This is a tough loss to take. With Clark and Bona, our defense would’ve kept us in the game during our scoring drought and maybe even ended it earlier if we could’ve gotten fast break points.
Mick in the post game sounded mad. Mad for having to wait nearly 35 minutes before he could begin the conference, mad at the refs, mad at Andrews for not playing Strauther tighter.
Love the heart our team showed down 8. Instead of jacking up 3s like any other team, Jaime mustered up every once of remaining energy he had to drive and get fouled. And cronin made a pretty genius move to foil their worst free throw shooters even when fouling wasn’t necessary and that got us the 1-point lead.
On the final play, it’s understandable why ucla didn’t press. One pass will break the press and then your defense is playing with a man down with only a one point lead. It was clear we were trying to avoid a drive or a foul as we were only up 1 in the double bonus. But sometimes lucky 3 point shots from the logo just go in I guess.
I think the key stat went unmentioned. We lost the rebounding battle 50-26. We easily could have survived a cold spell if we could have kept them off the offensive glass. They got way too many 2nd chance opportunities. Better rebounding may have led to better offensive opportunities as well. We definitely do not get outrebounded like that with Clark and Bona playing.
I was very disappointed in the lack of adjustment to Timme. Frankly I am surprised he didn't drop 50 with Mac getting so many minutes no offense to Mac. Also, during that 11 minute slump Bailey should have been more involved at least trying to get to the foul line. Last, what the hell was Will McClendon doing?
I'm less than thrilled with Dimitri's recap of this game.
He wasted a lot of precious words whining about rotations. In a game of this importance, against a perennial tournament powerhouse team, nobody should be surprised that Cronin was going to lean heavily on his seniors, players who are battle-tested and tournament tough.
He said McClendon played similar minutes to Andrews. McClendon played for 4 minutes; Andrews played 10 minutes, more than double McClendon's minutes. How exactly is that similar?
But the fact is, Cronin was going to live and die with Jaime, Tyger, Amari, and Dave, even if it meant playing them for nearly 40 minutes each. IMO, the minutes were not an issue nor should it be a point of criticism. In the gametime group text with my UCLA classmates, a few guys were saying UCLA was gassed in the 2nd half. I really didn't understand those remarks because the Gonzaga players of any importance (Watson, Strawther, and Timme) played the same number of minutes. Exhaustion is part of part of the game. You fight through it and you find a way to overcome it.
IMO, minutes wasn't a factor. I've seen Tyger and Jaime go more than 50 minutes in several OT games. Like Tyger and Jaime, Amari and Singleton are strong young men. I don't think they were bothered by the minutes. They weren't tired. They simply went cold. And we've seen this time and again this season, this team is streaky as hell and they have a tendency to go completely flat. And that's exactly what they did for an 11-minute stretch in the 2nd half.
The only story here is UCLA had a one-point lead with 12 seconds left and they lost. That's all that needs to be discussed. All they needed was one stop and they would be playing UConn on Sunday.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why Singleton or Jaime didn't pick up Strawther at the half court line and face guard his ass. Strawther, one of the best 3-pt shooters in the country, walks into virtually uncontested shot at the 3-pt line. Singleton was 4 feet away and tried to recover, but he had too much distance to cover and came nowhere close to applying any pressure to Strawther.
How does that happen after a timeout?
With 12 seconds left and after a UCLA timeout, did Mick call for the Bruins to pack the paint to keep the ball out of Timme's hands? If he did, that was the wrong play. If you pass the ball into Timme on the low block, the ball could get tipped. Or Timme could get fouled and it's a known fact that Timme is a certified brick layer at the free throw line. To me, it was apparent the last shot was going to be Strawther's and it was almost as if UCLA rolled out the red carpet for him to take it.
The defense in that one possession was what lost the game.
It's fine. I'm okay with the outcome. Losing Clark and Bona was killer, but injuries are part of the game. For them to get within an eyelash of beating Gonzaga was an accomplishment. The team played great. Coach Cronin was great. The refs sucked, but when don't they suck?
I look forward to next season. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Bailey and Bona will be back, along with Andrews and Canka. With the incoming freshmen, Coach Cronin will have a new opportunity to build a juggernaut in Westwood and hopefully, the incoming kids will live up to their billing.
