UCLA Basketball: Mick Cronin Shares Brutally Honest Assessment of Bruins After Loss to Utah
The UCLA Bruins men's basketball team dropped a heartbreaker on Sunday evening, losing to the Utah Utes at home by a score of 70-69. It was a game that UCLA should have won, but they let it slip away from themselves in the end.
The young Bruins have shown their inexperience throughout the season, but there was hope they had finally turned a corner. Bruins head coach Mick Cronin said that he is tired of hearing about how his team can learn from losses. He shared an honest assessment of the team after the game.
“We’ve learned enough. We had enough losses,” said Cronin.
Cronin is looking ahead to see that this team may not be good enough after all. While there were always going to be growing pains, Cronin likely expected more growth at this point in the season.
Dropping this game to Utah isn't the end of the world, but it's a tough loss nonetheless. There was a lack of discipline within the Bruins against the Utes, and Cronin was clearly displeased by it.
“Two things that I already said,” Cronin continued. “Too many bad fouls. Egregiously unintelligent fouls. And terrible scouting report defense against Deivon Smith. Terrible. Not keeping him out of the paint all the way to the end. It’s not like we didn’t know that he has been starting at the point since we played them, since (Rollie) Worster got hurt.”
UCLA sent the Utes to the line 18 times, leading to the frustration of Cronin. He knows that his team can be better than this, but all they can do now is move on. They can look forward to the next opportunity, where they can put this bad taste out of their mouths.
