Cal Head Coach Cuonzo Martin

Opening statement: 
"Great team win. To get number 27, I'm excited for our guys. Obviously, there's a lot of tradition and history here at Cal, a lot of great players have come through this program, had great success with teams, too. It's not something we set out to do. It just sometimes turns out that way. We have to continue to protect our home court, fight for our home court, continue to get better as a team. The great thing about this, of course it's 27, but you see the guys shoot the ball well, 3-point shooters making shots. So that part was fun to see.
 
On Jabari Bird's game…
 "Jabari is a talented basketball player. I thought he was our best player before he got injured, and I don't even think that was close the way he was playing on both ends of the floor - not only how he's playing but how he's leading , defending, rebounding. He was playing really well, and to see him play well tonight, I'm not surprised you see there's 25 points. I think that's a career high for him, but he was playing really well. He was playing really strong, attacking the rim. And he was really leading, so it's fun for me to see him play well.
 
On how long until the Bears start to focus on Virginia…  
"Oh, right back at it tomorrow. We will be right back at it, it never stops. Again, it's a tremendous honor to be a part of 27 straight in an institution of this magnitude, not only this team, but David Kravish's group as a senior. That's where it started. And then last year's team, Tyrone Wallace as a senior, Jaylen Brown, and those guys did great things. We just really try to protect our home court. That's all we talk about, we don't really talk about numbers, we talk about fight and protect your home court, because you have to do that. And it's not an easy thing to do. Virginia comes in as a talented team, but that's another number, and we have to focus on winning a basketball game. For us, it's protecting our home court and doing what we need to do to get that done.

Senior Forward Jabari Bird
 
On being more confident this year…
"I mean, I put in a lot of work on my game, so why not show them out on the court. I feel like it's a waste of time to put in all that work throughout the season and when the lights come on you don't show out. So I've just been trusting my game and shooting more, and look to keep it going moving forward."
 
On having an early sense that it would be a big game…
"I wanted to bounce back from last week. I feel like I played poorly against Davis, but as a team I felt like we were on the brink of history, so just come out and handle business. But I didn't come out into the game thinking I'm going to set a career high tonight."
 
Sophomore Forward Ivan Rabb
 
On how much different the team can be when Bird is playing at a high level…           
"Obviously he's an explosive scorer and an explosive athlete, but we need him out there. He plays the game the right way. He's not selfish, so he has the right balance to look for a shot. We appreciate him but we have to continue to play together as a team and we did that tonight."
 
On knowing when Bird is about to get on a roll or not…
"All I know is that when he hits that first 3, he hits open 3s but if he gets contested, a pull-up whatever it is, I feel like he has it going. Once he does that and he gets to the basket the next time, then you know he has it going. So what I try to do is play off of him. I'm sure everyone else does the same thing, but when he's going like that we have to continue to feed him, and we did tonight."

Cal Poly Head Coach Joe Callero
 
On Cal…
"They have two to three legit 7-foot players. They have NBA first-round draft picks that will be playing in the three-letter league and I love it. I think it's a great game for our players and coaches to help us continue to tweak things that we need to improve, and yet realize that we have another game on Tuesday that will have the same athleticism and length as this one. This is what we wanted in a game. One of the things that I think Cal did a really great job in to start the second half was to change their lineup and bring another shooter in to start the second half. This made the court just too big for us to cover—they had shooters all over the floor. (Jabari) Bird really heated up, (Grant) Mullins is a great shooter and (Charlie) Moore is just scary—I really respect those players."
 
On Charlie Moore…
"For a freshman, I think Moore is not only a top 100 kid in America, but has great poise and feel for the game. I saw him score 38 points as a freshman against UC Irvine with some of Cal's top players out. Cal is back to full strength now, they really look like a team to me that could compete with the top four in the Pac-12--they are building an NCAA resume.
 
On the game…
"We had a layup that we either got fouled on, or missed the layup, got no call, and instead of us getting the two, they (Cal) ran across the court and hit a corner three—that's a five-point swing that I think hurt our emotions more than anything. The crowd really got into it, the crowd really woke up on a Saturday afternoon after finals, and suddenly we realized we were in Bear Territory and we were getting eaten up."