Yup, I'm super looking forward to next season.
But most importantly, I wish the departing seniors a fond farewell. Tyger, Jaime, Dave, and Kenny wore the blue and gold well and they earned a place in UCLA basketball history. It will be interesting to see where these guys go and what they do in their future beyond UCLA. I'm wishing them the best.
BTW I disagree that Timme is the best low post player in the country. Let's see how he fares against Adamo Sanogo of UConn next Sunday. I love watching Sanogo play. There's nothing I'd love to see more than Sanogo destroy Drew Timme.
I despised Florida for always knocking out the Bruins whenever they met in the NCAA tournament (0-4 record vs. the Gators), and now I'm experiencing that same feeling with Gonzaga. Same goes for playing in Las Vegas. No luck seems to be there either for the Bruins. UCLA seemed to be in control of this game, but unfortunately they followed this season's familiar pattern of playing well for only 1 half. Not sure if UCLA's ugly 2nd-half collapse was due to exhaustion, overconfidence, bad luck, all of the above, and/or other factors, but credit goes to Coach Few for making adjustments on defense and getting his team to continue attacking the boards and making shots, including the play to enable that deep 3-pointer by Strawther and ice the game for the Zags. Anyway, kudos to the Bruins for not giving up and fighting on until the very end. Missing 2 out of 5 starters obviously hurt the Bruins, but they showed once again how difficult it is for any team to beat them, even at less than full strength. Best of luck to the departing seniors and those deciding to turn pro early, and hope next season's team will have continued, if not even greater, success. Go Bruins!
Pretty good observations below re this heart-rending loss. If I'm Cronin, I'm scheduling Gonzaga each year until we get them out of our system. It's getting to be like Notre Dame under the vapid, glory-seeking Digger Phelps only Few is much, much nicer.
You gotta believe that Cronin built this team and the two other tournaments that were held during his four seasons. He loses some awfully good seniors but none of them were "one-and-done" deserters and he's rebuilt the program and is on track to attract some pretty good talent to Westwood. (Who knows what the B10 exposure will do for talented kids in the Midwest who don't want to freeze their asses off in the Winter?)
..anyway, Cronin is a lifetime .692 coach who's been to the tournament a lot at Cincy and will go a lot more at UCLA. He cherishes the job, reveres the tradition, and loves recruiting.
Check out the Wiki on NCAA Men's D1 basketball. Notice whose trophy room they showed because of all the hardware UCLA has. Cronin will bring #12 home someday. Meantime, he'll put out team that are fun to watch as this one.
A tough loss... Not much more to say, really. Up. Down. Clawed back with a never quit mentality. Daggered from nearly half court. This team taught me a lot about competitive spirit. Respect and love.
I was at work last night and successfully avoided any news of the game and the rain of texts on my phone, so I turned on the replay when I got home at 1am to see it fresh. What a high, then a long slow decline, then a roller coaster, then all the hope in the world, and finally an absolute knife in the gut. I couldn't go to sleep for an hour, and I woke up this morning still feeling sick and numb.
Thank you to this team for an amazing run. You have been a credit to our unprecedented Bruin legacy, and I have loved cheering you on, and always will in the future.
But personally, this will always be a "what could have been" year for me. With a healthy Bruin roster, that game is a blowout and we're game planning for UConn today. Do you think we get outrebounded like that in the second half with Jaylen and Bona in the game? Do you think Timme has free rein down low with Bona patrolling the key? Do you think Jaime and Tyger are that gassed at the end with a couple more guys to split some minutes over the game? Do you think Gonzaga lobbing in another freaking miracle deep last second 3 makes a dent in the result? We had a legit shot at #12 this year, and it all went away with a couple fluke injuries in the last 3 weeks. We can talk about depth and development and overreliance on veterans and rotations and all of that. For me, if we had a healthy roster, we could have overcome all of those things with room to spare.
This is even more painful because I expect we will lose our top 6 players in JJJr, Tyger, David, Bailey & Bona, and Clark next year, and so, especially considering our recruiting prospects, we will never have as good a look at a title like this again for a long long time. Heartbreaking.
