nine deflections in 21 minutes of play, that extremely hard to do so you get one for every 2.2 minutes you play, so he’s a problem defensively, he’s a great athlete and his teammates love him, he’s a great kid, so trying to figure out ways to get him incorporated on the offensive end, you can see he’s got tremendous vision as a passer and he loves to pass, so it’s just overall, though, really happy to be back out here with the fans, that’s really my thing, this is so much better than last year, so much better.

Jaime almost perfect from the field and at the line?

Yeah, he's worked hard at his free throws. He's such a good shooter, it got in his head. Jaime's an elite college player. He's a really hard guy to defend for other teams because we play him as a point forward and he tends to have a bigger, slower guy on him and obviously we used that to our advantage. We have shooters everywhere so one thing – you got these guys here to talk – we worked really hard on this offseason is multiple guys – I think you saw, hopefully you saw and noticed multiple guys bringing the ball up the floor and improving everybody's pick-and-roll game, not just having Tyger have to have the ball so much. It's just gonna make us a better team. Jaime has gotten better at it, Peyton's natural at it, we work hard with Johnny, he's still improving at it, obviously and Jules. But just having more guys that can make plays initiating the offense cause we have so many shooters. Jaime, because he can finish, and as he's developing as a passer at a point forward spot, it's hard to defend us cause he and Peyton, they're so big, they're gonna finish down the lane if you don't help. If you do, they're gonna find shooters that never miss. So we recruit to that style, we try to play hard and believe in it. So doesn't surprise me, that's just who he is. That;s where he left off last year.

What do you take from tonight to build upon for the season opener?

Yeah, there's some areas from our San Diego State that we needed to improve on that we watched a lot of film, so it was good for us. We watched a lot of film from our scrimmage, how we can get better, areas we needed to improve and things we need to do a better job. Cause I look at it like we're not doing something well, that means we haven't taught it the right way. For me, it's trained or untrained, my job is to make sure they do it the right way and find a way to put my team in a position to win. So we'll look at this film. Bakersfield, I've known coach Barnes a long time, thankfully I don't have to play him 1-on-1. I think he's the only guy to ever win a title, SEC title, as a player and a coach, I think. Great guy. They're very tough, we scheduled them on purpose cause they're very physical, they play extremely hard and are really well-schooled defensively, which is very similar to the game following. So it's all for real so we'll look at the film and see what we need to improve on. Right now – late in the game, we finally got them to miss. Trying to think of something like, they were shooting a high percentage for a long time. It can't just be turnover or they score, we gotta be able to force teams into hard shots and finishes when they're not open.

Myles Johnson?

Well let’s see, statistically, almost a double-double in fifteen minutes. Somebody hit his leg or something, or it was cramping or something happened. You know, look, it’s the most obvious thing out there. Size wise, you know, Jaime’s sitting over there...when we walked out and played Michigan to go into the Final Four, I turned around to the staff and said ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’ You know like 6’10, 6’10, 7’2, we’re nowhere near that. So his size is something we need. It just adds a …. You know, we needed two things: we needed a great athlete that happens to be a great player – which is Peyton, and we needed a guy with size, who is a veteran – that happens to be a veteran, very effective defensive player. So, those two guys had really taken us to antother level I think. I think you’re going to see that. We had to play around the fact that we were really small last year and just overcome it.

Peyton’s offense and ball-handling?

Yeah we he does a great job...he handles the ball like he’s 5’10". He’s got very quick feet, like most 6’8 guys can’t change direction the way he can change direction. You know, which is why he’s going to have such a long career in basketball. But ball handling is something...he wasn’t born with that. He worked at it. He’s lived in a gym his whole life. When you have two point forwards like Jaime and Peyton that can make plays, they’re matchup problems. Smaller guys, they score over, bigger guys, they’re going to go by them. Like you said, they’re going to break them down every time. But again, he’s got a chance to be an unbelievable defensive player. The more he gets in shape, and the game slows down to him, he can position himself off the ball and you see the stuff he does. But he has no limits offensively.