California Head Coach Wyking Jones

 
Opening Statement:
 "I was happy with our guys' effort tonight. I felt like we battled and competed for 40 minutes, but they're a very good basketball team at every position. We came out and I thought we had a great start, and much of the time we ended up having a scoring drought. We saw that in the middle of the first half, and a lot of it was our own fault. Marcus takes a jump shot and Don takes an ill-advised shot. We could have had better shots and that led to them going up by 10 at half."
 
On the team's offense:
"Part of it is guys forcing the issue, but then part of it is also using more clock to get a good shot. In non-conference, teams don't know you as well and don't see you year in and year out. They don't know your personnel as well, and there isn't as much film out on you. Now you come into a situation in conference where everyone knows what everybody wants to run, so in order to get a good shot you have to work a little bit harder, you have to execute more, do a better job at setting screen, you have to come off the screen a little bit harder and so I didn't want it to be an up-and-down game against these guys because we aren't going to win that game. Obviously we didn't win anyway, but were definitely not going to win an up-and-down game with them. You come down and run more clock just to shrink the game a little bit and that's part of it. We had some guys take some shots at crucial parts of the first half when they made a run that I prefer them not to take."
 
On defending Arizona's big men and their three point shooting:
"You have to pick your poison at the point. Do you want those guys hurting you -- Ristic and Ayton -- in the paint, and getting your guys in foul trouble, or do you play the zone and kind of keep it tight and dare them to miss the long three? They made the long three tonight. Guys that don't normally shoot the ball -- Parker Cartwright goes 4-for-6 from three, and he's not even a high-volume shooter like that, but he saw opportunities, and knocked them down. That's part of playing against a veteran player."
 

California Freshman Forward Justice Sueing

 
On difficulties guarding the three-pointer:
"In our zone, I know we were doing a great job in the beginning. But some point, like halfway through the first half, our bumps from the guards to the forwards got a little sloppy and they hit a couple threes to go on that little run. We need to stay solid enough throughout the game to not allow little errors like that because it comes back and hurts us in the end."
 
On growing confidence shooting the ball:
"I've been a lot more comfortable throughout the season. My teammates put me in a great position to score and they are always there for me telling me to be aggressive, so I'm going to take those opportunities to score while also trying to create for someone else. I'm just playing and reading and that's how I've been. We were running a low motion while they were running man and I thought I had a mismatch on me. My teammates did a great job of letting me know that as well, so I was just being aggressive and trying to make a move to put our team in a better position to win. Unfortunately, we came up short but we are still working on everything and our team is growing every game."
 
On team's confidence:
"Throughout the season, we've lost a couple games in a row now, but we have to keep building. We can't get our backs up against the wall. We have to continue to move forward and keep pushing because we know how good we can be. We haven't shown it thus far but we have to keep pushing so we can catch that break soon."
 

California Senior Center Kingsley Okoroh

On turnover improvement:
"We saw their guards get a little spread, and our guys are good to speed up their guys -- Trier and Cartwright -- so we just tried to press them and they coughed it up. We weren't able to capitalize on turnovers."
 
On Deandre Ayton:
"He's a good player, and I tried to battle against him— but he still got 18 or 20, so he's a good player."
 
On difficulty guarding Arizona:
"It was difficult, as you saw. Our plan was to get out to the shooters, but the three-pointers really hurt us. He [Ayton] can really stretch the floor too."
 
On recent low total team points scored in games:
"We're just not hitting shots to be honest. I think we're still getting good shots but we're not hitting. We've got to keep working on it."
 
On tonight's performance:
"I felt good. My teammates kept giving me confidence to do what I do, so I felt good overall."