WATCH: Mick Cronin on UCLA Men's Basketball's Preseason Practices

UCLA men's basketball coach Mick Cronin spoke to reporters ahead of Thursday morning's practice session at the Mo Ostin Basketball Center. Cronin talked about how much teaching he's had to do with essentially eight freshmen on the roster, how Tyger Campbell and Jaime Jaquez Jr. are evolving to help the young roster, the expectations of bringing another championship home to Westwood and what the addition of Abramo Canka means for the future of the Bruins' international recruiting.

Today is my girlfriend and longtime partner’s birthday as well as my daughter’s 16th birthday, so today is a lot on me. I’ve got to make sure I’ve got multiple presents, I’ve got to grill out, I’ve got a party tonight. My head’s fried.

How are you?

You know, undefeated. I love this time of year. This time of year is my favorite time of year, you know, I get to stop fundraising, recruiting, everything else that goes on with the job and coach. I love practice and player development way more than the games.

Eight freshmen?

Yeah, eligibility standpoints with Mac and Will plus the two nonscholarship players, so it’s a lot of teaching.

More early stage teaching than you've done since you got here?

I’m hoping that helps us too, we walked about it as a staff and I just told myself, look, you don’t have a returning Final Four team, these guys don’t know, and as the head coach, you’ve got to remind yourself because this is my 20th year and I take myself back to—not that they’d listen but I’ve worked for two Hall of Fame coaches and I was very young but I’d fight them sometimes and say, ‘We’re moving too fast, we’re reviewing things we haven’t taught,’ so we’ve really started basically because defensive principles are things—Amari Bailey doesn’t need a lot of help on offense, to be honest with you. But defense, a different world.

Press more this season?

Yeah, we’re not there. Actually, I don’t know what day it is …

Thursday

We did our last practice, so we did that. We do a thing, every fifth day I force myself to do zone offense, zone defense, press, but we’ve been extremely in major teaching mode. Like, ‘see ball, see man’ every day, A to Z, because eight guys haven’t been trained. I always say trained or untrained, if they’re untrained it’s our job to train.

Rod Palmer said you've been stopping practice, teaching, scolding, restarting?

Well, the interesting thing with freshmen is they’ve never practiced this hard and been taught this much, so their brain—you look at a guy and you can see his brain is just completely fried, and it’s hard for them to stay focused and keep listening. I mean, how to practice, how to pay attention is a major league skill and there’s so few guys that can come in in their first year in any sport at any level—at this level, at the pro level—and impact winning in their first year. It’s so, so hard. Can you physically compete ,can you mentally compete at a whole other level? Getting some points doesn’t mean you’re impacting winning and that’s what we’re trying to teach these guys how to do every day, so I put it on us, it’s our job to get them there. It’s their job to, they have to be receptive because your rate of progress depends on your focus level and if you’re not a sponge, it’s hard. A lot of college players—you guys write articles, I don’t—you think about all the guys you’ve interviewed over the years and their junior, senior year they say, ‘Man, I wish I knew as a freshman what I know now, you know, I’d have paid attention more, I’d have rested more,’ and they need to do that now because we have some guys who aren’t going to be here in another year, so they need to impact winning while they’re here and the only way they’re going to do that is to compete like a veteran player, so that’s what we’re practicing. A lot of teaching. Here, we teach how we do things but I’m also very big on teaching how to compete physically, how to give everything you have.

Impressions of freshmen?

Will and Mac are not at full speed yet. Mac’s ahead of Will and obviously hoping to have both of them. Every day, Tyler gives me updates, our trainer, and then the scholarship guys, Abramo obviously got here later so he’s got more to learn and Dylan and Amari and Adem have all been awesome, they’re really good players. So my focus is, we have much more playmaking on this team because of Dylan and Amari. Throw in Jaylen Clark, who looks to pass the ball, and it’s just in the DNA—it’s not a knock on anybody but Jules and Johnny, without their scoring, we weren’t going to be who we were but Dylan, Amari and Dave, who’s always been a willing passer, I don’t have to force ball movement as much on this team, we’ve got guys who can create shots. Dylan is the fastest guy I’ve coached with the ball in my 27 years in college.

