LOS ANGELES — Mick Cronin is yelling, probably.
Incensed by a bad call or a terrible shot — made worse by the fact that player knows better — the sixth-year UCLA men’s basketball coach is livid, stomping around the sidelines in his perfectly tailored suit and hollering at players who tower over his 5-foot-7 frame.
This is likely how you know him. And this isn’t even the entertaining part.
That comes after the game, when Cronin sets up at the news conference. He’s been ranting nonstop this season, in which his Bruins are 22-9 entering this week’s Big Ten tournament, providing more outrageous soundbites than Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney, another known crybaby. Not that Cronin is apologizing.
“When you get to a platform like this, you have an obligation to tell the truth. I know it makes me a target,” Cronin said in an interview with The Athletic. “I think people don’t understand, this isn’t Little League. I’m intense, yes.”
And memorable. Some Cronin highlights from this season:
• After a 94-75 loss to Michigan on Jan. 7: “It’s really hard to coach people that are delusional.”
• Following a 94-70 win over Iowa on Jan. 17, when asked if Eastern-based Big Ten teams’ cross-country travel is as challenging as the Bruins’ travel: “Oh, the Big Ten teams get to come to Los Angeles, where it’s 70 degrees, one time a year. They don’t even have to switch hotels; we (UCLA and USC) are 12 miles apart! Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re kidding me. Is this a planted question? You cannot be serious. … We’ve seen the Statue of Liberty twice in three weeks! You’re asking me to feel sorry because Iowa had to come to L.A. for a few days?”
• Explaining his team’s free-throw issues in a 64-61 loss to Minnesota on Feb. 18 at home at Pauley Pavilion: “Our crowd, they make it worse. When a guy misses a free throw, I mean, the stress in Pauley’s crazy! I mean, the guy’s not trying (to miss) — how about help the guy? How about cheer for the guy?”
And he’s still got maybe another month to go.
In an era of one-and-done NBA prospects and limitless transfers, it’s the coaches who are most recognizable during the NCAA Tournament. When it comes to Cronin, he whines — and he wins. Earlier this season, he became the youngest active coach (53 years old) to total 500 career victories.
His Bruins are a lock for the NCAA Tournament, projected anywhere from a six to an eight seed, in what would be the fourth appearance of his tenure after missing the postseason last year. He’s provided the stability the program had lacked, and a Final Four appearance in 2021, though it’s been an up-and-down first season in the Big Ten. And his demeanor has ruffled enough feathers to elicit several complaining letters to the editor in the Los Angeles Times.
But is the coach of one of college basketball’s proudest programs actually a sourpuss?
Asked after UCLA’s 69-61 win over Ohio State on Feb. 23 if Cronin is as grumpy as the social media clips imply, junior guard Skyy Clark laughed. Sure, coach gets on them — but he’s also pretty funny.
“He’s definitely got his goofy side. When practice is getting heated, he’ll call a foul and start thrusting (his hips in) the air,” Clark said, laughing, demonstrating Cronin’s showman tactics.
Not the visual you were expecting about the No. 1 curmudgeon in college hoops, eh?
Mick Cronin and No. 4-seed UCLA start Big Ten tournament play in Friday’s quarterfinals in Indianapolis. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
Cronin harps on players about issues on and off the court, admonishing them for not rebounding and not budgeting correctly.
“Roth 401(k), you better get one!” senior guard Eric Dailey Jr., who learned about the magic of compound interest from none other than Cronin, warned reporters recently.
“Coach Cronin is crazy, for sure, but there’s always a method to the madness,” said Jaime Jaquez Jr., who played for Cronin at UCLA and is in his second season with the Miami Heat. “Some of the things he said are so outlandish, but they stuck with me.”
One of his favorite examples: During Jaquez’s freshman year, 2019-20, the Bruins lost at home to Cal State Fullerton 77-74. Disgusted with their lack of energy and pride, Cronin made them practice the next day in plain white tops and black shorts, thundering, “You don’t deserve to wear UCLA gear!”
But the worst part came when, instead of the standard Wilson basketball, Cronin tossed them a wadded, taped-up ball of towels. Their effort hadn’t even been good enough to deserve a real basketball, he spat.
Cronin’s antics worked.
“We took that s— seriously,” Jaquez said. When the Bruins ripped off seven straight wins toward the end of the regular season — just before the postseason was canceled because of COVID-19 — Jaquez said it was undoubtedly because of that specific practice.
“He’ll say, ‘I know I’m an a–hole,’” Jaquez said. “But like, a lot of times the guys who people call a–holes are just the ones telling you the truth. And usually, they’re telling you exactly what you need to hear.
