NCAA MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - BYU VS UCLA

March 20, 2021

Mick Cronin

Hinkle Fieldhouse

UCLA Bruins

Postgame Media Conference

UCLA - 73, BYU - 62

THE MODERATOR: We'll begin with an opening statement from Coach Mick Cronin.

COACH CRONIN: Thank you. Tremendous effort by our players tonight. It's not easy to defend BYU. It's actually extremely hard. "Not easy" is not the best way to say it. It's extremely hard to defend them. Many, many try. I think they've had over 70 in every game since some point in January.

So, they've put a lot of 80s, 90s -- had 100. The way they shoot the ball, pass the ball and space you. So took everything our guys had on the defensive end tonight. That's where our focus was. And we were able to take them off the 3-point line. It wasn't easy. I can't tell you how hard that was for our guys and how proud I am of how hard they played. Played with a lot of pride.

I try to remind them here who they play for to get their confidence back. They practice in a gym with 11 banners hanging. So, it was a big win.

Congratulations to BYU on their season. Alex Barcello had a great game. He's obviously a great kid, great player. It's always -- guys like him are great for college basketball.

But our guys stepped up. Obviously Johnny had a big game coming off the ankle. But Tyger didn't make a lot of shots but his defense was big. Barcello and Averette are just really, really good guards. And they can cause you a lot of problems. Great win for us.

Q. Coach, a lot of great contributors tonight. The moment that really kind of crystallized the toughness of the team for me was when Jaime went up grabbed that rebound out away from Haarms and just really showed a lot of toughness there. What did it mean to see that kind of play and bring that tenaciousness?

COACH CRONIN: Look, I will say this. We don't have any seniors. So you've got guys -- Johnny sat on the bench at Kentucky last year. Jaime is a sophomore. We've got a lot of young guys. You've got, what, three sophomores in the starting lineup. Kenneth Nwuba gave us big minutes. He's such a good kid. I was so happy to see him be able to give us some minutes tonight, because his defense was much needed.

For us to be able to win the first half by 11 without Cody Riley was really the key to the game. When he went out with his second, immediately my mind goes to, I've got to get to halftime while we're still in this game, when Cody gets that second foul so quickly. But I thought just our effort and our toughness was there all night. It had to be because they're really, really hard to play defense against. Really hard.

Q. Juzang was just on here, and he was talking about how we don't plan to go home. I know you spoke after the previous game about what that victory meant for your team psychologically. Where do you feel you guys are now really after taking the game to them especially in that first half?

COACH CRONIN: Well, look, we had some tough times late in the year but playing good teams makes -- it can either kill you or it makes you better because it's so hard to win. And you're finding out that the Pac-12 not being ranked all year was an absolute joke. And some people ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Now maybe people can't stay up late, and I don't blame them because I can't either. Where I live the sun shines all day and it comes up early so I get up early. So maybe people can't stay up for our games. But I've been doing this a long time. Back in 2011, I coached in a league where 11 teams made the NCAA Tournament. And the national champion finished in a tie for ninth, 10th and 11th. So I know good teams. So Oregon State, Oregon, Colorado, SC, those teams winning is just not a surprise at all to me. It's just not a surprise.

I know we didn't have great early season stuff. But that's COVID and scheduling was way against us. And the West Coast, man, our teams, we didn't have the whole summer where the rest of the country had workouts in the summer. We didn't. So I think the Pac-12, the teams we played down the stretch has really prepared us for the NCAA Tournament.

I was just concerned with getting the first win because Michigan State at Purdue where they're going to have more fans than us, you know, in a gym they're comfortable in. I thought if we could get by that game we could get some momentum.

I don't know who we play in the next game. Everybody is good at this point. But it's really about us now. Our guys are extremely connected. So we've just got to continue with our focus on whatever it takes to win.

Q. Couple of tactical questions for you. Looked to me like you chose not to double Haarms in the post.

COACH CRONIN: Correct.

Q. And if you could say what went into that. And also what was the strategy when they started shadowing Juzang in the second half?

COACH CRONIN: Well, first, your first question would be the obvious answer, right. You've got to ask me but I know you know it. We wanted to not give up a bunch of 3s. I thought a team like BYU, the 3-point shot is their fuel. They almost beat Gonzaga, whatever it was, ten days ago because they came out raining them in. And they also count for one more point than a Haarms bucket on the interior.

So that was our philosophy. If they scored a few buckets inside, we were going to live with it. We were just doing everything we could to try to disrupt their offense and take away the 3-point shot.

With Johnny, when they went into denial, what you do is you use that guy as a screener because his man can't switch off. Then whoever comes off his screen is going to be wide open. And we had some guys at the basket. Obviously Tyger had a rough night. If he makes open shots, we win 20-plus. But I want to mention David. David gave us some big minutes today. He's a great kid. I'm really happy for him. He's a really, really good kid.

