WATCH: Mick Cronin Talks UCLA's Plane Scare, Thoughts on Marvel Cinematic Universe
UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin talked to reporters Tuesday about his team’s recent win over Marquette, what he expects to see out of Alabama State on Wednesday, the integration of Myles Johnson and Peyton Watson and what he thinks about Spider-Man and the Marvel Cinematic Universe post-"Avengers: Endgame."
MICK CRONIN
More details from the plane landing?
I’m meeting with university officials today about our travel stuff, so I can just tell you it was real, we’re lucky, extremely fortunate. You know me, everything goes back to movies, so I told the staff—I can’t tell the guys because they haven’t seen any classics—but we’re like the Blues Brothers now, we’re on a mission from God.
Sense of that against Marquette?
I’ll tell you, it was, we had a great week of preparation—I’m a big believer in preparation in practice and we had some great practices, some of our best practices of the year. Now a lot of that was because Cody practiced, so that added to the excitement and the guys are excited, they know he’s coming. It’s just growth of our team, we had some really good practices and that’s the No. 1 indicator of how you’re going to play.
Myles getting more in the flow defensively?
I think Myles has worked hard to improve with coach Savino on his offense and it’s kind of new for him, being a part of the offense, whether he’s in the pick and roll or he’s posting up or he’s a passer, our big man is involved a lot in our offense, so it’s new for him. Obviously, he’s not a freshman but he’s never played in the style that we play with his usage rate, just that you’re a part of the offensive flow, so I think it’s just natural progression, but finishing around the rim and things of that nature, he and Darren have worked really, really hard on that.
Cody playing tomorrow?
Hopefully. We’ll see how he goes today. I’d love to be able to get him some minutes tomorrow, but that’s going to be his decision—I know what his decision will be, I know it. He could have played Saturday from a clearance standpoint, I just wanted to see him practice more, so we’ll see. I would think that if he plays we’ll probably keep him in that protective brace for a little bit maybe just for precautionary, but I don’t have the degree for that, so I’ll stay in my lane and let our medical staff decide. I know he’s raring to go.
Cody coming back mean another adjustment period of Myles or is it simply additive?
I think it’s going to be an adjustment for all of us—he hasn’t played this year, he played three minutes, so more importantly, it’s going to take him time—I would think—to get his game conditioning back to where he can be the Cody Riley that we all know and need. I’d say two, three, four games maybe before he can get back to his normal self, you would think. That’s why I wanted to get him the extra practice time and give him plenty of time to prepare but I still think practice’s not a game, it’s not the same simulation, so even when he comes back, sometimes, I’d like to have him do it tomorrow if possible if he’s going to play Saturday because I think it throws you off the first time a guy comes back because you’ve been used to playing in certain rotations and as good as he is—I think it will be definitely be ‘yes,’ to your answer, an adjustment period for him, all of us, our rhythm of our team to take a few games for us to get back into that flow.
Peyton's progression?
I think in practice he is awesome, his attitude’s great, he’s trying to figure it out, the physicality and speed of the game have been issues for him. You know, listen, Jules, Jaime and Johnny are three of the best wings in the country, and they’re in their third, third and fourth year in college basketball and they’re three of the best players in America. That being said, though, I think Peyton is super talented and it’s just a matter of time for him and he’s still trying to get on balance. You know, a lot of his offense is still where he’s off-balance a lot and that’s because he has a high center of gravity because he’s tall and the college game is physical and it’s a tight, compact game, but that’s my job—my job is to get him comfortable and get him where he's finishing around the rim better at a higher finishing rate. But he’s improved defensively, his rebounding has really improved and when I say that, you don’t see it as much because he plays more in practice than he has recently in games, but I think that’s all going to change in time. I have the utmost confidence in who he’s going to be as a player because his attitude is tremendous.
Team recaptured identity?
