WATCH: Mick Cronin on UCLA's Defensive Weapons, Injury Updates

UCLA men's basketball coach Mick Cronin spoke with the media ahead of Wednesday morning's practice session at the Mo Ostin Basketball Center. Cronin talked about the importance of Jaylen Clark's defense, how rare it is to recruit a player with his motor, what went wrong on the boards against Sacramento State, how he expects the freshman to contribute on defense moving forward, David Singleton's shooting ability and the statuses of Mac Etienne and Will McClendon.

Jaylen Clark first player in NBA, WNBA, NCAAM or NCAAW to put up the stat line he did in 20 years?

I have two responses to that – No. 1, whoever did that really needs to get a hobby if they spent all that time researching that, they’ve really got to get outside, I mean I understand it was raining yesterday but yeah, there’s just too many other things to do in life. Secondly, guys like Jaylen Clark, you have to have to win, guys that like I said the other night after the game that play defense, they’re not on defense, and when you evaluate, I know he didn’t have 10 points when I went to see him play for coach Kleckner at Etiwanda and offered him a scholarship—he did not have 10 points in the game, but he plays every play every of the game. You’ve got to get guys who play without the ball--they go after the ball, they rotate defensively, they sprint down the floor, the little trick in our game in evaluation is watching what guys do when they don’t have the ball and he competes when he doesn’t have the ball. It’s a skill, it really is a skill. Most people talk about skills in our game, it’s with the ball. But listening’s a skill and playing without the ball and it’s not just moving without it on offense to get open. I mean, he plays the game when he doesn’t have the ball with tremendous competitive spirit and intensity.

How rare is it to find a guy who has that kind of intrinsic motivation to do that on the defensive end when you're out evaluating?

I don’t know if it’s rare—it’s not common. It’s not common. Our game is, I guess, I don’t want to say plagued, but the biggest problem with our game is the stat sheet and when 8-year-olds and 10-year-olds play basketball and they go home, everybody asks them how many points they had, so they tend to think that that’s the only part of the game. Jaylen’s mom’s from Cleveland and his dad’s from Newark, two of the toughest, hardest-working towns in America, so I’ve got to give them a lot of credit. I think a lot of that comes from the DNA of his family.

How has Jaylen improved leading the break and making decisions with the ball?

Well, I would say his best offensive skill, even the first time I saw him, has always been his passing, he’s definitely improved as a scorer. Passing has always been his best skill.

Anything new when you looked at the film?

There always is. We all knew the rebounding wasn’t the greatest, some areas where we’ve got to improve but it’s early, you know everybody is trying to clean stuff up right now but we’ve got to clean up our boxing out, especially with Long Beach State coming in, they’re a great offensive rebounding team, very athletic team, they play hard, so that’s an area where I think they’re strong and we’re not, so that would probably be my biggest focus.

When your defense is working the way you want, what does that look like?

We’ll see. The other team can’t score. You're talking about defense? The other team can’t score. So I think Amari, because he’s a tremendous elite athlete and he also has the competitive side of it, he has a chance to be a devastating defender at our level because again, I talk about guys who can do things that other guys can’t do. Because of his athleticism combined with his toughness, he can get steals or block a shot—he can recover in ways that other guys can’t recover because of his athleticism and he has size, so Dylan Andrews is just tremendous on the ball defensively and then when you add Adem Bona, a devastating shot-blocker, it makes our defense that much better.

Adem good to go on Friday?

Yes.

See defensive improvement from exhibition to season opener?

Oh yeah. Yeah, I think we had a chance to hold a team to 50. You hold a Division I team to 50 or less then you’re doing something right, you force 21 turnovers. You’ve got to understand, David Patrick’s a really, really good coach, he knows what he’s doing. His teams have always executed and all the guys, often in his case have Australian or international backgrounds, they’re pretty adept at their offensive execution stuff, so I was happy with that. You know, what I was really happy with was we made in-game adjustments. Look, to be really good you have to have Plan A going in and you have to make some adjustments and our guys, when we made adjustments to the things they were doing, we got better—you’ve heard me talk about this, your defense has to get better as the game goes on because at winning time is when we got stops, so I thought we got better as the game went on defensively and that’s something that I look for, our ability to make those adjustments.

Did David Singleton's release quicken in the offseason?

Nah, that’s overrated and people write about things like that, it’s comical. I could care how fast his release is; I care if the ball goes in. Look, Reggie Miller played here, I’d like to get him down here, you know it’s tough to get Reggie out of Malibu and he’s a big shot—probably the best analyst on TNT in-game but he would tell you that shooting is about getting your footwork and what happens before you catch the ball. The guy was legendary in his pregame routines and growing up in Cincinnati being so close to Indianapolis and basketball people and his run with the Pacers and the stories about his preparation before a game, so having read all that stuff as a younger coach when I was getting started, it’s all about preparation, it’s not about how fast you release the ball. Everything that today, Steph Curry, it’s all about shot preparation. I watched last night the replay of their win the other night when he had 47, his footwork before he catches the ball is why he’s so good—and that’s what I’ve been working with David on and I shouldn’t say this because he never struggles but when he does miss shots, he tends to not have good pre-shot footwork; when he has his footwork, it’s like you’d be surprised if he misses.

Heard about his shoe collection?

Uh, yeah. Yeah. I always say, ‘Look, Dave, you can’t hide money. You know, people who are going to have shoe collections must have money.’ That’s what I tell guys—people who have shoe collections must have a lot of money.

157 pairs?

See, the difference between Dave and I, I compare that to how much I can sell those for. But we’ve all got to have things we love. When I was young, I probably wasn’t the most fiscally responsible human being.

What do you want to see from Mac now that he's back?

Just getting better every game every day. Mac hasn’t played in a year and a half, it’s going to be the same for Will. You know, Mac could have easily said, ‘Hey, coach, I’m not ready’ but we needed him on Monday with Adem out and I was really happy, he had four blocks and like six or seven rebounds, so it’s going to take a while probably for him to calm down on offense and that’s probably the biggest thing with all of our freshmen, with Amari—young guys, they get really excited. There’s no such thing as a 10-point play. You know, trying to find a rhythm as a young player and let the game come to you is probably the hardest thing to teach a young player offensively where you see Tyger’s patience out there, David’s patience out there offensively versus young guys, when they get the ball their excitement level goes up like 100 times, you can see it, and that’s what happened to Mac offensively the other night.

How close is Will to coming back?

Yeah, I said it the other night, I would say, he had a PRP thing where it takes time. I don’t know, three or four weeks ago and you’ve got to give that six weeks so we’re hoping for mid-December, I think, but it’s all speculation because every time you step a guy’s progression up that’s coming back, they have to clear hurdles, so that would be no setbacks.

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