WATCH: Mick Cronin on UCLA Beating Maryland, Moving to Big Ten

Cronin praised his players' defensive efforts in Wednesday night's win over the Terrapins, labeling Jaylen Clark as the best defender in the country.

UCLA men's basketball coach Mick Cronin spoke with reporters following the Bruins' 87-60 win over No. 20 Maryland at the Xfinifty Center on Wednesday. Cronin talked about how his players executed on the scouting report, the runs they were able to string together thanks to their defense, Jaylen Clark's continued emergence on both ends, the UC Regents approving UCLA's move to the Big Ten, his thoughts on the cross-country road trip so far and how Adem Bona has improved.

Opening statement

Obviously, we’re not that much better than Maryland. I think a couple of things—one, they were in a bloodbath on Sunday, we were able to play our subs most of the game against Denver on Saturday, they were in a bloodbath against Wisconsin last week as well, so sometimes it’s the schedule. It happens a lot in the NBA but in college, it does happen, so I think the schedule was clearly in our favor. We had played four of our last five at home—I think three in a row at home—and they’re coming off three straight bloodbaths, so their emotional tank might have been a little bit on empty. What Kev’s done early—as you guys know, we’re best friends—what he’s done early to have all these people here and do this this quickly is a miracle, they had a great recruiting class and have great things to come for Maryland basketball. You’ve got the right guy in charge.

Complete effort on both ends – 10 steals in first half, only turned the ball over four times – almost a perfect game?

That was our game plan. No, I mean our game plan was take care of the ball. I think what Kev’s done with this team, you know, look, with all due respect to certain people, Patrick Emilien was playing at St. Francis in Brooklyn—my high school was bigger—last year, Reese didn’t play the second half, you know, he had to plug a couple of guys in with the team to throw together quickly. It’s amazing that they were able to do it, that being said, our guys did a great job with the scouting report. Again, psychology of the schedule. They were beat up and were revved up to prove that we’re a lot better defensive team than we showed in Vegas. Our goal was to play great defense and hold them to one shot, take care of the ball. If we take care of the ball, we’ve got plenty of guys who can score. Talent’s not an issue for us, all we’ve got to do is not turn it over. But tonight our mind was on defense, I thought for the first time in a long time, we were trying to win with defense—actually Stanford we opened the game up 17-2 [17-0]. Not against Oregon, though. It’s the hardest thing, to keep kids grounded.

Tonight change thoughts of how good this team can be?

Um, you know, I don’t get caught up in that. I try not to get ahead of myself. I mean, you guys asked me my first year if I was worried about just rebuilding and we won seven in a row and lost the Pac-12 title at the buzzer. So, you know, like I told Kev, tonight, it’s one game. You lose five in a row in February and it ain’t going to matter much tonight. They go on a run and win a bunch and it don’t matter, so I don’t get ahead of myself. Injuries happen, pandemics happen, last year we got shut down for a month, but I told you, we’ve got a chance to get better. We’ve got eight freshmen out there, you know, six scholarship freshmen. They’re going to get better, they’re all talented kids, so we’ve just got to make sure we’ve got a singular mind and we had a singular mind tonight. We were on a mission to be a better defensive team tonight. Like you said, we’re 55-2 in the last four years when we hold teams under 65 points. So that might be why we win because everybody has Johnny Juzang and Jules Bernard and the guys we’ve had—everybody’s got players. You’ve got to play defense, man.

When you looked at Maryland on film, what did you see that made you think you could be so aggressive in passing lanes?

Well, that’s who we are—we force 17 turnovers a game. Jaylen Clark on our team, he had 12 deflections and he took a hard fall but he still four steals. I mean, he’s literally the best defensive player in the country. Now, Jaime actually had some stuff going tonight defensively—he got four steals, that’s new for him, but I had his mind in the right spot tonight, I’ve got to keep it there, so give him credit. We did a lot of switching, you know, tried not to let them in the paint. We did everything we could to try to keep Jahmir Young out of the paint, front Donta Scott in the post, try to keep them out of a comfort zone and I think it just kind of snowballed. Like I said, you guys know they’re better than that. I mean, I saw a team out there on an emotional gas tank that was almost empty because I just believe in the schedule and what they’ve been through, we were fortunate we caught them beat up.

Regents approved move to the Big Ten?

Yeah, I knew that was coming. You’ve got to understand, in California we like politics, we like to make everything pretty dramatic. The Big Ten thing’s been done for a while.

So you might take this trip in the future, how did it go?

Well, first of all I had been here—my man Justin Jennifer had played Millford Mills, I actually came here to see Dion Wiley and couldn’t get him but I left with Justin Jennifer, who won me a lot of games and I talked to his dad Howard today, we were texting, so I had been in here, it’s a great place, the student section was awesome. Obviously, we took the air out of the building. Look, the world has changed, you’ve got to embrace it and roll with it; they make nice planes for a reason and when you live in California, it’s awesome, trust me. When you turn left on Sunset to go to work, I pinch myself. That being said, though, when you go anywhere else, everywhere’s kind of far. It’s not like when we play Washington it’s a quick flight, you know, other than the SC game. It’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be tough, I’m well aware of that.

Adem's best game with interior rim protection?

Yeah, by far his best game. We’ve got to get him the ball more. He’s starting to get confident in his offense, we’ve really worked hard on our passing and we got him a lot of lobs tonight, got him the ball more tonight. Again, for him and Amari, it’s hard, like, well, you think, I’m a top-10 guy, I’m going to walk into college and just dominate. I mean, it’s just not that easy, man it takes some time, but your rate of improvement depends on your attitude and your effort and he’s A-plus, so is Amari, all our freshmen are, and that’s why their rate of improvement is going to help us get to where we can hopefully get to in March.

Shut down Maryland's 3s until the end of the game – an emphasis?

Really, I was worried about their penetration. Kevin’s a good coach, he understands that the easiest three is to drive it and kick it out and they’ve had a lot of success with that so far this year, so we want to take away the drive to the kick-out three. So we were successful at doing that. Ian Martinez got it going, made some shots for them late, but I was actually happy about that.

Follow Connon on Twitter at @SamConnon
Follow All Bruins on Twitter at @FN_AllBruins
Like All Bruins on Facebook at @FN.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