Colorado Head Coach Tad Boyle
Opening Statement
“Losing is losing and the feeling is the same in your stomach and just your disgust and frustration and anger, whatever you want to call it, the litany of emotions. There's a different feeling today after the loss than after Thursday night's loss and something I talk to the players about in the locker room is that the reason that they're I think down and disappointed tonight is because they fought their tails off and they competed their tails off, and they came up short. That's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to have that pit in your stomach, it's supposed to feel empty. If it doesn't, there's something wrong with you as a player or as a coach, quite frankly. Our guys fought tonight and the feeling in that locker room on Thursday night was one more of disgust, disappointment, regret, and like what the hell you're going to do if you don't compete and we competed tonight. We competed tonight and we competed against a really good team and made plays down the stretch. Tyger Campbell, Jaime Jaquez are all-conference players in this league, they've shown it year after year, game after game, and they made every play down the stretch that UCLA needed to be made and they made a few more than we did and that was a difference in the game. Our guys fought and battled especially when Tristan (Da Silva) went out with five minutes to go. We could have folded our tents and felt sorry for ourselves and we didn't do that. The guys kept fighting and just didn't make enough plays down the stretch.”
On neutralizing UCLA’s two best players
“There's two ways you can look at our team this year. Let's go to Thursday night for example. You can say their two best players, Boogie Ellis, and Drew Peterson was better than our two best players, KJ Simpson and Tristan Da Silva, or you can say the USC supporting cast to their two guys was better than ours was. There's two ways you can look, the bottom line is we're a team, you win together we lose together and we need our supporting cast, and USC’s supporting cast outside of Peterson and Boogie Ellis on Thursday night, shot 70% from the field. That's pretty damn good from a supporting cast. Ours shot 36%, that's not real good. That supporting cast is critical. The two guys that you're kind of going to down the stretch, they're critical. It goes hand in hand and sometimes the supporting cast can make up for the one or two guys that might not be having a great game and that's happened on occasion for us, not very often, but today I thought our supporting cast battled and fought, I don't know the numbers, but I can live with it. You can live with guys that compete and give you everything they've got and do everything that you're trying to get done and at the end of the day, players make plays down the stretch and Tyger Campbell and Jaime Jaquez have made the plays and that’s why they're both seniors and I told them both in the handshake line, I can't wait until they graduate. This COVID year stuff, I don't know who's got years left and who's coming back and who's not but, I'm gonna have a drink when I find out both those guys are gone from UCLA because I've got unbelievable respect for both of them, I really do. I got great respect for Coach (Mick) Cronin and just the toughness that those guys play with each and every game, and they played with it tonight in a tough environment. Our crowd, I can't ask for anything better than that. I felt like apologizing to our crowd on Thursday. I'm not apologizing for anything other than the fact that we’ve got to try to get our guys over the hump and coach a little bit better and we’ve got to make a few more plays down the stretch.”
On Luke O’Brien stepping up
“Luke, he battles and he gives you everything he's got and plays with great energy and great emotion. I think for Luke to take the next step as a player, It's between the ears. It's not his physicality, because he's shown that he can rebound the ball, he can defend when he wants to defend, I think he's playing really, really smart basketball in terms of staying out of foul trouble or not making defensive miscues, whatever the case may be, offensively making the right plays, but Luke's getting better and better and better. There's no doubt about it. Since he's moved into the starting lineup, our record hadn't gotten any better, but Luke's gotten better and I guess that's a positive.”
On what makes Luke O’Brien such a good rebounder
“He goes after it. He's active. You have to go search the ball out. The ball is not going to come to you in basketball. You have to go search, you have to go find it. I've coached for a long time now you look at the great rebounders in the game, the great rebounders we've had here, Andre Roberson, Jabari Walker, they go find the ball, they go find it. They don't wait for the ball to come to find them and Luke's doing that. The biggest thing I'm trying to get Luke to do is to go after it with two hands. As big hands as Dr. J had back in the day, he never got one-handed rebounds out of the air. You have to get that thing with two. You don't have Velcro on your hands, you have to get it with two. Luke has been in a position to get probably, I would say 30 to 40 more rebounds this season alone just with two hands versus one. If he can make that jump, he could be one of the top rebounders in this league. There's no doubt because he does go after it.”
