WATCH: Mick Cronin Talks Tyger Campbell's Impact, UCLA's Games Against Oregon Schools

Cronin talked about how Campbell can rise up and become a great point guard and Pac-12 Player of the Year contender.

UCLA men's basketball coach Mick Cronin was made available to reporters prior to practice Tuesday morning.

Cronin spoke at length about point guard Tyger Campbell's improvement over the past year and what it's meant to the Bruins as a whole on both ends of the floor. Cronin also previewed Oregon and Oregon State, who played each other during the College Football Playoff Championship Game on Monday night.

MICK CRONIN

Tyger doubled his 3-point percentage – what goes into that and how much does it help the team?

It’s all coaching. Huge for our team, huge. I thought during our tournament run last year, that was our one weakness offensively and teams that weren’t guarding him. Now we hope they don’t guard him because as I told you in the preseason, he had been our best shooter all summer and he has lived in the gym, so all the credit goes to him, it just proves that some people think that shooting or slumps are luck and they’re not, it’s a matter of dedication and commitment to getting better technically and developing muscle memory and putting the reps in. People say ‘You’ve got to have confidence,’ well it’s hard to have confidence when the ball doesn’t go in, right? So it’s like Darren Savino on 5-foot putts—why would he be confident, he never makes one, so you’ve got to give Tyger all the credit and it’s been huge for our team from an offensive standpoint.

Form different?

Yeah, he was a little flat-footed at times, so we’ve tried to get him to finish on his toes and when you show him a little video, he was just a touch flat-footed. His elbow was always under the ball, his hand placement was always correct, I didn’t like his follow-through and he wasn’t finishing with his legs the way, aggressively finishing into his shot, but you can talk about that stuff, you’ve got to put in about 10,000 shots in the off-season for that to become natural for the next season and he did that. So he’s just reaping the benefits. When you work on something the right way, it’s like putting money in the bank—you’re going to get to take it out later.

Assist-to-turnover ratio, 3-point shooting, Pac-12 Player of the Week, now a candidate for conference Player of the Year?

Yep. No doubt. Well, we’ve got a long way to go, a lot of games. Consistency is what all these guys are trying to achieve, but we’ll see how that goes, but I want him to chase that. You know, my talks with him in the off-season, you’ve got to go from good to great, you’ve got to challenge yourself, you can’t accept being good. I didn’t him to think, well, we went to a Final Four and I was a good player, that’s not enough; we need you to become a great player and you’ve got to chase your dreams and to do that, you can’t put in the same effort and expect a different result, so he’s put in much more effort and he’s gotten much better and he’s just reaping the benefits of his off-season work and it’s made us a much better team in a lot of ways, but his assist-to-turnover has always been great, not a surprise in that aspect.

Teams defending Juzang differently than last year?

A little bit. You know, they’re more familiar with him. You know, he didn’t play in the Pac-12 last year, I’d say definitely more of an awareness on him for sure but as the end of the season wore on and the tournament wore on, I think that that was the case late in the year last year, but I would say more consistent this year as far as what I would call marking him, you know, and our opponents know where he’s at at all times.

Tyger's shooting help Juzang and others?

Yeah, for everybody. Huge, right. It’s amazing, when the ball goes in, you become a better offensive coach, it’s just amazing. I would say that when you can make a team—geometry lesson, right—when you can make a team defend all five of your players, then they have to guard the whole floor and when you have guys that can’t shoot and you’re playing good teams, college is an over-scouted game versus the pros, where they play 82 and the players, 28% of the games are in a coma from travel and fatigue, that doesn’t happen in college. We have time to prepare, our scouting reports are locked in and teams shrink the floor and don’t guard guys that can’t shoot, so Tyger, aside from the points, it’s opening up the floor and just geometrically, it stretches the defense, so I’ve had many talks, friends of mine, pro guys are comical at times, they say college guys don’t understand spacing; yeah we do, our guys just don’t shoot the ball like the best 300 guys in the world that actually get in in NBA games. We stretch the floor but the defense doesn’t stretch on guys that can’t shoot. So Tyger’s shooting definitely stretches our opponent’s defense, but really right now, I haven’t seen it, so I don’t think anybody believes it. If you watch us play, to me, teams are guarding him like they did last year.