Was looking at Rivals' ranking of next year's (2023) recruiting class compared to this year. UCLA is currently rated 19th with no five stars, two four stars and one three star. Given the likelihood that the only returning starter may be Clark, if he can recover from his injury and be effective, and nobody from the transfer portal as yet, it will be a heavy challenge for Cronin. Further to Clark, assuming it is an Achilles injury, that is one of the most difficult injuries to overcome and judging from the ACL injuries (I know that is different) of Mac, McClendon and Tyger, the first season back from injury was not a great season.
After the first 2 loses in LV this season, I still predicted we would be in the Final Four. This was our best chance in a long time to hang #12. It takes some luck to win the National Championship in a single elimination tournament. Unfortunately, the only luck we had was bad with the injuries. I'm really depressed that I won't be watching us play tomorrow. But I love what Cronin has done with the program, especially after the last clown we had as a head coach.
Overall it was a successful season with lots of fun games to watch. Cronin has done a good job as a coach with his defensive intensity getting better every year. The offense got better this year too, and I think it was an impressive season turning the program in the right direction.
My few quips on the season overall:
- the point guard has to look at cronin as they run the ball up the court every time. Let them play on their own sometimes
- cronin is so critical of his players when they make mistakes to the point of embarrassment on the court. I understand there are high expectations, but these are kids and sometimes everyone gets so scared to make a mistake that they stop playing basketball on the offensive side
- I know your seniors are the most trust worthy option, but the 10 minute lulls of the Jaime and tyger show got really old and often allowed teams to get back into games throughout the season. That was no different in the Gonzaga game
- Bailey was amazing and should have been incorporated into the Jaime and tyger show at the end of the season. In the Gonzaga game it’s like they forgot he was on the team even though he carried them for large stretches of that game. Just give him the ball and let him be a part of the plan… didn’t happen
- the bigs had no offensive game development. They can all dunk and oop, but they need to be developed like timme is. Where is the offensive development for the bigs?
- cronin criticizing his players in the media is completely unacceptable. Dylan Andrews is a freshman who played very limited minutes all season which is coaches fault in the first place. The end of game Hail Mary 3 from the logo is a perfectly normal progression. Nobody is expecting that shot. And watching that shot real time everybody I was with was excited when he let the low percentage deep three go… it happened to go in and that’s basketball.
- in the Gonzaga game, why didn’t the bigs hack timme all game long. They should have started by setting a precedent of who was the boss… instead, they let him score at will and build confidence… get in his head and hack him down. Everyone I talked to thought that would be the plan to get in his head early. Instead, he dominated. Just a part of basketball, but they should have at least attempted to set a precedent and they didn’t…
Again, happy with the season and hope those things get cleaned up. The biggest qualm is the open on court criticism that scares players that if they make a mistake their going to be publicly humiliated by their coach who is twice their age… I don’t see other coaches belittling their players like cronin does. It might make them better players in the long run, but takes a lot of the fun out of the game… better luck next tourney, see you next year
This is a tough loss to take. With Clark and Bona, our defense would’ve kept us in the game during our scoring drought and maybe even ended it earlier if we could’ve gotten fast break points.
Mick in the post game sounded mad. Mad for having to wait nearly 35 minutes before he could begin the conference, mad at the refs, mad at Andrews for not playing Strauther tighter.
Love the heart our team showed down 8. Instead of jacking up 3s like any other team, Jaime mustered up every once of remaining energy he had to drive and get fouled. And cronin made a pretty genius move to foil their worst free throw shooters even when fouling wasn’t necessary and that got us the 1-point lead.
On the final play, it’s understandable why ucla didn’t press. One pass will break the press and then your defense is playing with a man down with only a one point lead. It was clear we were trying to avoid a drive or a foul as we were only up 1 in the double bonus. But sometimes lucky 3 point shots from the logo just go in I guess.
I think the key stat went unmentioned. We lost the rebounding battle 50-26. We easily could have survived a cold spell if we could have kept them off the offensive glass. They got way too many 2nd chance opportunities. Better rebounding may have led to better offensive opportunities as well. We definitely do not get outrebounded like that with Clark and Bona playing.
Selfishly hoping Bailey comes back, but I'm pretty sure he's gone. Could be a tough next season losing Jaquez, Campbell, Bailey, and maybe Clark.
I was very disappointed in the lack of adjustment to Timme. Frankly I am surprised he didn't drop 50 with Mac getting so many minutes no offense to Mac. Also, during that 11 minute slump Bailey should have been more involved at least trying to get to the foul line. Last, what the hell was Will McClendon doing?