“That’s who he is.”
The other truth: Cronin is often saying out loud the things other coaches are thinking, especially when he talks frankly about the challenges of coaching in the name, image and likeness era.
“I’ve gotten a lot of texts from head coaches, not just assistants but head coaches, who are like, ‘Thumbs up!’ who agree with this analysis of today’s athletes,” said UCLA associate head coach Darren Savino, who has been on Cronin’s staff for 17 years at Murray State, Cincinnati and UCLA.
Cronin also has weighed in on topics ranging from the NCAA’s impotency to expressing empathy for the thousands of federal workers whose jobs were cut. As Savino points out, Cronin genuinely doesn’t care what outsiders think.
“Think about, who are the best coaches ever?” Cronin said. “They didn’t whisper sweet nothings in people’s ears. Even coach (John) Wooden, there was Coach Wooden The Coach and Coach Wooden The Philosopher and Grandfather. Those are two different people.”
Ah yes, Wooden, the GOAT of college coaches. Around these parts, he’s better known as the Coach Everyone Is Compared To, and the one no one will ever live up to.
That’s understandable, to a degree. Wooden won 10 national championships, coached dozens of All-Americans and built a dynasty unmatched in men’s college hoops. In some of those letters to the editor published Feb. 22, UCLA fans decried Cronin’s various comments, saying that Wooden would have never pointed the finger at players after losses.
Cronin, whose contract runs through the 2027-28 season and pays him more than $4 million annually, doesn’t so much as flinch at the criticism.
“I’m hard on kids,” he said. “I get that. But the guys I look up to like (San Antonio Spurs coach) Gregg Popovich, they’ve never been afraid to say what needs to be said. And I think it’s healthy for the game.”
Jaquez said it’s all part of a plan, anyway. By the time Cronin says something to the media, he’s already said it in the locker room a few times, as he did with former standout guard Tyger Campbell.
“People used to get mad when he’d rip Tyger in the media, but like, he’d die for Tyger — and Tyger knows that,” Jaquez said. “When he says it to the media, when he says it to the rest of the world, now it’s gonna hit a little harder in the locker room. He knows what he’s doing.”
Cronin said he knows he’s not for all players.
“They think of college as a trampoline to the NBA, and then think it’s inevitable they’re going to make that jump and they don’t need coaching or mentorship,” he said. “And a lot of that is not their fault, it’s ’cause they’ve been told ‘you’re a pro’ since they were 10 years old.”
The road to basketball glory, he added, is littered with former players who had that mentality. And he’s going to make sure his guys don’t fall victim to it.
Plus, if he’s being honest — and when isn’t he? — Cronin isn’t concerned about his players liking him right now.
And that’s true even when UCLA is struggling. The Bruins have been inconsistent in the Big Ten but went 13-7 in league play while adjusting to so much travel back East. After dropping four straight in early January, they reeled off seven straight wins, including three over ranked teams (Wisconsin, Oregon, Michigan State). They’ve seesawed the last month, winning four of seven, but locked up a double-bye in the Big Ten tournament and could make a run in the NCAA Tournament with the recent emergence of 7-foot-3 sophomore forward Aday Mara.
After defeating Ohio State, when Cronin notched win No. 500, he told the media he doesn’t really care what 18-year-olds think of him.
“I worry about when they’re 28,” he said. “Are they gonna say that I cared about them, enough to be hard on them and teach them right from wrong? Sometimes I say stuff I shouldn’t say, I’m well aware of that. I can be too hard on them. But I’d rather err on that side because I wake up worrying about what they think when they’re 28, not 18. When they’re 28, what was Mick Cronin all about?”
Alex Olesinski has an answer for that.
Olesinski was a senior at UCLA when Cronin got the job, a 6-10 forward from New Mexico who spent his final season under Cronin. Six years later, at 28, he’s pursuing Cronin’s profession, now a grad assistant at TCU.
“Sometimes I catch myself talking to our players like he did, saying: ‘You don’t understand this now, but you will when you’re older! No one cares that you played college basketball when you get to the real world, you have to fend for yourself! In four years, you’re going to miss all this!’” Olesinski said. “With coach Cronin, there are no participation awards. He’s very blunt. When he was yelling at me then, I’d be thinking, ‘Who is this guy?’”
He groaned good-naturedly. “But now, I get it. Now I have a better appreciation for him.”
Just like Cronin predicted — and planned.
(Top photo: Michael Allio/ Icon Sportswire via AP Images)
