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    UCLA’s demanding Mick Cronin enters NCAA Tournament after tumultuous season
    • March 19, 2026

    LOS ANGELES — Practice had just ended. Jaylen Clark was tired, Kenneth Nwuba started walking to get water, Jaime Jaquez Jr. wasn’t expecting to hear a lesson. Mick Cronin had other ideas.

    The UCLA men’s basketball coach called his team to the whiteboard, grabbed a marker and began scribbling out math equations.

    Seven times one equals seven. Seven times two equals 14. Seven times three equals 21. Cronin continued rattling the multiples of seven. Except when he got to “seven times seven,” he wrote the product as “50.”

    Nwuba was puzzled, Clark began to laugh.

    “What’s wrong?” Cronin asked the 2022 UCLA men’s basketball team.

    “We were like, ‘Bro, seven times seven is 49,’” Clark said.

    “But I did the other six right,” Cronin replied. “Why are you looking at the one time I messed up?”

    This was Cronin’s way of making the point that “it only takes one bad environment, one bad interaction, one bad action to throw off all the good stuff you’ve done,” explained Clark, now a guard on the Minnesota Timberwolves.

    Cronin became the example for his own lesson this season when he wrongfully punished UCLA senior Steven Jamerson II and engaged in a heated back-and-forth with a reporter after the Bruins’ 82-59 loss to Michigan State.

    This is the duality of Mick Cronin.

    He’s honest. He crashes out. He complains about traveling, scheduling and officiating. He holds his players accountable and points the finger at them at times after losses. His antics have drawn plenty of criticism this season.

    But he also prepares student-athletes for the rigor of life. Fellow coaches value his honesty. The analogies and stories he provides are quirky, yet filled with deeper meaning.

    “What you see on TV,” Cronin said March 10, “nobody knows who I really am.”

    Bringing intensity

    The genesis of Cronin’s actions, good or bad, is an extreme amount of care, said Jim Leon, a former coach at Woodward High, who gave Cronin his first opportunity. He has a desire to win at the highest level, a love for his players and staff and a respect for the institutions he coaches.

    But that level of care isn’t always conveyed in a publicly embraced manner.

    “Sometimes,” Leon said. “Mick can get a little crazy.”

    That’s what happened in East Lansing on Feb. 17, when Cronin drew negative attention on a national level. He misjudged the severity of a foul Jamerson committed, an act he believed “was dirty” and intolerable for a player with the honor of wearing the “four letters” across his chest, at the home arena of coach Tom Izzo, whom Cronin reveres. He didn’t help himself later, when he accused a reporter of “raising his voice” at him.

    Cronin apologized, but the lashing out at Michigan State is part of the entire Cronin package.

    After UCLA’s 69-67 win over Purdue on Jan. 20, a clip surfaced of Cronin sarcastically saying, “I want to thank the Big Ten for giving us five of seven on the road, bringing Purdue here Thursday night – we don’t get back to L.A. until Saturday night – and giving us the team picked to win the league on two days’ rest.”

    His gripe was rooted in fact, but that comment caught the attention of the nation, becoming the story rather than any play UCLA made to upset Purdue.

    It’s an effect Cronin himself isn’t fully aware of, as he’s admitted, “I don’t read any (comments),” but they shape the perception around him.

    “A lot of people call him ‘over the top,’” said David Singleton, a UCLA assistant coach and former player from 2018-23. “Obviously, he’s intense.”

    In practice, he’s the same way. At an open intrasquad scrimmage before this season, UCLA forward Tyler Bilodeau’s late rotation allowed a wide-open dunk for Eric Dailey Jr. Cronin chided Bilodeau saying, “If you defend like that, you’ll be playing in Uruguay.”

    Bilodeau laughed, understanding the message. Players who embrace that coaching style can come away motivated, but others can struggle to take the criticism.

    “I don’t think he’s for everybody,” said Clark, who was named Naismith Defensive Player of the Year in 2023. “I think if you’re not mentally tough, wanting to work, wanting to go from a boy to a man, then it’s probably not for you.”

    “It’s definitely a shock to some players,” Singleton said.

    UCLA has lost key players such as Aday Mara, Sebastian Mack and Berke Buyuktuncel to the transfer portal in recent seasons. Denver Nuggets forward Payton Watson was ESPN’s 12th-ranked recruit in 2021, but averaged just 12.7 minutes per game in his one season at UCLA before declaring for the NBA draft.

    In the five years since Watson, the Bruins have signed only three top-30 recruits.

    Cronin’s actions and antics don’t mesh with every player or fan – not in this day and age, where opinions are formed with the touch of a screen. To understand them requires a trip back to an era where social media didn’t exist, a time when Cronin had a full head of hair, and was just starting to form his coaching habits.

    ‘Our kids just loved him’

    Before Cronin was even 20 years old, Leon brought him on as an assistant coach at Woodward High, a public school in the heart of Cincinnati. Cronin had played his high school ball for his father, Hep, at La Salle, an all-boys Catholic school. So the opportunity to coach at Woodward offered “a different perspective,” Leon said.

    “He got so involved,” Leon said. “And our kids just loved him.”

    At the time, Cronin owned a classic gold Cadillac. He’d stick around after practice, help the players with study hall, then drive them back to what Leon described as “some of the toughest neighborhoods in Cincinnati.” He’d bring them to his dorm at the University of Cincinnati to play video games with his roommates, he’d buy them food, he’d give them money for school dances.

    “He kind of fell in love with helping kids who needed help,” Leon said.

    This was Cronin’s introduction to coaching. No money – well, $500 for the season – and certainly no cameras.

    “High school coaches, they coach because they love the game and they want to help young kids,” Cronin said March 10. “That’s what I was taught coaching was for.”

