I want to see Donovan Dent look for his shot more. He came to ucla as a highly heralded player, but he’s deferring to much.
Last year he shot 41% from 3! This year, it’s like he’s allergic to taking shots that are more than 10 feet away from the basket. The guy is 6’2, what’s he doing trying to shoot over players half a foot taller than him?? Arizona started the game double teaming him, but once it was clear Dent wasn’t looking for his shot, they allowed him to drive and dared him to shoot over the taller AZ players and the result was, as Dimitri mentioned, a terribly inefficient 5-16.
And in the Pepperdine game thread I mentioned that Skyy Clark making boneheaded plays near the end of games gave them an opportunity to make the game closer in the final score. Same thing here, he basically dribbled out the last 20 seconds, instead of looking to pass or shoot.
I was impressed by the defensive effort - 69 might be the lowest Arizona will score for the rest of the season. But the offense needs to catch up to the defense if ucla wants to make a run
Cronin's teams have always struggled on offense. It's a trademark, sadly. You see so many teams with fluid offenses and UCLA under Cronin has struggled to ever achieve that.
This is a senior heavy team and should be able to score... but the huge scoring droughts continue.
We all know defense is Cronin's thing, offense has never been, and he was the same at Cincy. Read the comments from Cincy fans moons ago and it's apparent that Cronin is who he is.
Cronin's teams have always given up leads because of their offense. I think he borders on decent to good, but not great coach, who will likely never win a nattie.
Our women's team is also senior heavy but it's a thing of beauty to watch as the offense is fluid and unselfish. If they can cut down on turnovers, which has been their achilles heal, they have a great chance to cut down the nets.
I did warn you that dent was going to have a worse year this year than last year due to playing for Cronin. Coming to play for ucla will hurt his draft stock as Cronin doesn’t know how to utilize a player like dent. The reason he’s allergic to shooting beyond 10 ft is… a coaching problem. Cronin coaches out of fear, he’s always angry, and sucks the joy out of the game. Dent made a terrible decision… meanwhile Mara made the best decision of his life.
Not sure what point im trying to make, but I want to say with a bball team that’s is better than the fball team and Intuit Dome being approx where Sofi is…. it felt like Arizona had more fans in the building than we did. I get it was a neutral site game, but its across the street from our home football stadium.
If we're not careful, it'll soon be our home basketball arena as well... after all, it's apparently closer to the Manhattan Beach fan base and newer and nicer with more suites than the old, traditional place where we now play, amirite?
Well, I think I saw 1st hand that this alone wont fix/improve attendance… which we already knew of course.
However, I realized something for the first time which may be controversial/counterintuitive. For 20 years I’ve been saying the fan base sucks bc the programs aren’t performing. Of course highly ranked, successful teams at UCLA will sell out but we need a reliable fan base.
We’re highly selective with admissions and that may actually be hurting us on the school spirit front. Maybe we need to start looking at the 3.8 that’s wanted to be a Bruin all their life, or comes from a Bruin family/background over the 4.2 that applied to have a spot in case Stanford rejected them. Realistically, it’s impossible to implement something like that, but last night it hit me how big a factor this might be—and how much it differentiates our fan base from what you see every Saturday in the SEC.
Another thing that may help is maybe having a dedicated section for the more die hard rabid fans who attend many games, cheer, etc. Having us together like a student section could help getting the rest of the crowd going… its easier to start a chant when the group is 20+ versus 4 people in a section. Again, I realize this is difficult, people want the best seats they can afford and we can’t force fans to sit in nosebleeds, or to pay for 50 yd line seats if it’s out of their budget…. But the casual fan coming to 1 game every other year being apathetic isn’t helping.
You're not wrong - we had that at the Rose Bowl, Section 2 the Alumni section... until Mora moved the home side of the field to the pressbox side and it was broken up as everyone moved individually (and Geoff the Alumni Cheerleader was banned and the Alumni Band was disinvited...)
The fan base for basketball sucks because people are starting to recognize what I’ve said from the beginning… Cronin isn’t a good fit for ucla basketball… fans want excitement, fun, and joy. Cronin sucks every ounce of joy out of the room he’s in. I’m amazed that anybody wants to play for the guy!! Meanwhile, Mara going to have an amazing year and shoot the draft stock board… just watch
I wonder how many times I’ve said “people don’t want to play for him” over the last 5 years… probably at least 100 times. Usually Evan and gib show up to tell me I’m an idiot that knows nothing about basketball… don’t worry, they’ll be here to rain on your parade soon… just give it time before they start bashing you as a hater, an idiot, and start asking who your source is.
