WATCH: Mick Cronin on UCLA-Northwestern, Big Ten Basketball
UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin spoke with the media Friday ahead of the Bruins’ NCAA tournament game against Northwestern in Sacramento. Cronin talked about his team’s improved defense down the stretch, going up against a familiar Wildcats coaching staff, the physicality of Big Ten basketball, Amari Bailey’s recruitment and where his family stands on the game.
THE MODERATOR: We have UCLA head coach Mick Cronin.
You've had a chance to take a look at some tape of Northwestern, review last night's game. What stood out to you?
MICK CRONIN: Northwestern has a great team. Whenever you win at Michigan State, at Ohio State, at Indiana, at Wisconsin in the same year, you must be pretty good.
Obviously I'm from the Midwest. It's hard to do one of those things. They're a veteran team. Great defensive team. There's a time where I carried their coach to victory at the Ocean course in The Bahamas with a wedge on 18. The best shot of my life.
Chris has done an unbelievable job. Obviously Northwestern has its challenges due to it being such an elite academic school. It's not the easiest place to recruit to. Chris has just done an unbelievable job. Happy for him. They've had a great year.
Defensively they're really, really well-coached. And they got really good guard play, as you guys know. We have our work cut out for us.
THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.
Q. How much have you heard from your sister since yesterday?
MICK CRONIN: Due to the fact that I said on national television, I was being facetious, she was going to be rooting for Northwestern, much like yourself. As an alum, they had signs made for her. She's a principal at Summit Country Day High School in Cincinnati. I guess it went viral on her. She sent me some pictures today I guess from her students posting signs and stuff in her office.
She would never root against me, so...
Q. Were the signs pro UCLA or pro Northwestern?
MICK CRONIN: They all made her Northwestern signs. She made sure she wore a UCLA shirt to school today (smiling).
Q. The other thing is the defense, obviously you want Jaylen Clark, but the numbers bear out your defense really hasn't had --
MICK CRONIN: It's actually gotten better.
Q. Yeah, went to up No. 1 in KenPom. So how do you --
MICK CRONIN: We're not better without Jaylen Clark. We try to train all year, as you know. We train for this time of year. We don't try to have a good season and then this is the icing on the cake. We try to train for this.
I think our intensity has gone up lately. That's helped. I think Amari being healthy and in game shape, he's had a month and a half now playing since he came back from the injury, has helped.
I think Jaime has definitely taken his deflections, defense, trying to create more steals. He and Amari are definitely trying to make up for some of Jaylen Clark's, some of his absence, with their activity on the defensive end.
We understand. Look, guys, it's going to be a lot tougher tomorrow, a lot tougher. Boo Buie, Chase Audige, those guys are veterans, and they're really good. I mean, they don't need a screen. They can get their own shot off the dribble. They got great one on one ability.
Q. You talked about Northwestern's defensive transformation. How do you think the addition of Chris Lowery has helped them this season?
MICK CRONIN: Is this his first year?
Q. Yes.
MICK CRONIN: See, I live in Hollywood now, so...
I did not know that. I just know they're really good this year. I'm not sure. I don't know much about their season last year. All I can do is speak to this year.
Chris Lowery and I played against each other in Murray State, Southern Illinois. It was a bloodbath, I can tell you that. Chris is great. He had a great run as a head coach. He was there with Matt Painter. I know he does a tremendous job.
His defensive background is as good as there is.
Q. Northwestern is known for throwing a post double out there. How have you prepped for that?
MICK CRONIN: You better be ready for it. It's what they do. Mark of a lot of good teams, whether it's offense or defense, they're really good at what they do.
Like if you watch them play, you know exactly what they're going to do. But that doesn't make it easy to attack 'em. I don't care how much prep you have. Because they're good at it, they do it with great intensity, they do it with great size. Their guards are big. As you know, Audige, I assume, 80 steals, led the Big Ten. I don't know. I would think 80 steals in a season led the Big Ten.
They recover extremely well out of their traps. It's team struggle to hurt them, to answer your question. And everybody knows it's coming, which tells you how good they are at it. That's a credit to their coaching. And they got a veteran team. They got some veteran guys out there.
Q. Talking about deflections, with Jaylen Clark, who has been winning that deflection bone recently?
MICK CRONIN: Tough for me to say. Now, he's only been out four games now, so I don't have that in front of me. I do know Jaime's gone up and Amari's definitely gone up. Those two guys in particular.
Now, Dave is going to claim. It's a big argument after every game. T.J. Wolf is in charge of deflections, and everybody runs in the locker room and starts to argue with T.J. that they had more. They want him to go to the replay.
Q. Players try to bribe T.J.?
MICK CRONIN: I'm sure. T.J. has been with me long enough.
