California Head Coach Wyking Jones

 
Overall thoughts:
"After showing improvement in the last five or six games, we've taken a major step back today. Yesterday in practice in our zone segment, I said to them, 'If we play the way we are playing right now in this zone, we are going to lose by 30.' I told (Academic Support Coordinator) Chris Oakes, 'Restart the clock -- we are going to redo this segment because this is unacceptable. We are not locked in.' It was better, but it wasn't what it needed to be to be effective tonight. It carried over into today. I don't know if it's fatigue, or what it is, but our communication wasn't there. We took a step back after taking steps in the right direction. We just have to get back to it and get back on track, because we arein a funk right now. The defensive woes carried into the offense and we couldn't find rhythm there. It's a lot easier to play defense when you are hitting shots."
 
On message after this game:
"Our margin for error is zero. We cannot afford to take days off from practice. I had three guys play over 40 minutes on Wednesday against UCLA, so I gave them a day off to recover. I gave them Thursday off to recover and rest, and we didn't bring into it on Friday. We didn't bring it on Friday in practice and this is the result from that."
 
On how you expect the team to respond:
"Typically, they put it in the rearview and come back with the right attitude. This one is tough -- tough on the team, tough on the staff. We just didn't have it tonight and it's my job to get them back on the right track. I said to them before the game, 'Continue to love.' That was one of the keys for tonight. What we are going through right now, the fact that we all come together and we enjoy coming to work, me and my staff, we all come to work eager to teach them and eager to practice. They continue to want to practice, with the right attitude, wanting to be around each other, wanting to get better means that they love each other. We are going to see what that looks like on Tuesday. I anticipate our guys will be fine, they are a close group. I'm sure they are embarrassed, but they have pride. It might be a good to go to a hostile environment for them to play right now."

 

California Forward Justice Sueing

 
On how the game got away:
"USC got on a great start. I think they hit their first three 3-pointers. We don't have that margin of error, especially our team, to start off that way, especially against a talented team like USC. They got started early and it just carried on throughout the game and it ultimately led to us losing by double digits, so that's the main thing."
 
On disappointing loss after encouraging progress:
"Of course it's disappointing. I wouldn't say 'discouraging.' We can't just look back onto this as we're still progressing in the season, we have to continue to make strides and although this was a little setback as far as how we have been playing as of late, we have to keep pushing and get ready against Arizona next week."
 
On Bennie Boatwright:
"Bennie is a talented player. We let him get started early and that confidence and his shot was feeling good and he got us tonight, he got the better — he got the best of us tonight."
 
On message to the team after a loss like this:
"We have to keep pushing. We were supposed to come into this game with a certain game plan and I feel like we didn't contribute as far as what Coach Wyking wanted, but besides the point we still had to defend and we didn't come up today. We didn't come strong enough and that's the results we get because of that."