On Lawson Lovering’s Defense
“I've talked about Lawson defensively all year long. And what you saw tonight is what happens when he's not in the game. What actually helped us a little bit during that stretch was that they went small when we went small, so they kind of matched our small lineup with their small lineup, which I thought was an advantage for Colorado if we can keep guarding them and but again, UCLA is a good team. I mean, you might hold them for stretches, but they're eventually going to make baskets they're going eventually going to make shots because they're they've got good players and they run good stuff. But yeah, losing Lawson into the second file was painful and again you put him in he gets his third, now he's playing you know, it just was too physical of a game I thought to risk it. I kicked myself maybe the other night for not playing Tristan against USC and in the first half with two and but I don't question that decision I made with Lawson tonight.”
On Team Defense
“We played with toughness, and we, for the most part, followed the game plan. I thought we fouled them a little bit too much in the second half. Kind of bailed them out ad but yeah, I thought our guys played with great toughness on defense. And again, I always look at the rebounding column and when you out-rebound UCLA by five, you've done something, we always say we'll undo by eight, but I'll take plus five on UCLA any day because they're tough on the board. So I mean, you saw that last rebound that [UCLA F Adem] Bona got. We played great defense. We forced a miss. That was as impressive a rebound by Bona as I've seen in this league in a long time. He just went up and got it above the rim, and came down with it. We fouled him and he made both foul shots.”
On Tristan da Silva’s injury
“I don't have a feel for how severe it is. I mean, it is his ankle. It's not his foot, which I'm really thankful for because he is holding his foot I was afraid it was a fifth metatarsal thing, which I've had a lot of players have which means surgery, but it was his ankle, and again, sometimes with ankles, you're out for two minutes, sometimes two hours, sometimes two days, sometimes two weeks, sometimes two months. I don't know. You know, we'll see. We'll get a feel for that as we as we get through the week but I'm hoping I'm hopeful. I know If Tristan can play we'll play and we'll get a feel for that as the week transpires.”
On more team effort
“Absolutely we certainly can beat and we've proven that against the best team in the conference by far UCLA we've proven we can go toe to toe now we've come up short both times. LA was a 17-0 run and 25 turnovers. Okay, if we turn the ball over 12 times in LA as we turn it over 12 times a night. We might win that game. I don't know if we will or we won't but, you look at the final score. We were right there. We were right there tonight. If you can do that against UCLA means you can beat anybody now. We eventually have to start making some shots. We have to start making free throws in close games. One-possession games, two-possession games, and free throws are critical. So those are things that we have to do offensively because your defense and your rebounding can take you so far. It can keep you in games it can keep you right there. But eventually, you got to start making some shots and or getting in a line and then making free throws and we didn't do either one of those well enough tonight to win UCLA Did you mention.”
On UCLA Sr., G/F Jaime Jaquez Jr.
“The ultimate compliment is when an opposing coach says I don't like coaching against you and it's not I don't like coaching against you because they're bad kids. They're just really good players that create problems for you and they and they compete and you know, it's funny when you're coaching in the game. I'm not worried about Jaime Jaime Jaquez or Tyger Campbell. But when you're watching films of UCLA playing Utah or Arizona State or Arizona you see what they do again night in and night out in this league. It gives me great respect in great appreciation for what they do on a game-to-game basis because look, our game plan was to slow those two guys down their game plan was to slow Tristan and KJ down. You know and if you're successful doing that, then it comes down to the supporting cast that was talking about earlier whether it's for UCLA or Colorado. They're just good players.”
Colorado Players