Q. Your players talked about a different brand of basketball in the Big Ten. Tougher, more physical. They said they were up for matching it. What do you want to see from your players? How tough is your team to be able to match up against a team like Northwestern?
MICK CRONIN: Well, you better be ready. They're not going to get out of your way. You got to be able to deal with physicality and contact. That's life in the Big Ten. Always has been.
Nobody's getting out of your way when you go to the basket, as you know. It's really hard to have freedom of movement coming off screens. They're just so well-versed.
You have to be in that league because they all play that way. Not all of 'em, but 95% of the league, maybe 90%. The league's getting so big now, it's hard. Got to start reminding myself who's in the league now before we go in the league.
It's been that way for a long time. That goes back to Steve Yoder and Bob Knight going at it. It's the way the Big Ten game is played.
I think Northwestern, part of their success this year is they've been better at it, at dealing with it, giving it out. That's why they've had so much success. Probably because their guys are a little bit older, a little bit tougher, play a little bit harder on the defensive end. Then you combine that with really good guard play.
But schematically, their coaching, what they do defensively, I really like it. I like what they do because they know who they are and they're never confused. They know what they're going to take away. They know how they're going to take it away regardless of who they're playing.
They post trap, it's not every other game. It's like to the earlier question, they do what they do. The way they do the pick and roll, the way they defend screens. They do it with great intensity. So we better be ready for it.
It's not the first time we played a really good defensive team. But we told our guys it's like we're playing ourselves, schematically, other than trapping the post, which we do at times. It's like we're playing against each other in practice. You better be ready for it.
Q. Having the number of guys that you have that have tournament experience, obviously in a game you can tell how much of a factor it is. In situations like this where you have one day to prepare against a team that you probably haven't played or haven't seen, how helpful is that experience to be able to lock in?
MICK CRONIN: I mean, it doesn't hurt. But what helps more is that we play in the Pac-12, where you play Thursday, Saturday all year. We have been playing Thursday, Saturday. Our guys, they don't know anything else.
This is really normal, other than having to come here and do media. The fact that we don't have to travel in between games. Usually we play Thursday Utah, Saturday at Colorado. Try that one on for size.
Q. Or the Washington trip.
MICK CRONIN: Pick one, you know? But you get to come to L.A., it's like this. You don't have to travel when you come to the L.A. schools.
Look, experience always helps. If you can have talent and experience, you got a better chance. But I'll take talent. I'll take talent. I'll take Amari Bailey getting 18 tomorrow if he can get it for me.
Q. Speaking of Amari Bailey, he committed to UCLA. That coach leaves. You step in. How were you able to gain his confidence and get him to come to UCLA?
MICK CRONIN: Really wasn't hard at all. Amari Bailey's recruitment was one of the easiest things I've ever done. I'm being serious. Like, he committed without a visit. He never, ever took an official visit.
We started talking, and he committed. I didn't even tell my staff. I was recruiting him myself. One day he committed. He told me, Hey, coach, is it all right if I commit on my birthday? He committed to me. We had a talk about things, his mom and I and him. He goes, I'm going to announce it on my birthday, two weeks later.
I said, Whatever you want to do, man.
I forgot. I'm in the middle of a season. He announced his commitment. I walked in that day and the staff is looking at me like, What?
I was like, you know, Be nice if you guys would do something (smiling). Help out a little bit. I hope you guys can sign somebody.
No, it was funny. But, no, it was really easy. He's a no-nonsense guy and so am I. Once we got to know each other, the rest was easy.
Q. Are you going to handle the Adem situation kind of the same as in the first game?
MICK CRONIN: We're getting ready to practice. I'm going to have him do some stuff today to give me a comfort level of where he's at. Some things I hadn't asked him to do up until yesterday. I'm getting ready to test him out more than I have.
Q. I don't think we've ever talked about, Adem and Amari are five-star recruits. How unique are they? How much of a unicorn are they?
MICK CRONIN: You would know this being your job versus mine, but I would say really unique. A lot of freshmen, they're delusional because of other people have told them that it's going to be easy. It's not their kid's fault. They get to college and they're playing against 22-, 23-, 24-year-olds. It's way harder than they thought. They can't play hard enough. The game is too physical. The game is too fast. They're not tough enough yet. It just takes some time. That's 98% of 'em.
I would say very rare. Amari and Adem physically could compete and play hard enough to be able to play from day one. Now, there's some things they had to learn along the way. You get to a comfort level on the offensive end. But to be intense, tough, physical, mature enough to pay attention, all those things, to be able to start basically every game they've played. I think Amari maybe not one because he was coming off that injury.
It speaks to how hard it is. A lot of guys, it's not their fault. They're just not ready yet.
Q. Curious if you've seen the graphic of Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton and Ken Nwuba that's been going around?