Tyger left open a lot last game?

I think that’s been pretty consistent. But to answer your question, I hope they don’t come around. But I’m sure at some point, if he continues it in Pac-12 play, which, I don’t see why he wouldn’t because right now his confidence is rolling at an all-time high, but we’ll see. But to this point, I haven’t seen the change in the way he’s been defended—now, part of that is teams picking their poison because you’ve got other guys and if you play him as a shooter, he becomes a distributor, so you may say, ‘You know what, we’ve got a better chance to win if we keep him out of the paint and don’t let him find all these other guys, even though we know he can shoot.’ It’s not that they don’t know, it could be that sometimes when you’re playing certain teams, you’ve got to pick your poison.

Watch Oregon-Oregon State or National Championship?

[Laughs] That was easy, the Oregon-Oregon State game was a great game; I had two going, I had the football game on the side, but Oregon-Oregon State was a wild game too. Obviously it’s a rivalry game for them, packed house, fans going nuts, I saw a lot of rivalry stuff going on—some players talking in the stands from Oregon, so it was a heck of a battle. Oregon missed some free throws, they really struggled at the foul line and it made that game close.

Expecting from Oregon? What have you taken away from their past few games?

Well early on, Sam, they struggled to score. They have a lot of new parts, trying to plug transfers in is not always seamless, where last year they really had a returning squad, they were a well-oiled machine. So they struggled to score, and this year it's taken them some time. But in their last five games, they're averaging 78 a game, so they've started pushing the ball to try and stay out of getting bogged down in the half court. Williams, he has been nonexistent, and then last night he was huge for them. Harmon's getting comfortable in their offense, Will Richardson's always been a talented guy. So typical Dana Altman, if he's got a bunch of guys, it's just gonna take him some time, but we all know it's just a matter of time before he gets them playing like a well-oiled unit. And all you gotta do, you gotta look at their last five games, statistically, where their points per game is way higher than it was in the previous games. It affects your morale when you can't score, and I think they really struggled with that early, but I think they're definitely past that.

Going to have fans Thursday?

Yeah, that's a question for our administration, Ben. Obviously, you know where I stand on that, can't be enough people in there for me. I watched the football game last night, indoors with 75,000 people, so you can imagine where I stand, I've been pretty clear, but they don't include me in that.

Good to finally get Oregon coming to Pauley?

Well let's hope we're not jinxed, let's make sure this game happens Thursday. Yeah, it's my third year and I haven't seen Dana Altman walk into Pauley Pavilion yet, but that doesn't equal victory, just cause the game's at Pauley Pavilion. That stuff happens now in the era of unbalanced conferences and throw in COVID on top of it. But we'll see if Pauley's empty or packed, that could probably have a difference. My obvious concerns would be, Ben, one, support of our players and this group of guys that has been special to the university, guys who came back to school. And two is competitive advantage versus disadvantage, cause when we go on the road, we're definitely playing in packed houses.

Jaime's toughness compared to everyone you've coached?

He's up there at the top, no question about it. I think what happens, sometimes, we – if a guy can't score, all we talk about is that guy's toughness, right? Because we can't talk about his offense, so we exaggerate his toughness, his defense, his competitiveness, his rebounding, his dive on the floor. Jaime's a scorer that's a warrior as a competitor. I would throw – see, on this team, I think, the reason we've become what we've become is I would throw Jules in there, I would throw Tyger in there and I would throw Cody in there as far as physically tough guys that have played through injury, that have played major, major minutes to get our program to where it's at. But yes, pointedly with Jaime, I think my point, I guess, Rick, would be sometimes it gets overlooked on guys that can score.

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