WATCH: Mick Cronin Talks UCLA-Washington State, Injury Updates

UCLA men's basketball coach Mick Cronin spoke to the media prior to Tuesday morning's practice.

Cronin detailed what makes Washington State's defense so good, the struggles UCLA has faced from beyond the 3-point line and the injury statuses of Jaime Jaquez Jr. and Peyton Watson heading into another big weekend.

MICK CRONIN

Any thought to shutting down Jaime for a while to get his ankles back to full strength?

We do that in practice. He’s very limited. Yesterday, he didn’t practice, he’s just on the bike and does shooting, so we’re limiting him as much as possible. It’s a day-to-day decision with Jaime.

Synovitis with him rest of career?

No. He’ll get things rectified after the season; he’ll be fine.

Myles' progression?

I think he’s really improved his rebounding for us. The numbers don’t like, right? That’s one stat that is inarguable, right? So he’s done a great job with his rebounding of late and I think he’s continuing to improve. Hopefully it will continue because we need him.

Washington State had it rolling but lost three in a row – thoughts on the job Kyle Smith has done up there?

Well, I don’t really look at the won-loss column in preparation; the more I look at is what a team’s strengths are and what we need to do to negate their strengths and prepare for them, so Kyle’s a numbers guy, so they shoot a lot of threes and they defend the three extremely well. They also defend the rim, so they’re one of the better defensive teams in the country. I think they’re giving up 59 points a game in Pac-12 play, their field-goal percentage defense is elite, so they had a game they held Arizona State in the 20s. So they’ve held teams in the 40s. The only two teams in Pac-12 play to score over 70 against them were Colorado once and then they came back and held them to 43 and Arizona got to 72 last weekend, so only two teams have broken 70 against them. They’ve got two rim protectors, are very athletic. Kyle does a great job. They’re hard to score on.

Best 3-point defense in the Pac-12, what makes them so good at that?

Well, they’re athletic and they have two shot blockers, so they try to get you off the line and they’ve got two guys that can protect the rim. I’m not going to try to pronounce both of their names correctly, but they both have multiple blocked shots, and then on the wings, Rodman and Noah Williams is long as well as their size, so they try to force you into driving the ball at times and into their shot blockers.

Challenge to get Peyton in games or keep him in games?

He’s been injured. Before he didn’t play, the two games where he didn’t play, he had already injured his knee and then as far as USC, he wanted to try to play in a big game but he hadn’t practiced for that game. He had a great practice yesterday, so hopefully he can get back to the progress he was making, but the knee injury definitely slowed him.

You said the practice going into Stanford was one of the best of the year, and when you lose you say it isn't a coincidence that you didn't have a great practice leading up to it – how do you maintain consistency in practice moving forward?

Well, that’s a great question. If we could all bottle the answer to that in coaching, then you really got the magic potion, right? It’s a long season, buddy. What you’ve got to realize as a coach sometimes is it’s tough to keep your guys at the highest, playing at their best, their highest level of focus. Sometimes it takes adversity to get people refocused. That’s just human nature, is what you fight, is really the answer to your question and it’s all of us at every level of sport in every sport is the hardest thing, to be able to stay playing at a peak level of mental focus. I’m a big believer in mental stage; hungry teams, humble teams tend to practice well, prepare well. Complacency in life, whether it’s in life or in athletics, complacency is always your opponent at times, not even the team you’re playing, it’s your complacency in your mental state and your human nature to relax at times, so we’ll see. Coming off the tough stretch that we’ve had, sometimes it’s the schedule, it’s not how you’re playing. It’s usually a combination but we should not have any complacency right now, so hopefully I don’t have to deal with that.

Jules Bernard shot 46% from 3 in the first 10 games but is shooting 18% since – how much of that is 3-pointer numbers going up and down and how much might need offensive tweaking or technical adjustments?

Great question and I’ll answer it for you for Jules but I’ll include the whole team because going into January, coming out of our COVID pause, we were by far leading the league in three-point percentage. Since then, we’ve been at the bottom or toward the bottom if you go with the games from January on. So I’d say it’s twofold, I’d say yes and yes to your assessments; some of it is shot selection, some of it is the law of averages. Shooting comes and goes like your old high school girlfriend, buddy. So I do truly believe the answer is both. The way to solve it, though, is the hard ones, you have to eliminate. If you’re struggling, it’s one thing, but if you’re taking hard ones it’s going to compound the problem. But I would say that for the whole team, not just for Jules.

Defensive changes?

We won’t tell Kyle Smith. We’ve got to do a better job at times on the ball, we just get taken for a basket and have to have more pride in our one-on-one defense and then our weakside help has got to be much better than it is. I don’t remember the last time we rotated and took a charge, so it’s something we’ve gone over yesterday in an extensive film session. I tell the guys, shot selection, guarding the ball, defensive rotations, those are hallmarks of well-coached teams, so yeah, I’m upset because I have a lot of pride. I didn’t wake up on third base, I had to get guys to do those things to get to where I’m at in coaching, so it’s definitely a point of emphasis, contention and I’ve got to get the job done with my coaching staff so we can do a better job of those things. And if your question says if that means change in lineups, that means guys not getting back in the game when they don’t take a charge, whatever has to happen will happen to improve those areas.

Watch film immediately after a loss?

Yes. Any game, I immediately – as soon as I can get on a plane to come home or as soon as I get back to my house, I immediately seclude myself, watch the film a couple times and take notes, win or loss, to answer that. I just rewind it more times in the loss, takes me a while to get the misery out of my system. Very, very hard to enjoy watching the Super Bowl.

Is that part of the job or is that something that's just in you?

Yeah, I mean, I can't speak to other (coaches). Darren Savino, we've been together a long time, he has a term he uses, clear-headed. Clear-headed people, they don't have stomach problems, they have a full head of hair, they don't stress out. I'm far from clear-headed. I also think that you have to look in the mirror. I don't think the answer is pointing at players. Sure, you can talk – look, you can be objective and say part of it's the schedule, we had four straight possessions where the ball goes in and out, three times in-and-out layups, then Tyger's free throw goes in and out on the front end of a 1-and-1, guy has a career night against us. And that's all factual, but that doesn't help you improve. I'm not gonna say, well, be clear-headed about it. I try to look in the mirror, what do I gotta do to make sure our team's performing, so that's just the way I'm wired.

On the injury-prone side for a season in your career?

Yeah, well combine it with COVID and making an emergency landing where the windshield is shattered at 30,000 feet, it's been a very eventful year to say the least, Tracy. It's been a very eventful year with all that stuff going on. All that being said, hey man, we've still got enough guys to play, it's my job to make sure that we're playing well. So we've had a tough stretch of games, hopefully it makes us better and we use it to improve. But yeah, the pointed answer is no, I've never had this many injuries, never. And it's really going back to starting with Chris Smith.

Windshield plane moment scary moment?

Extremely. Yes, yes.

Life flashing before your eyes kind of thing?

For all of us.

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