Q. After BYU cut the lead to four in the second half, your team made four of its next five to get it back to 11. When BYU called the timeout after a David mid-range, you gave a really enthusiastic fist pump. What's going on in your mind through that moment?

COACH CRONIN: For this team, we are from Southern California. So, at times I have to do everything I can to inject some intensity. Now Coach Palmer would tell you where he's from, Compton, a little bit tougher. So he helps with it.

Our coaching staff, we just know with our guys, again, we don't have any seniors. So we're just trying to make sure that they're dialed up and that they're an aggressive mindset.

And then the other thing is just belief and having fun. I mean, look, this has been brutal on these kids. It's been brutal on everybody. Indianapolis is such a great city. I've been here a million times, being from Cincinnati. It would be so nice to go out and get something to eat. I'd like to take a walk. My whole family's here. I can't see them. So we've got to try to have some semblance of fun. And tonight was a very fun game for me as well as the guys.

Q. What impressed you the most about Johnny tonight? And also can you comment on how he got after it defensively?

COACH CRONIN: That's what I would say, Coach Lewis and I were messing with him. He's in trouble. He's in trouble because we know what he's capable of defensively. There was a play where Jules and Jaime had the same guy because they run their offense so fast. And Johnny guarded the guy by the rim and the guy in the weak-side corner. He was watching them both.

And the passer was trying to figure out who am I going to throw to. And Johnny, he was messing with him, he was locked in. Again, Johnny is young. Last year he should have been a senior in high school. He's improved immensely. Part of it with him is it's my job to teach him how to do that stuff. And it takes time to train stuff. But he obviously had a huge game for us.

Q. It seems like quite often you can put five guys on the court who are capable of getting their own shot and even like Singleton was, I don't know if those were -- if that was you running plays for him. But I'm just wondering when you have so many skilled guys offensively like that sometimes everybody thinks that that they can be the one that the ball's in their hands. How is that -- has the togetherness and the unselfishness that's been on display the last couple games, is that something that's been there from the start or has it taken some time to develop?

COACH CRONIN: No, that's really never an issue with my teams. I think the guys understand we're going to play to win. The open man is the go-to man. But there's times my guys, the more they get to play for me, they know like there's a time where we talk about mismatches and guys we feel like we can attack defensively, meaning we can get certain guys on the other team where we feel we can get them isolated, and that the guys know that it's at that point that's what we work on. We spend a lot of time on individual instruction.

So that's your time to score, get fouled or create a shot for somebody when you can get, when we go to you in that situation. So yes, a lot of that is by design. We're trying to pick our poison, whether it's -- we got Jaime a few post-ups, got him some shots early. He was hot. The guys understand that; they know I'm trying to go to the mismatch.

And they know just because we go to you, your job is to score, if you can create a bucket. But if they help, you've got to be a passer. And when you play small you've got to be good on offense. Jaime is a guard and we play four guards. If you're not good on offense, you can't play small because we don't block a lot of shots. We were pesky with our lack of size tonight. And that's how we've got to be defensively.

Q. I know you guys were minus-6 on the boards in the first half, but plus-2 in the second. I know the big one Jaime had with 50 seconds left, ripping it away from Haarms. How proud were you of your guys for stepping up on the boards despite a size advantage down the stretch?

COACH CRONIN: We were plus-6 in second-chance points, so that's what really matters. They got a few on us. Caleb Lohner hurt us in the first half. He had four but he had none in the second half. You have to switch so much because they're so hard to defend with their pace-and-space offense, that you've got -- first half we got Johnny and different guys trying to block out Caleb Lohner.

And then we had our big man really semi trap in pick and rolls, so it's hard for him to get back sometimes to some of their bigger guys, whether it was Harward or Haarms.

So when you play defense aggressively, it exposes your defensive backboard. But as you can see, we're much better the last second half of the Michigan State game and this game when we're aggressive on defense. But it's going to affect you because you get spread out more, so it's harder to hold down the defensive backboard. And somebody asked it earlier, but Jaime's rebound late was big time, big time.

Q. You're playing Abilene Christian on Monday. Do you have a reaction to being a favorite for the first time in the tournament?

COACH CRONIN: They're showing me the score. Well, I owe Darren Savino lunch because he's scouting Abilene Christian and he told me they were going to win. And I saw their record's tremendous. I don't know what it is. You guys probably know it.

Q. 23-4.

COACH CRONIN: And so Darren said that. And I turned to T.J. Wolf on my staff. And he said, Coach, he's right. They force 20 turnovers a game. They're really, really good. That was just in passing.

So obviously they have a great coach. Somebody forces 20 turnovers a game, that's unbelievable. I mean somebody just told me Texas had 23 turnovers. And they got senior -- they got Jones, Ramey. They've got serious guards now, Matt Coleman. And they turn the ball over that many times? That means Abilene Christian is really, really good. That's all I can say.