UCLA redshirt freshman safety Tevin McDonald is emerging as one of the team’s promising young defenders, and most promising quotes. Here’s a conversation we had this week as he prepared to play his brother, T.J., later today, and here’s Vinny Bonsignore’s column on the two of them and their father, former USC safety Tim.

JG: When did you officially decide on UCLA?
TM: “When I came down here for an unofficial, came to see a game, I’d never really seen UCLA too much. Growing up, that wasn’t the school. It wasn’t just all USC for me, though. But I came down here, saw the locker room in the Rose Bowl and I fell in love. I had great relationships with the guys here – Sheldon Price and I went to camps together before he even committed here – and I liked Coach Neuheisel and he sold me. I loved it here, and it was a great choice for me.”

JG: You committed so early, you might have discouraged USC from recruiting you…
TM: “I don’t think their intentions were to recruit me even if I had a great senior year. Who knows? I committed early, so I eliminated that.”

JG: Did you ever have interest in USC?

TM: With their tradition and their recent success, how as a young athlete who wants to win, who wants to play for all the things you can play for, going to ignore that? I understand if you want to be a Trojan, they’ve had great success through the years. But my brother is a Trojan. My dad was a Trojan. Growing up, I was always known as Little Tim or Little T.J. Just getting to Edison, I was Little T.J. My dad was head coach, so to the older guys I was Little Tim. Middle school, T.J. was an eighth grader, I got there as a seventh grader, so I was Little T.J. All of elementary school.
“This seemed like the perfect opportunity to come here and be Tevin.”

JG: What were your dad’s thoughts on the decision?
TM: “When I got offered, my Dad and I had a long drive home – I actually had to leave the camp early for T.J.’s graduation – so we talked, a long talk, 3.5 hours of my future and what I wanted to do. He was really a huge advocate on me coming here. He thought it would be great. At this point, it’s really cool to see how this all panned out.

JG: Describe your relationship with T.J….
TM: “We spent a lot of time together; we have a little sister, but it was really just us two. We found out as we got older that we gravitated toward each other. Our circle of friends got smaller and smaller. Don’t get me wrong – we definitely had our battles. Outside basketball in the driveway was my friends versus his friends. We found a way to play two-on-two football. A quarterback, someone counting alligators, and then a 1-on-1 on the outside.”
It didn’t stop there.
The McDonalds’ cousin, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Fresno State return specialist Clifton Smith – whose younger brother, Brandon Breazell, played wide receiver for UCLA – strapped his younger proteges in helmets and shoulders pads, set them five yards apart and said go.
“Outside of sports,” Tevin McDonald said of T.J., that’s my guy.”

JG: This isn’t much of a story if you don’t have three picks against Cal and 11 tackles against Arizona State. Talk about your season and what it took to get here…

TM: “When I started playing, that’s when the ball started rolling. T.J. told me before my first start, ‘You know what’s out there for us. You know what’s out there for you. It’s up to you to go get it.’ For me to have a game like that, and to have T.J. come celebrate – regardless of the Stanford loss, he came right over to Westwood and celebrated – for him to be that excited…
“It’s a dream come true to know that what we designed, how this all would work out, is really happening.”

JG: Wow, he came to Westwood? What’s it like to hear that from a play like T.J., with that kind of relationship, especially with someone who knows what you go through?
“Hearing that from T.J… (trailing off, shaking head) I have the utmost respect for T.J. I play the position, I know how hard it is, and I know what a good play is. I know what good players can do at the position. To see him make the type of plays he’s making, to see him put himself in a position to be a real force back there, a real fear – we both can agree he’s the most-feared defensive back in the Pac-12? Maybe the country? – that says a lot about his play and his mentality. So whenever a person like that tells you that’s a good play or you had a really good game, it’s nice to hear. And that guy just happens to be my brother.”