UCLA Basketball: Bruins make underwhelming hire with Mick Cronin

Mick Cronin is the new head coach at UCLA Basketball. But is he the right guy for the job going forward?

Mick Cronin has signed a contract to be the next UCLA coach for $24 million over six years. He was masterful at Cincinnati leading the Bearcats to nine consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. The last time Cronin had a losing record was in his second season with Cincinnati in 2007-2008 where they went 13-19. Ever since then however he has never even been close to having a losing record with the next closest season coming the very next year when he led the Cincinnati to an 18-14 record. Even with Murray State, he was brilliant over three years leading them to the NCAA tournament twice, while having a career record thereof 69-24.

Does this job really fit the Mick Cronin style though? He has always been the coach that wants to build his players, and not bring in one and done type players. Think of players like Jarron Cumberland, Sean Kilpatrick, and even Jacob Evans, none of those players were the ones to just skip right to the NBA. Now think about the Bruins from the last 15 years, with Lonzo Ball, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, Trevor Ariza, and Jrue Holiday just to name a few. Not a single one of those guys played more than two seasons in college with Love and Ball only playing one.

Cronin has stated that “UCLA is a very special place with a strong tradition of excellence. To be able to join such a world-class institution is truly a privilege, and I can not wait to get started in Westwood,”. Obviously, he is a great coach and everything, but now all the headlines are going to be around him, whereas in Cincinnati he was behind a curtain. He has never been one to get along very well with the press either, which living in LA is unavoidable.

He will also more than likely be given a very short leash. If this school was willing to fire Steve Alford a coach who led UCLA to the NCAA tournament four times and to the Sweet 16 three times. Alford also had a winning percentage comparable to Mick Cronin. Alford has a .663 winning percentage compared to Cronin having a .670 at Cincinnati. Very similar numbers between the two of them. Cronin has also never made it to the second weekend of the tournament either. So what made this a good move?

Cronin although he has not been flashy, he has been effective. He has taken every team he has coached and made them into very solid teams. He is also a defensive mastermind, and look at what Tony Bennett did this year with Virginia. Defense will travel to road games and more often than not win you a lot more games than trying to outscore the other team.

Also, Cronin has developed many players into very productive college players. I referenced some of his players earlier, and how they turned to be great players, and maybe that is exactly what UCLA needs right now. Maybe they do not need to go out and get all of the top prospects in college basketball to be great as a team like Duke does. They could take the approach of aforementioned Virginia who takes under recruited players and their length and size and end up developing them into studs.

When it comes down to it though I do not like the hire whatsoever. They made themselves look like a complete fool during this entire process. They tried at coaches like Jamie Dixon, Rick Barnes, and John Calipari but none of them took the job. They fired Alford at 7-6 so you would have thought that they would have figured out a short list of possible coaches but throughout the entire process, they looked like a lost dog.

I respect Mick Cronin as a coach but I do not think he is the right choice.  He is not someone who will draw a lot of interest to the program, to begin with. If you struggle to begin with as he did at Cincinnati he might be cut short very early. UCLA is also very used to bringing in top recruits and Mick Cronin has never done that.

I think Cronin made the right choice for himself moving to a top school in the country, improving his salary, and taking a shot to move up the ranks. But, UCLA what kind of coach are you looking for, all of your candidates were very different it was tough to figure out the direction they were trying to go with their program