UCLA Basketball: Mick Cronin Offers Honest Assessment Of Frontcourt Defense

Fifth-year UCLA men's basketball head coach Mick Cronin has his sights set on March.

That's the only explanation I have, at least, for why he's getting so granular in his criticisms of his team following a 78-58 blowout win Wednesday over the (admittedly inferior) Long Island University Sharks.

He had some candid comments when talk turned postgame to how his two young frontcourt starters, freshman center Aday Mara and sophomore power forward Adem Bona, played defensively against LIU, per UCLA Communications.

"Well, their performance on the defensive end was O.K.," Cronin said. "Aday is learning and getting better at that. Adem has got to improve on his perimeter defense. He’s got to improve vastly on his switching on the perimeter and not fouling a jump shooter. We fouled two jump shooters in the second half. We also gave up 48 percent in the second half and 41 points. We stopped playing. We got up 30. I don’t what the score was with 11 minutes to play, but it says here (points to box score) we were up 30 and just stopped playing defense. We packed it in."

"So, we’re too young right now," Cronin concluded. "We’re not tough enough. That’s just the truth. We’re not hard, tough enough to be able to play 40 minutes. We don’t have enough guys that can play hard enough.”

Mara, a 7'3" potential NBA lottery prospect out of Spain, had earned his first start ever for UCLA in the win.

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