Expecting that?

Yeah, he's really, really fast with the ball and he’s such a good kid, he’s an unbelievable kid. I’ve asked the guys who have been around here, so when you see us, like Chris Carlson’s been around in many different positions at UCLA like to compare him because I knew Darren Collison from afar was fast with the ball.

Tyus maybe?

Tyus, maybe, but I didn’t want to go that far back. What I would say, recruiting rankings are for you guys, I don’t know where Dylan was rated and I know fans get caught up in that stuff but he’s lost [in the shuffle] probably because Adem and Amari are rated so high—and they should be, they’ve got tremendous talent—but Dylan’s really the guy that’s probably gotten lost in the shuffle with the hype or whatever. Nobody ever asks me about him, that’s why I brought him up first. Everybody goes right to Adem and Amari.

Ok, let's go there

Um, Amari is a tremendous passer, he’s really hard to keep out of the lane. He’s got great size—I don’t want to compare him to Lonzo, that’s not fair—but I haven’t had a guy, he can make passes—I’ve had taller guys who could pass but they’re not elite athletes that you can’t stand in front of. So he can make passes Tyger can’t make because he can see because of his size. He can get in the lane and find shooters in the opposite corner over the top of people that Tyger can’t see—he might see them but he can’t get them the ball, so he can really break the defense down and he’s got a super competitive streak. The elite guys that hopefully can impact winning as freshmen, they can physically compete and their talent can supersede their inexperience, and he is such a physical specimen. Amari is an anomaly for this day and age—he’s 18, doesn’t turn 19 until February. I mean, he’s younger than guys we’re recruiting, so to be the physical specimen he is at a young age, that’s what has impressed me the most, that he can physically compete and doesn’t get tired. We’ll see, it’s still early, it’s October 6—I better know what day it is, especially today

What do you like about Abramo?

Abramo is highly competitive, which if you know me, you know that's what I'm all about. So I think if you play hard and work hard – obviously there's some talent. Abramo's 6'6", he's very athletic and he plays hard. You play hard and you compete physically and you have a good attitude, you're gonna be a good player.

Pro background compared to high school? Adapting him to this style?

I think it's interesting. I was wondering what effect, if any, that would have. He's definitely – you can tell he's played against older guys cause the physical – even though he's not a stout build guy, he's put on 15 pounds since he's got here, but he got sick at the world championships 20 and under, lost a bunch of weight. But he is competitive. I love – I have a belief – I was right on Jules when people were all over Jules early in his career – guards that will rebound always turn out to be good players. Abramo goes, I mean, he goes after every ball. If you don't box him out, he's a great offensive rebounder, which tells you athleticism's irrelevant if you don't use it. He uses his athleticism. I think the more he gets adjusted, he's gonna have a great career here, he's gonna have a great career. He's not a one-and-done guy by any stretch, but we don't need that. Those that follow us and pay to follow us on recruiting know I believe you gotta have some guys who are gonna be in your program. So he's got a bright future here.

What was behind the international recruiting?

I've wanted to do it a long time and never could get anything done cause I realized, in international recruiting, you have to have – it takes a lot of time and commitment and connections. But you gotta have connections. You can walk in, I can walk in and people are nice to me, problem is they've known the other guy 20 years. It's no different than anything else in all walks of life. But I do think the game has become international, I've thought that for a while. I'm at a worldwide school, UCLA's got a worldwide brand, it's the perfect place to be able to recruit internationally. It's a recruiting pitch, but if I'm an international student and I'm gonna come to the United States, I think I'd rather come to Hollywood and LA than some of these other places. So we have built-in advantages, we have an international student body here. But advantages of maybe why, international kids, I think they've faced reality because they don't play scholastically, they play against the pros, so they know...

