Watch: Mick Cronin Talks Upcoming UCLA-USC Matchup, Mac Etienne Status

MICK CRONIN

How much do you want to get on the board and beat USC?

We need a win, so that’s I look at it. I will say, I have nothing but great respect for coach Enfield and the job that he’s done. You know, West Coast bias probably gets him, maybe football a little bit over there, but I think he’s a tremendous, tremendous coach. I’ve gotten to know him, he’s a good guy, so it’s not like where I came from there was no love lost in the Hatfield and McCoys in my days in Cincinnati in that rivalry, so it’s much different but I’d like to not get beat at the buzzer, how about that one? It would be nice to maybe win one at the buzzer. As you know, I own a few racehorses so I try to keep my eyes going forward; there’s nothing you can do about games in the past. Again, they have a tremendous team statistically, when you look at them. I mean, other than free-throw shooting, they have literally dominated the bottom line in every category—rebounding, field-goal percentage, assists, points per game, turnovers—so they have a quite impressive stat line. But it’s going to be a challenge, obviously. They’re at home and we’re both fighting for—are they the same as us in the Pac-12?—but we’re both fighting to get better and stay close in the Pac-12 race and seeding in the NCAA tournament, so it’s going to be a tough game.

Cast two buzzer-beaters aside and move forward or do they still percolate?

You remember your toughest [losses]. Coaches, we have a dilemma, man, it’s why very few of us keep our hair, survive long. You know, those things eat away at you, but in season you’ve just got to move to the next game. That’s why I think it was good for us to play Stanford and get the triple-overtime situation behind us for our team as fast as possible. But like I said, it would be nice to win one at the buzzer.

Status update on Jaylen Clark? Is he 100%?

Yeah. Well, other than rusty. His season’s been so chopped up with being held out with the hits he’s taken. I’m sure he would tell you his basketball rhythm isn’t where he would like it to be, but no if he wasn’t 100% he wouldn’t be out there. Peyton is dealing with a bruise to his knee, he says he can tolerate it. When you’re dealing with stuff like that, I’m really uninvolved, I stay out of it, so that’s a medical decision and a Peyton decision, so we’ll see how feels today, it’s a day to day thing but he has no structural issues.

Cody Riley still getting back stamina and game readiness?

Well, there’s nothing wrong with him at this point. You’re probably referring to his stat lines, you know, his rebounding’s way down and that’s a big concern for us, so hard for me to say. I can’t speak to how he feels physically, but obviously I would agree with what I think you’re alluding to with just his general explosiveness and being able to get to the ball on the glass and stuff, conditioning and stuff of that nature, it does seem to be that he’s trying to get there—I see what you’ve seen. Next time when you’re doing your status check, you’ve got to check on me too.

Status of head coach?

Day to day, my friend. Johnny Rambo, day by day. It’s the only way to live.

USC dipped with shooting and defense and fell behind Pacific, is that just a midseason lull?

Uh, yeah, I think you just answered your question. First of all, trying to motivate your team to play Pacific in between Arizona and UCLA might be the toughest task in the history of college coaching so I would put no stock in other than they were just so good that they figured out a way to win and erase a lead in a matter of seconds, it seemed—Pacific’s lead. As far as their statistics, you know, we all get into the grind right now. They went to the desert as we did. I thought they played Arizona tremendous, they just didn’t make shots. Drew Peterson, who I think is a heck of a player, just couldn’t get one to go down, they have a five-point lead with six minutes left, Boogie Ellis missed a wide-open three to put it to eight, so I assess them—you know, I don’t really look statistically more as I’m watching the film, from what I see, they tend to play as good as they need to play, for the most part. They can match up with anybody and that’s why it didn’t surprise me that they went to the Elite Eight last year and to be honest with you, I thought they had a shot to get to the Final Four. They got off to a horrible start against Gonzaga but I just have great respect for Andy and I hope Isaiah is OK.

Does it help UCLA is USC is good?

Well, I would say if teams have to come and play us both back to back and we’re both really good, it puts a lot of pressure on the opponent in our league rotation for sure. But I think it helps with the Pac-12—the stronger the league, the old rising tide raises all ships, that’s why our run in the NCAA tournament as a conference last year is important because we just always fight the most-people-are-asleep bias.

