Feb. 3, 2001
Stanford Head Coach Mike Montgomery:
We weren't good enough today. UCLA shot the ball extremely well, they were clearly the aggressor out there, which they've done to us before. We didn't handle the press as well as we needed to. We're in a little bit of a valley right now, we're not 100%, and this was not the kind of game we needed at this point. Maybe it is the kind of game we needed but not in terms of personnel. [Curtis] Borchardt out, [Ryan] Mendez with the flu. We needed to be 100% against a team that played as well as they played. SC took us to the task pretty well Thursday night. I was concerned about that ? we just didn't seem to have the energy that UCLA had and it showed. We didn't defend very well. We got out-rebounded substantially in the second half and yet with a play or two at the end ? we maybe could have pulled it out. They deserved to win. We just have to get back to business and bounce back. We get on the road next week ? hopefully get a little bounce back.
Q. Why do you think you weren't able to handle the pressure today when you have in the past?
A. This is better pressure than we've seen. They really gamble everybody up front. They're very quick,. When they're on their toes coming after you and really being aggressive, that makes them that much better in terms of their pressure. We needed to attack more, and we didn't attack. Truth of the matter is, they got us going at a pace we couldn't play. That's what they were trying to do and that's what we did. When we did attack and get the ball down the floor, we didn't handle and convert and the press paid [off]. That's why we shot the ball poorly, I think. When we executed, we got pretty good shots and pretty good percentages. They had us going pretty quickly and taking shots on leans, running full blast ? and that's not what we do. We needed to get back and get better control of ourselves. We kept going back to our out of bounds guy, which is our big guy, and that's not really what we wanted to do. We wanted to attack down the floor, we just weren't able to do it.
Q. First you said this is not the game you needed, then you said maybe it is the kind you needed.
A. No, we needed a tough game and we got one. We didn't defend like we need to defend. We gave up shots too easy. Earl Watson 20 [points], [Billy] Knight gets 22 [points]. We just weren't defending people. They were getting pretty good shots. They were taking at us and jumping up right in our face and shooting it in, so we were not aggressive enough.
Q. Did Casey Jacobsen have a bit of the flu too?
A. I don't think so ? not that I know of. Jason [Collins] had some. Mendy was really sick. He had a 102 temperature last night. He went to bed a 6:30 and took an IV and came back at halftime today and took an IV. In this kind of game, you have to have everybody 100% and ready to go and we just didn't. Tony [Giovacchini] had to play a lot more minutes, and then we got in foul trouble a little bit at the post and we didn't have Curtis. There were just a lot of circumstances that put us in an odd spot, and we just didn't respond well enough.
Q. Did you have any other options during their 11-0 run?
A. They did a good job with something we've been concerned with all along. When we have a shot that we think we're supposed to make or we think we're fouled and the ball doesn't go in or the foul doesn't get called ? we tend to stop. We're like, wait a minute, where's the call or why didn't that go down? They do a really nice job converting off of that. They did that two or three times and it seemed like each time they did they got an open three and nailed it. Those things are really hard to come back from. They shot 50% for the game and almost 50% from three [point range]. A lot of them happened in situations where we should have been feeling good, we should have been the aggressor, we should have gotten a knock and instead they come down and drill us and all of a sudden, we're back down to being down. That took a little bit out of us.
Q. Is there a silver lining ? like not being undefeated going into the tournament?
A. No, there's not a silver lining in losing to UCLA at home. We just didn't have enough fire power today. If this is the one little stretch we go through where we're forced to deal with Justin [Davis]'s sprained ankle, Julius [Barnes]' sprained ankles, Mendy's flu, Curtis' foot ? if we can come out of this and get everybody back, and this is the only timeit happens, then yes we'll get better and we'll bounce out of this thing and get back to where we were. But there are no guarantees that that's the case. We've got to bounce out of this thing with some fire. We've got to have some good practices and get guys back healthy so that we can compete with everybody that we need to have. We had a chance in the first half to really put a nail in some coffins with Arizona losing and we just didn't take advantage of it. We're still in first [in the Pac-10] and all those things, but it's going to make it that much harder for us. We were trying to get a little distance.
Q. Does that make the loss easier ? knowing that you were thin today?
A. No, I'm not looking for reasons to rationalize or excuses. I know what we were up against, I knew coming in what we were up against. I also looked at our team and said that we've got enough people to get this done. It wasn't the optimum situation, but it was enough to get it done if we had done all the things we needed to do ? and we just didn't and they did.
UCLA Head Coach Steve Lavin:
That was a great Pac-10 Conference game. Of course, I'm a little biased because we were fortunate to come away with a win today. I'm really proud of our kids in terms of the way they came back from a tough loss at Cal. I was impressed with their maturity from the end of the Cal game through the end of this game, just in terms of the way they prepared, their focus ? they had a two and a half hour, very workman-like practice yesterday. I'm really proud of them coming here against the No. 1 team in the country, an undefeated team, and to execute like they did for 40 minutes. Hats off to the kids. I think Stanford just caught us at a tough time. Our kids were a little salty and had that hard-edge. Our back were [against] the wall because you know you have to get at least a split on the road in conference play to stay in the race. With the way Cal manhandled us ? blitzkrieg-ed us ? on Thursday night, I thought our kids responded well and executed for forty minutes on both ends of the floor.
Q. Is there a simple explanation between Thursday night's game and today's?
A. After the game Thursday night, we didn't really overreact. We just said that we need to get back to the basics ? the things that allow us to be successful. We won eight of nine games going into the Cal game, and now we've won nine of 11. After the Cal game, I knew how Gary Williams felt last year in the NCAA Tournament. It was one of those things where obviously we weren't 35 points better than Maryland, but on that night we played so well and Maryland played so poorly, so you have this huge disparity and I thought it was a combination where Cal played extremely well on their home floor and we played extremely poorly. So, we had a lot to do with it, but also Cal deserves a lot of credit. College basketball, when you get into conference play, is really wacky, it doesn't make any sense. Oregon gets swept in LA and then they go home and beat Arizona, so go figure it. I think that's what makes college basketball so exciting, so as a coach ? you just try to peak your team and try to be resilient. You have to learn from each loss, learn from each set-back, and I think that's one thing we've done over the years here. Our team has started to play better towards the end of the year. We want to go undefeated, that's always the goal at UCLA ? to go undefeated and win the National title every year, but when that's not going to happen, I think the key is to keep making progress, individually and collectively from day to day in practice and with each game.