MICK CRONIN: I think it's awesome. I mean, Mac was four for four. Why wasn't he on there? I get it, Kenneth had 10 at half, though, right?
Just really happy for both those guys. You don't see on the outside -- people watch your team play, and they don't see how hard the other guys are working. Abramo Canka, Kenneth, Dylan, Will. You know me, I'm a big believer in development. I don't know who is here from Northwestern, but Nicholson is a great example. If there's any Northwestern writers, I mean, he didn't play. He goes from not playing to starting center on an NCAA tournament team from his freshman year to his junior year.
Just shows you. You don't want those guys to get discouraged. When those guys get a chance to play, play well, you're just really happy for them. Because I know what they go through. Somebody told them how many stars they had. We keep talking about that. I'm going to ask if anybody is a general.
You know how hard it is for them. You go from a star to struggling to get in the game. It's a tough, tough transition for a young player, especially if Tracy Pierson at 247Sports puts too many stars on them (laughter).
Q. You've played two Big Ten teams this year in Maryland and Illinois. How much do you look at common opponent game tape to get ready for a team you're not familiar with on a short turnaround?
MICK CRONIN: A lot. But I'm more interested in their last 10 games. Again, if they played somebody that runs a similar offense or defense, as we do, strategically you can see how they defend it, how they defend it in offense similar to ours, how they attack a defense similar to ours. Anything you can pick up.
Obviously Rod Palmer has been scouting them since Sunday at 3:30, whenever it went up on the board in L.A. I'm catching up.
Q. Chris talked about...
MICK CRONIN: My wedge (smiling)?
Q. It came up. He talked about catching a couple of your games this year. How much of Northwestern's games have you watched this season?
MICK CRONIN: They had a couple big wins. Actually, I caught both their Indiana games. We were off for whatever reason. I was sitting in my backyard watching 'em on a weekend when they played Indiana. I remember. I mean, those are big wins.
I know Indiana came back on 'em. That was a wild, wild finish. But I know it was pretty evident they were going to make the tournament at some point. I didn't want to be the jinx, but I texted BJ, Brian James, and said, You're going to get your bonus this year, big boy. Maybe you can buy dinner when I see you on the road.
But I was impressed. Wasn't like I was watching... That's all I do during the season. I'm either watching film or I'll watch other games.
Those games were impressive because obviously Indiana, I think they're a 4 seed. They're really good. They were two very different games. One was crazy high scoring in Bloomington, then the other one they got way up, technical fouls, it was wild, right? Indiana came back. I think Boo Buie hit a big shot to win it, right?
I've seen 'em. It stood out to me when I saw them how much better defensively they seemed to be than when I had seen them before. Chris Lowery effect.
When Chris Collins played at Duke, back then when he played, they were much more defensive-oriented team. Now, he's old (smiling). How old is Chris? He's getting as old as me.
Back in those days, they were a man, tough, defensive team, draw charges, really try to deny you. I'm sure he's gotten back to some of that from his Duke stuff. You can see it in the way they're playing now.
Q. Now that you're further west, as a coach, what does that feel like coming out of that geographical area, coming to the West Coast, California, specifically Los Angeles?
MICK CRONIN: You ever see that one of Tupac's videos, he's got the top down, driving through the flats of Beverly Hills doing this? That's how I feel every day. California love. It feels great.
Although we've had more rain. Rod Palmer told me we've had more rain this year than we've had in 50 years. Worst winter in 50 years. Exponentially better than winter in Cincinnati.
Been great. Got a lot of friends where I'm at. I've always loved Southern California. Fertile recruiting ground. Best tradition in college basketball. It's been refreshing for my career.
This stuff can be a grind. Thirteen years at my alma mater was a great run for me. It was an honor of my lifetime to be able to coach at a school I rooted for growing up.
But getting a chance to be the coach at UCLA, sit in Coach Wooden's seat, has been awesome. I cherish it. Been a great, great time.
Having to deal with COVID. COVID, it was lockdown as everybody knows in California. It's still been awesome. Couldn't even go to the beach, man. Crazy.
Q. Northwestern does not have an extensive history in this tournament. Second time. Do you feel that may be an X factor with you having experience?
MICK CRONIN: I mean, I'll take any advantage you want to give me. But I don't know. I mean, their league was such a blood bath this year. They've been in so many close games. They got some grizzled veterans on this team.
I don't know. Maybe. We'll see. If it's talent or experience, give me talent. Boo Buie's got a lot of talent. I'm not going to worry about his inexperience. I'm worried about his talent.
Maybe. You just never know how things shake out in those type of situations. If I was a Northwestern fan, I wouldn't be worried about their inexperience. In the tournament, meaning.
THE MODERATOR: Okay.
MICK CRONIN: All right, guys.
THE MODERATOR: Thanks, Coach.
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