Mick Cronin is attempting to lead UCLA back to national prominence. The Bruins finished 16-17 last season and missed the NCAA Tournament, which was the first time that Cronin was not a part of March Madness since 2010. I caught up the 53-year old head coach over the weekend in Westwood to discuss UCLA’s loaded transfer class, joining the Big Ten, and much more.
Jon Rothstein: What was the most difficult part of going through what you went through last season?
Mick Cronin: I hadn’t been part of a tough year in a long, long time. My daughter was probably just being born the last time that happened and now she’s graduating from high school. But you’ve got to show maturity — if you’re around long enough in this business you’re going to go through it. Jay Wright went through it. Jim Calhoun went through it. And those guys won titles and are in the Hall-of-Fame. The other thing is it ultimately makes you a better coach because you’ve got to win games with coaching when your talented is limited. It’s a challenge and you’ve got to try and grow from it. I don’t want to go through it again.
Rothstein: You’ve openly said that you think this is the deepest team that you’ve had as a head coach. When you get into the guts of your schedule, how many players do you think you’re ultimately going to be able to play?
Cronin: I tell everybody the same answer: The players will determine that. There’s an old saying, “you’re only as strong as your weakest link in the chain”. The challenge is, if we are as deep as we hope to be then how do we use that as a weapon? I’m not concerned about the guys buying in — they understand that. Trent Perry understands who was on our team. He was the last guy to sign up. And Dom Harris (Loyola Marymount) didn’t come until August when he graduated — he could have opted out this summer. These guys want to be here and they want to have a great team. It’s on me. It’s on the coaching staff to get the job done in terms of how do we use our depth as a weapon in terms of our defensive schemes.
Rothstein: The million dollar question is how UCLA is going to adjust to the travel this season in the Big Ten. Have you consulted with anybody in sports about that in order to best prepare your team for what’s ahead?
Cronin: I was able to add Dave Andrews, who’s now our strength and conditioning coach and he’ll be the best in the country on the basketball side. And Tyler Lesher — who has his PHD — is our trainer. Those two guys have been working on it for six months. One thing that I try to learn from great coaches is delegation and make sure that I listen to those two guys. The other person that I’m going to talk to this fall is our former Chancellor Gene Block, who’s still here as a teacher at UCLA because he’s done great research on sleep deprivation and the impact of sleep. Whether we should have guys sleeping on planes and whether or not it’s going to hurt their REM sleep or not. Look, NBA teams play 82 games. Some of it’s overrated, but the science side I do believe in and I’m letting the experts handle that.
Rothstein: From 2021-23, you had three teams that could have legitimately won the national title. How much does your hunger to win UCLA’s 12th national title burn even more after a year in which the program did not play in the NCAA Tournament?
Cronin: I don’t ever want to go through that again. As you know, I came here because I thought it was time for a change in my life and it would be better for my daughter as well. But also, I wanted to run to the challenge of getting UCLA to the point where we’re competing for titles. In three of the last four years, we’ve had teams that could have won the title. In two of those years, we got beat in the Sweet 16 and we had injuries, including massive injuries one year in 2023. And then a few years earlier, we got beat on a half court bank shot in the Final Four. The hunger is there to get back. That’s what I’m doing it for at this point — that and to help kids achieve their dreams. Some coaches out there right now that I have a lot of respect for — I look at it like we’re trying to hang on to our game and what it’s about — regardless of the rule changes that are happening all over the place. It’s still about helping young people grow up, get better, and learning how to be a man. And teach the game, give guys the truth about what they need to be better in the quest for their dreams. They just don’t get enough of the truth the way that basketball is structured right now in our country. They get a false sense of what it’s all about. Other than trying to get that 12th banner, some of us have banded together and we’re going to try and fight to the death to try and make sure that we keep teaching basketball the right way.
Rothstein: The makeup of the team that you’re about to coach is much different than the three teams that you had from 2021-23 that played deep into the NCAA Tournament. What has to happen by March for this team to play on that level?
Cronin: It’s interesting. What I’ve looked at more is baseball teams than basketball teams. I’ve tried to look at some of the teams the Yankees had that had a lot of free agents. In the NBA, because of the salary cap, there’s not a team that brought in eight new players and has six free agents. That’s a baseball thing. Ultimately, the free agents you bring in are guys that you hope want to win. So when we recruit at UCLA, I try to be incredibly honest. I don’t want guys to come here for a dollar amount. I want guys to come here because they want to get better as a player and they want to try and win a national title. You’ve got to become a team. You can’t just be a bunch of guys with talent. You’ve got to become a team that’s willing to fight through the times when they get tough because it’s going to happen. If you do that, you can grow and hopefully by March, you can become a team that hopefully wants to win a title for each other. But those guys didn’t know each other a year ago. That’s the challenge in the “portal era”.