Oh yeah, like I told you—well, you weren’t there because you were on the sprint to get to the plane after we played UNLV with our radio guys—yeah, I told them it was nice to have my team back. You’ve got to be able to defend, you’ve got be able to win when the ball doesn’t go in. Like, you know, I’ve obviously had to do a lot of film study—I kind of scout us and our staff scouts our opponents and Johnny missed a lot of shots against Marquette he never misses and we didn’t finish around the rim four or five times point-blank because we decided to challenge a shot-blocker and just didn’t finish it. But we’re still able to win convincingly because of defense, so you have to be able to win that game where you don’t play great on offense, you know you’re trying to get to a point where you can win six in a row in March, you’re going to have to win in different ways. You’re going to run into a Michigan, who you can’t score on and you’ve got to beat them with your defense. You know, other teams, you might have to beat them with your offense or your rebounding, so to me, you’ve got to be able to win in different ways, so what we’ve talked about, our last five have been, so you’re right, I agree, but also my concern in our last five our field goal percentage—I always have Alex do our last five games and our field-goal percentage is down, so I spent Sunday dissecting that, why, you know, our points per game needs to get back up but our field-goal percentage needs to get back up and that always goes back to we’re not getting as many layups as we got earlier and we’re not finishing around the rim the way we need to finish around the rim and maybe too many hard shots at times, so we show that, talk about that with the guys. As Bill Walton would say, he always says, ‘Coach, don’t forget offense.’ You know how he is, he’s, ‘Give me offense.’ I’m all for offense because then you can win when you can’t stop the other team, so you’ve got to get better at everything. For a four-guard team, the thing that’s been the most consistent for us is our rebounding. I mean, we’re almost plus-10 on the glass and we play with one big guy and we’ve played without Cody and we’re almost plus-10 on the glass, so Johnny, Jules, Peyton when he’s in there, you know obviously Jaime and Myles but we rebound really at four spots, which has really helped us.
Alabama State?
Quick, fast, athletic, not as big. That’s the difference. Myles and Kenny are going to have some tough matchups, if Cody plays. Speed and quickness.
More small-ball lineups?
I mean, if we have to, but again, I’d like to be able to play the way we’re going to have to win in March, which at times we do have to play with no big. But you don’t want to have to do that the entire game. You have to be able to play with our big guy and deal with that some.
Playing these smaller schools let you play with some things?
Well my recent study of the NET rankings that you pointed out to me, I guess we're 22, coach Lewis is in charge of telling me where we're at. So what I've told our team is – I think it's terrible, I'm the son of a coach, so I don't think, and I'd like to – Logan's wanting to redshirt so I think it's great to get everybody minutes to get people minutes like Russell or Kenny Nwuba – but the NET rankings and the powers that be have obviously decided that it matters how much you win by. So you have to try to figure out what's a win for us against Alabama State? Winning by 1? Or do we have to win by 20, 30, 40? You used to just have to win by one, but when they redid this thing and they put in metrics into it, you could literally win by 15 and it could be considered a loss in your metric, in that, which I think it sends a bad message, just my – a really bad message, you know. I follow locally, so I saw what happened with Inglewood. I'm a son of a coach, so I know that if – to me, you should be trying to win the game, get everybody some playing time in the situations you're alluding to. But I've told our team, the facts, here's the facts of the way the NCAA is doing this, so we need to be ready to rock on Wednesday night and hitting on all cylinders to get ready for Saturday as well.
Done with Marvel movies after Iron Man died but are you seeing Spider-Man this week?
Yeah, I'm sure I'll see it Sunday, Sunday's my Sammy day. We're gonna go – well, this is what happens when you have a 15-year-old daughter, you say you wanna spend some time together, get off your phone and friends and remember your old dad, remember me. Of course she rolls her eyes, that's one, and then she says yeah, we can go shopping and I can just show you everything I want. The point was you could go shopping to help me get gifts for other people, but ok, whatever I gotta do to spend time with her. So we're gonna do both, I would assume we'll somehow see the Spider-Man, I would think so. Look, she's a Marvel person, Jake Kyman is a huge Marvel person – you knew that, huh – so they're pretty good, I get through it, I hang in there, but it's just whoever decided to kill off Tony Stark should be fired. I mean, how do you kill off Tony Stark, he's Iron Man. I mean, terrible, terrible, I cried. I am Iron Man. It was all over. That was one of the coolest guys in the history of movies, Ben. Did you see Iron Man?
Ben: I have not seen Iron Man
Oh, come on. Do you know that Die Hard is a Christmas movie?
Ben: No, I'm on the other side of the argument
You disagree? Do you think it's a quality movie?
Ben: Love the movie, just not really Christmas-y
Right, I agree with you, probably. Do you remember in Lethal Weapon they had the Christmas tree, it's not a Christmas movie. Are we boring you with all the movie stuff?
David: No, this is quality content
Yeah, there's nothing new coming out really either. I had to turn one off the other day, it was so – the Rock and Ryna Reynolds' new movie on Netflix.
David: I thought you were talking about "The Rock" with Sean Connery
No, that's an elite movie. Come on, you kidding me? "Do your best?" You remember that line? We can't say – I say that to my team all the time when they tell me they've tried their best, I give them the Sean Connery line.
Follow Connon on Twitter at @SamConnon
Follow All Bruins on Twitter at @SI_AllBruins
Like All Bruins on Facebook at @SI.AllBruins
Subscribe to All Bruins on YouTube
Read more UCLA stories: UCLA Bruins on Sports Illustrated
Read more UCLA men's basketball stories: UCLA Men's Basketball on Sports Illustrated