Cronin is simply the stepping stone from Alford to a new real coach. I’m just disappointed that cronin has lasted this long. His boring brand of basketball doesn’t fit in LA. Never has, never will
Dmitri, you’re more optimistic than me. Overall, I thought it was a sloppy game for both teams, fairly normal for November. UCLA is very short on playable depth. Jamerson and Perry were decent, Brown hardly played and Brandon Williams was difficult to watch. I don’t understand the idea of having a dynamic, quick PG and playing at a snail’s pace. Once again, Cronin was Cronin and micromanaging the offense into stagnation and one on one basketball down the stretch. It is a long season and I’m sure they will improve. At the moment, they look massively overrated.
They ARE massively overrated!!! I tried to warn everyone. Dent is going to look like a meh player under cronin!!! He’s not a good coach, takes the joy out of the game, and is the absolute wrong coach for a player like Dent. He will regret having come to play under cronin and should have followed Mara’s lead
One problem I saw last night with Dailey moved to the 3 is that the offense tends to go away from him. We need to incorporate more shooting opportunities for him if we are going to be successful this year-- or move Tyler to the 3 and have Dailey play the 4.
Collapse! Scoring droughts! I've seen this movie before.The supposed roster of marksmen labors for a bucket.The $3M man, The Difference Maker, is not worthy of the hype.
Just too many turnovers and a 16-6 scoring drought during the final 5:26 cost them the game. AZ Coach Lloyd confirmed afterwards what the analysts on the Peacock network had astutely pointed out--that the Wildcats went to a switching defense during those last few minutes to disrupt the Bruins' offensive flow and forced them into more 1-on-1 situations, leading to stagnation and contested/bad shots. It was deflating to see the Bruins struggle to score, lose their lead down the stretch, and then finally lose the game.
It's also very disappointing that Coach Cronin, for whatever reason(s), wasn't able to fully develop and retain Aday Mara. I think Mara would've made a big difference in rebounding, blocking shots, scoring close to the basket, and making passes to open shooters to facilitate an inside-out attack. What a lost opportunity! Anyway, it's still early in the season, the Bruins finally showed that they can be competitive, but they have a lot of improvements and adjustments they need to work on or figure out.
I want to see Donovan Dent look for his shot more. He came to ucla as a highly heralded player, but he’s deferring to much.
Last year he shot 41% from 3! This year, it’s like he’s allergic to taking shots that are more than 10 feet away from the basket. The guy is 6’2, what’s he doing trying to shoot over players half a foot taller than him?? Arizona started the game double teaming him, but once it was clear Dent wasn’t looking for his shot, they allowed him to drive and dared him to shoot over the taller AZ players and the result was, as Dimitri mentioned, a terribly inefficient 5-16.
And in the Pepperdine game thread I mentioned that Skyy Clark making boneheaded plays near the end of games gave them an opportunity to make the game closer in the final score. Same thing here, he basically dribbled out the last 20 seconds, instead of looking to pass or shoot.
I was impressed by the defensive effort - 69 might be the lowest Arizona will score for the rest of the season. But the offense needs to catch up to the defense if ucla wants to make a run
Cronin's teams have always struggled on offense. It's a trademark, sadly. You see so many teams with fluid offenses and UCLA under Cronin has struggled to ever achieve that.
This is a senior heavy team and should be able to score... but the huge scoring droughts continue.
We all know defense is Cronin's thing, offense has never been, and he was the same at Cincy. Read the comments from Cincy fans moons ago and it's apparent that Cronin is who he is.
Cronin's teams have always given up leads because of their offense. I think he borders on decent to good, but not great coach, who will likely never win a nattie.
Our women's team is also senior heavy but it's a thing of beauty to watch as the offense is fluid and unselfish. If they can cut down on turnovers, which has been their achilles heal, they have a great chance to cut down the nets.
I did warn you that dent was going to have a worse year this year than last year due to playing for Cronin. Coming to play for ucla will hurt his draft stock as Cronin doesn’t know how to utilize a player like dent. The reason he’s allergic to shooting beyond 10 ft is… a coaching problem. Cronin coaches out of fear, he’s always angry, and sucks the joy out of the game. Dent made a terrible decision… meanwhile Mara made the best decision of his life.
Not sure what point im trying to make, but I want to say with a bball team that’s is better than the fball team and Intuit Dome being approx where Sofi is…. it felt like Arizona had more fans in the building than we did. I get it was a neutral site game, but its across the street from our home football stadium.
If we're not careful, it'll soon be our home basketball arena as well... after all, it's apparently closer to the Manhattan Beach fan base and newer and nicer with more suites than the old, traditional place where we now play, amirite?
Well, I think I saw 1st hand that this alone wont fix/improve attendance… which we already knew of course.