Abrama played second division in Italy at 16

They know that tells them the truth. They know they have to get better. Sometimes American kids, our system is so messed up, they don't have any sense of reality. Until you can play every day against pros, you don't realize that you're not a pro. Abramo, internationally, they know. You're 17 and all you have to do is go back and look at Brandon Jennings when he went to Italy. He averaged four points a game. Right, so it's hard those kids have had a dose of reality, they've had great coaching cause they don't have the scholastic restrictions that our high school coaches have, massive restrictions. So there's just a lot of plusses to it. All you gotta do is watch the Olympics, the last four Olympics were life and death to win as the United States. Tells you how international the game has become. So hopefully we're just getting started.

Expect more international recruits?

Oh, I hope so, yeah.

Element of surprise from Adem's game?

Um, oh yeah. Look, Adem's, I would say, on the AAU circuit, had the folklore of 'This guy' – again, he had played against professionals, his competitive spirit is second to none. And that, like, whether it's his energy, his smile, his dunks, blocked shots, similar to a Kevin Garnett, personality-wise. He's not nearly as tall, but it's just infectious for your team. I mean, aside from having a guy that good around on your team, having a guy that every day is in a great smile, great attitude, always has energy, can't wait to listen, can't wait to be taught, which is why he's come a long way this summer in a hurry with coach Savino, who's such an elite teacher with big guys. Darren, in my opinion, has become as good as there is, that Adem's rate of progress, because his talent level and his attitude has been really, really impressive. He's better offensively than I thought.

You have veterans on this squad...

Five guys have been to the Final Four.

Tyger and Jaime becoming leaders?

Well I've been more vocal about that because I haven't had a team like this with such a gap. For us to be great, they have to be like me, they have to help these guys. I can help them during the dead ball, coaching them, but during live play, they have to help them. You know, you're in a defensive screen situation and it's Tyger and Amari, Tyger's just gotta tell him what to do, and it's gonna have to go that way all year – same with Dave. And I've been real clear with the freshmen, it's their job to just listen. But these guys, we had such a veteran team that I haven't had to harp on that, as much as I've told Tyger, Dave, Jaylen Clark, Jaime and Kenny. Like, they have to help these guys, you're not playing with Jules. This guy is untrained, he is in his second week of practice, he does not know what he's doing and he's tired, he's never practiced this hard, he's never had coaches so demanding, he needs your help. So for them, they haven't been in this position, so they're adjusting to that too, to be more vocal, to have to help those guys.

These guys coming back, a lot of talk about chasing banner No. 12...

That's every year here.

Feels like this is the year to do it...

I'm glad you feel that way.

Trying to stray away from overlooking short-term goals and working your way there?

We don't talk about that stuff. I mean, here, you don't come to school here – this isn't for everybody. Some guys wanna shoot every ball and put their name in the draft, they're not coming here. I think I made it clear – I tried to, at least – when I got the job, that you come here, the responsibility is to play to win and uphold the tradition. You get to go to school here, which is by far the best place – not that I, I've probably would've had to have been more disciplined to get in here – but if I could do it all over again, if you could pick a school, this is the best place, it's not even close for an 18-year-old. So if we're gonna let you put this jersey on, these four letters, you're gonna play to win. So that's every year here. I would say to you, I mean, you want reality about how many times you're going to have two seniors that are potential All-Americans. I think Jaime, somebody told me is on, I mean, I'm sure he will, I think Tyger. But yeah, preseason's for people, just it's kinda like the winners go out to eat, the losers talk about the officials. Winners are worried about what the did, they're still playing, and the losers are talking about where they were ranked in the preseason. But I think Jaime and Tyger can both end up All-Americans. It's rare that you have two seniors that good, very rare. And then Dave's back, he's the ultimate team guy, elite shooter. And then Jaylen Clark and Kenny, so five guys that have played in the Final Four. You don't have that every day, I'm well aware of that. But yeah, you just gotta have one good day at a time, one good practice at a time.

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