UCLA's coaching search was a disaster but its new hire doesn't have to be
Here’s some truth that often gets forgotten anytime college basketball’s coaching carousel starts spinning: Sometimes the most mismanaged searches still yield a competent hire.
Mick Cronin has a chance to be that at UCLA just like Dana Altman has been at Oregon or Chris Beard would have been at UNLV. He may not have been as flashy a choice as some of the men the Bruins targeted ahead of him, but Cronin is capable of infusing the toughness, consistency and attention to detail recent UCLA teams have often lacked.
The son of a legendary Cincinnati-area high school coach, Cronin has been groomed to be a coach for most of his life. In 2006, he landed the head coaching job at his hometown school, taking over a depleted Cincinnati program gutted by the forced resignation of Bob Huggins and the messy transition that followed.
Building around three- and four-star recruits from the Northeast, Cronin returned Cincinnati to national relevance. The Bearcats only advanced to one Sweet 16 under Cronin, but his teams made nine straight NCAA tournaments and never finished worse than third since joining the American Athletic Conference.
At Cincinnati, Cronin’s best teams were tough, old, slow-paced and defensive-minded. Each of his last nine teams cracked the top 30 in adjusted defensive efficiency and offensive rebounding percentage, making up for sometimes modest scoring talent with their ability to crash the glass and string together stops.
If Cronin can infuse the same rugged, defensive-oriented mentality in a higher caliber of recruit at UCLA, the possibilities are tantalizing. That’s the same formula Ben Howland utilized during the first half of his tenure when the Bruins reached three straight Final Fours from 2006-08.
Cronin’s defensive acumen is no doubt something that appealed to UCLA’s search committee after watching Steve Alford’s teams put forth a halfhearted effort at that end of the floor. The Bruins have produced just one top 50 defense in the past eight seasons and ranked outside the top 100 both of the past two years.
For Cronin to succeed at UCLA, he’ll need assistant coaches who are familiar with the recruiting landscape in Los Angeles and can help him land the region’s top prospects. Cronin didn’t recruit the West Coast at Cincinnati and he’s not a name that Los Angeles high school prospects or their parents, coaches and handlers will recognize.
It will also be essential for Cronin to win quickly so that he can overcome the stigma of not being UCLA’s top choice — or even its fourth or fifth. Athletic director Dan Guerrero and his search committee did their new coach a disservice by targeting high-profile coaches they couldn’t land and not being very discreet about it either.
They cobbled together a massive offer for John Calipari even though nobody outside of UCLA thought there was any chance he’d leave Kentucky. Calipari shrewdly used UCLA’s interest as leverage to negotiate a lifetime deal to stay in Lexington.
They pursued Virginia coach Tony Bennett in hopes that he might be swayed by the chance for a fresh start. Bennett passed on the job and then showed why that was the right choice by shedding the label of NCAA tournament underachiever and winning the national title.
They pivoted to Jamie Dixon, mistakenly assuming that TCU would lower his $8 million buyout even though the Horned Frogs had no incentive to do so. When TCU refused, UCLA decided Dixon wasn’t worth that kind of cash, a decision that bolstered the school’s reputation for being cheap and made you wonder why the Bruins targeted Dixon in the first place.
UCLA’s last candidate ahead of Cronin was Tennessee’s Rick Barnes, a choice that smacked of the Bruins searching for marquee names they felt they could pry loose rather than coaches who actually fit their school. Barnes is an excellent coach but he’s 64 years old, has no ties to Los Angeles and doesn’t appear to be at the juncture of his career where tackling a rebuild would make sense.
Only after Barnes renegotiated a more lucrative deal at Tennessee did UCLA at last turn to Cronin. The Bruins had to nearly double Cronin’s salary with a six-year, $24 million deal, but by Tuesday they had little choice but to overpay.
Something that should help Cronin succeed at UCLA is that the expectations of his new fanbase aren’t as out of whack as some might suggest.
Fans in Los Angeles no longer expect UCLA to contend for national championships every year after an 11-year period like the one the Bruins have endured. Since its three straight Final Fours under Howland, UCLA has missed the NCAA tournament four times, captured just one Pac-12 regular season title and failed to advance past the Sweet 16.
If Cronin can restore consistency, regularly contend for Pac-12 titles and make some deeper NCAA tournament runs than he did at Cincinnati, he'll be embraced. Fans in Los Angeles may be fickle but they aren’t delusional.
Those aren’t unrealistic goals either because the UCLA job is better than its bungled coaching search suggests.
The talent pool in Los Angeles is plentiful. Some of the NBA’s biggest stars are on campus at UCLA for pickup games all summer. UCLA also appears committed to finally spending the money to be a top-flight program again, having just recently renovated its arena, built a new practice facility and opened its wallet to try to attract a top coach.
It’s up to Cronin to capitalize on those advantages and restore the luster the UCLA program used to have.
Cronin may have been the product of a botched coaching search, but he has the potential to succeed anyway.
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