However, I realized something for the first time which may be controversial/counterintuitive. For 20 years I’ve been saying the fan base sucks bc the programs aren’t performing. Of course highly ranked, successful teams at UCLA will sell out but we need a reliable fan base.
We’re highly selective with admissions and that may actually be hurting us on the school spirit front. Maybe we need to start looking at the 3.8 that’s wanted to be a Bruin all their life, or comes from a Bruin family/background over the 4.2 that applied to have a spot in case Stanford rejected them. Realistically, it’s impossible to implement something like that, but last night it hit me how big a factor this might be—and how much it differentiates our fan base from what you see every Saturday in the SEC.
Another thing that may help is maybe having a dedicated section for the more die hard rabid fans who attend many games, cheer, etc. Having us together like a student section could help getting the rest of the crowd going… its easier to start a chant when the group is 20+ versus 4 people in a section. Again, I realize this is difficult, people want the best seats they can afford and we can’t force fans to sit in nosebleeds, or to pay for 50 yd line seats if it’s out of their budget…. But the casual fan coming to 1 game every other year being apathetic isn’t helping.
You're not wrong - we had that at the Rose Bowl, Section 2 the Alumni section... until Mora moved the home side of the field to the pressbox side and it was broken up as everyone moved individually (and Geoff the Alumni Cheerleader was banned and the Alumni Band was disinvited...)
The fan base for basketball sucks because people are starting to recognize what I’ve said from the beginning… Cronin isn’t a good fit for ucla basketball… fans want excitement, fun, and joy. Cronin sucks every ounce of joy out of the room he’s in. I’m amazed that anybody wants to play for the guy!! Meanwhile, Mara going to have an amazing year and shoot the draft stock board… just watch
I know a former player and he told me word on the street is he has a napoleon complex and people dont want to play for him.
I wonder how many times I’ve said “people don’t want to play for him” over the last 5 years… probably at least 100 times. Usually Evan and gib show up to tell me I’m an idiot that knows nothing about basketball… don’t worry, they’ll be here to rain on your parade soon… just give it time before they start bashing you as a hater, an idiot, and start asking who your source is.
Cronin is simply the stepping stone from Alford to a new real coach. I’m just disappointed that cronin has lasted this long. His boring brand of basketball doesn’t fit in LA. Never has, never will
Baskets! I missed you!
Papethova: One needn't be a player (or a doctor) to make that diagnosis.
Everyone has started to realize that cronin is a fraud and all the dent’s in the world won’t turn cronin into a better coach
Dmitri, you’re more optimistic than me. Overall, I thought it was a sloppy game for both teams, fairly normal for November. UCLA is very short on playable depth. Jamerson and Perry were decent, Brown hardly played and Brandon Williams was difficult to watch. I don’t understand the idea of having a dynamic, quick PG and playing at a snail’s pace. Once again, Cronin was Cronin and micromanaging the offense into stagnation and one on one basketball down the stretch. It is a long season and I’m sure they will improve. At the moment, they look massively overrated.
They ARE massively overrated!!! I tried to warn everyone. Dent is going to look like a meh player under cronin!!! He’s not a good coach, takes the joy out of the game, and is the absolute wrong coach for a player like Dent. He will regret having come to play under cronin and should have followed Mara’s lead
One problem I saw last night with Dailey moved to the 3 is that the offense tends to go away from him. We need to incorporate more shooting opportunities for him if we are going to be successful this year-- or move Tyler to the 3 and have Dailey play the 4.
Bilodeau is a net negative.
Collapse! Scoring droughts! I've seen this movie before.The supposed roster of marksmen labors for a bucket.The $3M man, The Difference Maker, is not worthy of the hype.
Youngest To 500© can't break .500 against Tommy Lloyd.
I’m not sure if Lloyd is a better coach, but he certainly has a team that’s more fun to watch…
He made it longer than I thought he would… the only question that’s left is whether his run with ucla ends this year…
Just too many turnovers and a 16-6 scoring drought during the final 5:26 cost them the game. AZ Coach Lloyd confirmed afterwards what the analysts on the Peacock network had astutely pointed out--that the Wildcats went to a switching defense during those last few minutes to disrupt the Bruins' offensive flow and forced them into more 1-on-1 situations, leading to stagnation and contested/bad shots. It was deflating to see the Bruins struggle to score, lose their lead down the stretch, and then finally lose the game.
It's also very disappointing that Coach Cronin, for whatever reason(s), wasn't able to fully develop and retain Aday Mara. I think Mara would've made a big difference in rebounding, blocking shots, scoring close to the basket, and making passes to open shooters to facilitate an inside-out attack. What a lost opportunity! Anyway, it's still early in the season, the Bruins finally showed that they can be competitive, but they have a lot of improvements and adjustments they need to work on or figure out.
Go Bruins!