I prefer a blowout over USC

I hope with us winning, right?

Do anything after Arizona State game to help turn things around for the Stanford game?

Well, we had Sunday off, had to travel back to LA, practiced Monday and got back on the plane to go up [to the Bay Area]. You know, with this group of guys, they’re mature, we don’t have a young team, so I don’t have baby them, I can tell them the truth. Like, they know, but the real truth that someone talked about is if you score 60-58, 62-62 Arizona State at the end of regulation, you’re going to have to win a close, close game because college teams in the Pac-12 can get to 60, so we talk about our execution a lot. Obviously, we had some bad fouls at the end of the Arizona State game that almost sent me to the hospital. In all reality, if you can get to 79 like we did against Stanford, you give yourself a chance, you don’t have to pitch a shutout defensively, which is hard to do on the road, so we talked, how are we going to get there? The answer to getting there isn’t jump shots. We have to get more player movement, ball movement, got to get more layups, got to get out on the break and I give the kids credit. You guys know I’m hard on them but I defend them, but I give them the credit because we only had one practice to really talk about it, work on it, we got better ball movement, we ran the floor, we were plus-10 in fastbreak, but although I read all his books and my respect for Phil Jackson is off the charts, and I’m a history major and I love history but I’m not much into the Native American history, I don’t know, so I was not waving incense in the locker room, maybe I should try that.

Offense energy was 100% better than against ASU?

Yeah, look, I give the players credit. Look, they knew we needed to play better and I see – you gotta have pride. Some of this stuff with strategy, Rick, is overrated. You gotta outplay the other guy. Like Tyger, you gotta outplay this guy, you gotta create offense for us, you gotta get in gaps, you gotta create shots for each other. And they were all looking to do that, you gotta step up and play, you can't just be a name. What you've done in the past also doesn't matter. I think, sometimes, we fight that, all kids do, probably – human nature. It's not gonna matter on Saturday, so the fact that we did it against Stanford doesn't matter. So as an athlete, as a competitor, it only matters what you do going forward. So you gotta get yourself ready and go out there and perform. I thought Tyger – I don't know his stat line, Rick – but I thought Tyger, he was really the catalyst to get it all going. He had a great practice the day before, probably his best practice as a Bruin.

Thoughts on Mac Etienne situation? Status moving forward, discipline from the team?

Well, first of all, obviously I'm disappointed. I take seriously our program's need to be a shining light for our university. When people look at the four letters and when they're looking through the lens of men's basketball, I want it to all be positive, so that hurt. Secondly, he's a young guy, for legal stuff, I'm not gonna get pointed on the incident, Ben, but he's definitely – he's been in counseling. And my concern is I'm his parent here, so I have to take care of him because – look, it's easy to just sit there and say obviously how disappointed I was, but at the same time, it's my job to care about him and love him. So right now, that's what I'm trying to do with him and by the time he's back on our bench, he'll full know the responsibility that goes with that, that goes with being on our team, being a part of it, the way you gotta represent our university. So that said, the rest of that stuff's up to the league, my friend, I'm waiting on the Pac-12 for some responses on a lot of things, namely the Arizona State game, the clock started before we touched the ball on the last play, Peyton got hit with a t-shirt on the last play while the play was going on. So as far as all that other stuff, I let Chris Carlson handle it, I got enough on my plate. So I'm just trying to get ready for USC, but I appreciate you asking.

Inquired with the Pac-12 about anything that happened with the Arizona crowd?

Well again, that could go to Mac's legal situation. So again, Martin Jarmond, Chris Carlson, the Pac-12 communicates with them. The conferences I've come from in the past, there's communication with the coach, but that's not really the case in the Pac-12. So I talked to the head of officiating, who's a great guy, but other than that, I have communications with Martin and Chris, so they're handling that stuff. And to my knowledge, Ben, I don't know where that's all at. I see those guys, but to my knowledge, I haven't seen anything said. Like I alluded to, you probably didn't even know that at the end of the Arizona State game – I'm not making that up, that's a fact from precision timing that was told to me by the head of our officiating. I mean, it's just a fact, there was 2.2 seconds. So by the time Peyton grabbed it, the clock was going off, so he would've had time to give it to Jake Kyman and have a chance to tie, so it was unfortunate, but we move on and get ready for USC.