UCLA Basketball: Mick Cronin Reveals "I've Never Spent This Much Time Yelling At Guys To Shoot"
An aggrieved Mick Cronin remains perturbed with his UCLA Bruins, even in victory.
Per UCLA Communications, the Blue and Gold's head coach explained after the club's regular season finale, a 59-47 victory over the Arizona State Blue Devils, that he had to encourage his players to look for their shot against ASU, especially late.
"I’ve never spent this much time yelling at guys to shoot. Literally taking Sebastian Mack out, you have to shoot the ball," Cronin revealed. "Like they are not going to let you shoot, drive the ball, I don’t care if you miss. It’s a hell of a deal when a coach says that to you, it’s a pretty good deal now. You have to shoot the ball now, it’s not like you can’t shoot. But, you know, young kid out there, a lot of people in the stands, you know, it’s not easy. Lazar [Stefanovic] and Dylan [Andrews] did not have good nights. I watched some games today, a lot of teams are tired. Dylan played a lot of minutes, in the last couple weeks. He needs some rest for sure. But obviously we really appreciate the crowd today for coming back and supporting us. The guys showed a lot of fortitude. Like I said, I told Sebastian Mack in there, anybody can make shots when you are up 20, a guy making shots when you're losing, that shows me something. Anybody can make shots when your team is rolling; you put a team in a game, and then you see if they can make shots. Those were big, big, buckets by him [Mack]. But our passing improved. We did pass it, we just were not shooting the ball. We just weren’t shooting it.”
The Bruins wrapped up the season with a 15-16 record, and will next suit up in the Pac-12 Tournament on Wednesday. Winning that event outright is now the team's only shot at making March Madness this year. Cronin clearly seems ready to offload as many of his players through the NCAA transfer portal as he can.