    “I’m the son of a high school coach,” Cronin added. “And I believe that ‘coach’ is a sacred term. And it means you care about your players. And you’re going to spend a lot of time trying to help young people get ready to be adults because it’s a tough world.”

    Cronin’s mentors influenced his coaching style in other ways, too.

    “There were times where I would get upset,” Leon said. “Some of our guys just needed it. You just kick their ass and they’d respond.”

    In fact, during a preseason scrimmage open to Woodward’s fans, Leon ejected his own player. His best player, Damon Flint, who went on to be an All-American guard at Cincinnati, wasn’t showing any effort on defense, so Leon banished him to the locker room. Cronin, who had grown close with Flint, left the bench to console him.

    On a hothead scale of 1-to-10, Leon said, he was an 8.

    “But Mick’s dad,” Leon added, “was a 10.”

    “I yelled,” said Hep Cronin this year, “but I didn’t cuss as much as Mick because I was at a Catholic school.”

    A ‘relentless’ style

    Cronin went from playing for his father to coaching with Leon, to earning his first college position at Cincinnati with Bob Huggins, before spending two years at Louisville with Rick Pitino.

    Those experiences impact an aspiring coach. Growing under those figures, Cronin became a fiery leader with unbounded love for his players. He carries that approach into every moment as a head coach – often to his own detriment.

    Cronin describes his coaching style as “relentless.” An endless motor for player development on and off the court, and no concern for the way in which those methods are judged.

    “I have no outside influences,” Cronin said in February. “My outside influences are coaching friends of mine talking about coaching and player development. If you focus on that, then you develop Jaime Jaquez, you develop Tyler Bilodeau – look at his stats since he’s got here. Look at Jaylen Clark, who nobody wanted to sign [out of Etiwanda High School]. Focus on player development, that’s what we do.”

    Each of those players improved under Cronin. Jaquez became a two-way star at UCLA, and got selected in the first round of the 2023 NBA draft by the Miami Heat. Clark went from averaging nine minutes per game as a freshman to hearing his name called in the second round of that 2023 class.

    Bilodeau, a three-star recruit from the Pacific Northwest, became UCLA’s leading scorer this year. Trent Perry’s scoring average has increased by nine points in his sophomore season. Eric Freeny has emerged as a crucial piece to UCLA’s late-season surge. Donovan Dent has made strides as a defender and improved his assist-to-turnover ratio from 2-to-1 to nearly 4-to-1.

    Take a look back through Cronin’s career, and those stories are consistently repeated throughout his time as the head coach of Murray State and Cincinnati, too. Sean Kilpatrick, a player Cronin redshirted at Cincinnati as a freshman in 2009, was a first-team All-American by his senior year. Johnny Juzang went from averaging 2.9 points per game as a freshman at Kentucky to a March Madness star for UCLA as a junior.

    “I try to stay focused on player development, and that is not all basketball,” Cronin said.

    He talks to his players about their finances, their 401(k), and the importance of protecting themselves from outside influences such as agents. He tries to prepare them for life as a professional on and off the court, and he provides them with support when needed, too.

    For Nwuba, who immigrated from Nigeria to the U.S. when he was 15, and hasn’t seen his father since, Cronin acted as a parental figure.

    “He’s always trying to teach you to be a man,” said Nwuba. “That’s what a parent would do … tell you what’s right, what’s wrong, how it’s not fair.”

    For Clark, Cronin campaigned for him to win national defensive honors in 2023. He bet on him as an underrated recruit and then as a sophomore to make a junior-year leap.

    For fellow coaches, he offers advice and a model of authenticity.

    “Mick has always done a great job of developing that trust and showing the players, the families, that he can make their son a better player,” said Richard Pitino, the head coach at Xavier, who was part of his father’s staff with Cronin at Louisville.

    ‘He cares about us’

    It does, however, take the right type of coach or “right type of kid to attract to him,” Clark said.

    Cronin and Perry have built a relationship in which they can discuss scenarios openly. For example, during UCLA’s 81-62 win against USC on Feb. 28, Cronin pulled Perry after committing a mindless turnover, and the two shared a passionate disagreement on the sideline.

    “I’m just grateful,” Perry said following that game. “You know, we can talk back and forth, talk basketball, talk what I did wrong. You know, all those types of things. It’s something that a player dreams of, is having that relationship with a coach.”

    Cronin is giving Singleton the opportunity to start his career as a coach, teaching him how to analyze film from that perspective, challenging him to bring enthusiasm to each practice.

    “He cares about us,” Singleton said. “He’s intense because he wants to bring the best out of you. If he’s on you, it means he loves you.”

    Richard Pitino and Cronin often hop on FaceTime, smoke a cigar and chat about coaching. Pitino argues that Cronin “is for everybody because he’s “not afraid to tell the truth.” But in the era of social media, the patience for his candidness has diminished.

    In today’s college basketball, players often decide on a new coach each season, and prospects can develop perceptions years before being recruited.

    Cronin has adapted. He’s embraced the transfer portal. He’s been at the forefront of building UCLA’s NIL collective, Men of Westwood. But when it comes to his coaching style, he’s steadfast.

    “Times have changed with the money, so does responsibility,” Cronin said. “But it doesn’t change who you are and what you believe coaching is.”

    So he seeks players who will respond to that style, like senior Skyy Clark, who says the strategy is to “listen to Cronin’s message, not how it’s being conveyed.” He focuses on development. He offers lessons about life. He rubs people the wrong way. He is who he is, unabashedly. He leaves himself open for interpretation.

    “People can choose to see who they want, and whatever sells, sells,” Cronin said. “It doesn’t bother me. I don’t mind.”

    ​ Orange County Register 

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