California Head Coach Cuonzo Martin

 
Opening Statement
"I thought it was a great effort by both teams. Both teams played extremely hard and competed at a high level. It went down to the wire. We had some costly turnovers and lost some momentum. I thought Ivan (Rabb) played too many minutes while he was exhausted, but we had no other options—when they go small, we couldn't put Kingsley (Okoroh) in the game because of all of their perimeter shooters. That's part of the game."
 
On Sam Singer's performance
"I think Sam has been playing well for us. I think Sam has really grown as a senior, really playing with a good pace and a sense of confidence. He can do a lot of things for us—he's really a jack-of-all-trades. He can play any spot we put him in—I'm just glad to see Sam play with confidence."
 
On the loss
"You'd love to win the game, but there's also a lot we can learn from moving forward. As a freshman guard, Charlie, as talented as he is, was going against a senior, and all you can do is learn by playing against better players. Charlie is a very talented young man, and he'll learn from it—he'll begin to understand what it takes and how to take care of the ball, attack the ball screens, push through the game. I think moving forward this game will be a valuable lesson for him." 

Senior Guard Jabari Guard 

On Virginia's second-half run
"We weren't getting stops, and they were getting shots off the fast break. I remember that we lost the ball in transition and they turned that into a three, and we just kind of got away from what we were doing that had kept us so close during the game. We took a timeout to settle down and came right back at them, went on a little run ourselves. It's really a case of a back-and-forth game between two good teams."
 
On Virginia's Kyle Guy
"We knew coming in that he was a talented player that makes tough shots down the stretch. I thought we played good defense, but he just made better shots."
 
On outlook on conference play
"It gives us something to look at. We're not a perfect team, but we're getting there. I think that we haven't peaked yet. I don't think we've shown our full capabilities and I think that's a good thing because we can only get better. A couple days off at home, and we'll get back at it against Arizona."

Sophomore Forward Ivan Rabb

On game plan to counter double-team
"Just make the right play out of the double team. When I didn't turn the ball over out of the double team, I thought I made good passes, I just don't think we got off as many shots off as we wanted to."
 
On the game
"Honestly, we definitely felt like we could have beaten them—it doesn't matter about the ranking. Just like every other game, there's things we can take from it—positive and negative. I think we had a lot of positives, but down the stretch we made a bunch of silly mistakes that will be stuff we can learn from. It was nothing that they forced us to do—it was mostly mistakes we made on our own to give the game away."
 
On defensive attention from opponents
"I always hang my head on making the right play—I feel like down the stretch I should have shot the ball a bit more when I had it but I was just stuck on looking for the next guy. I expect it (double-team)—I didn't get normal shots tonight, really only free throws."

 Virginia Head Coach Tony Bennett

On Cal and how the game played out
 
"Hard fought. I have lots of respect certainly for Cal, and Cuonzo and this team and knowing when I played against them when he was at Tennessee. His teams play so tough, and obviously last year's game, and the streak. You knew it was going to be physical, I told our guys this was going to be a good old-fashioned knuckle-buster. That's what we called it and that's really what it was. There was come sloppy play there. Both of us will watch the tape and be sick about, but then there was good hard effort. Both of us are a work in progress, we both have lost some key, key guys from last year's squads so we're still evolving and kind of forging our way with our identities so it's good for us to do that. I felt bad for him because I like Cuonzo and it was a tough shot clock call, but it was a big play, but there were tough calls the whole way."
 
On game that Wilkins had
"He just had a hard time finishing. You know, those are some big bodies, and very good players. He was laying it on the line defensively, I thought he was sharp defensively but we were having a little trouble with all of our interiors just finishing, making plays and that's why I thought let's open up the court a little bit, attack that way. We haven't done that too much. It helped us against Ohio State and wasn't great against West Virginia, but I thought it was necessary."
 
On how they did when Cal went with two bigs
"So-so. We knew we were going to give up a little but defensively, and I don't like to give up anything defensively, but I knew offensively we were going to at least get to move Rabb around, we're going to get drives, touch the paint, some looks, so it was kind of give and take."
 
On going on to their next game at Louisville
"The ACC is not a forgiving league. It's special. The Pac-10 was special when I was in it and now the Pac-12. It's conference time now and you're going to go against an elite team that you're going to have to fight and scrap and figure out ways to get it done, and this will hopefully help get us in this mindset and preparedness."