I'm less than thrilled with Dimitri's recap of this game.
He wasted a lot of precious words whining about rotations. In a game of this importance, against a perennial tournament powerhouse team, nobody should be surprised that Cronin was going to lean heavily on his seniors, players who are battle-tested and tournament tough.
He said McClendon played similar minutes to Andrews. McClendon played for 4 minutes; Andrews played 10 minutes, more than double McClendon's minutes. How exactly is that similar?
But the fact is, Cronin was going to live and die with Jaime, Tyger, Amari, and Dave, even if it meant playing them for nearly 40 minutes each. IMO, the minutes were not an issue nor should it be a point of criticism. In the gametime group text with my UCLA classmates, a few guys were saying UCLA was gassed in the 2nd half. I really didn't understand those remarks because the Gonzaga players of any importance (Watson, Strawther, and Timme) played the same number of minutes. Exhaustion is part of part of the game. You fight through it and you find a way to overcome it.
IMO, minutes wasn't a factor. I've seen Tyger and Jaime go more than 50 minutes in several OT games. Like Tyger and Jaime, Amari and Singleton are strong young men. I don't think they were bothered by the minutes. They weren't tired. They simply went cold. And we've seen this time and again this season, this team is streaky as hell and they have a tendency to go completely flat. And that's exactly what they did for an 11-minute stretch in the 2nd half.
The only story here is UCLA had a one-point lead with 12 seconds left and they lost. That's all that needs to be discussed. All they needed was one stop and they would be playing UConn on Sunday.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why Singleton or Jaime didn't pick up Strawther at the half court line and face guard his ass. Strawther, one of the best 3-pt shooters in the country, walks into virtually uncontested shot at the 3-pt line. Singleton was 4 feet away and tried to recover, but he had too much distance to cover and came nowhere close to applying any pressure to Strawther.
How does that happen after a timeout?
With 12 seconds left and after a UCLA timeout, did Mick call for the Bruins to pack the paint to keep the ball out of Timme's hands? If he did, that was the wrong play. If you pass the ball into Timme on the low block, the ball could get tipped. Or Timme could get fouled and it's a known fact that Timme is a certified brick layer at the free throw line. To me, it was apparent the last shot was going to be Strawther's and it was almost as if UCLA rolled out the red carpet for him to take it.
The defense in that one possession was what lost the game.
It's fine. I'm okay with the outcome. Losing Clark and Bona was killer, but injuries are part of the game. For them to get within an eyelash of beating Gonzaga was an accomplishment. The team played great. Coach Cronin was great. The refs sucked, but when don't they suck?
I look forward to next season. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Bailey and Bona will be back, along with Andrews and Canka. With the incoming freshmen, Coach Cronin will have a new opportunity to build a juggernaut in Westwood and hopefully, the incoming kids will live up to their billing.
Yup, I'm super looking forward to next season.
But most importantly, I wish the departing seniors a fond farewell. Tyger, Jaime, Dave, and Kenny wore the blue and gold well and they earned a place in UCLA basketball history. It will be interesting to see where these guys go and what they do in their future beyond UCLA. I'm wishing them the best.
BTW I disagree that Timme is the best low post player in the country. Let's see how he fares against Adamo Sanogo of UConn next Sunday. I love watching Sanogo play. There's nothing I'd love to see more than Sanogo destroy Drew Timme.
I despised Florida for always knocking out the Bruins whenever they met in the NCAA tournament (0-4 record vs. the Gators), and now I'm experiencing that same feeling with Gonzaga. Same goes for playing in Las Vegas. No luck seems to be there either for the Bruins. UCLA seemed to be in control of this game, but unfortunately they followed this season's familiar pattern of playing well for only 1 half. Not sure if UCLA's ugly 2nd-half collapse was due to exhaustion, overconfidence, bad luck, all of the above, and/or other factors, but credit goes to Coach Few for making adjustments on defense and getting his team to continue attacking the boards and making shots, including the play to enable that deep 3-pointer by Strawther and ice the game for the Zags. Anyway, kudos to the Bruins for not giving up and fighting on until the very end. Missing 2 out of 5 starters obviously hurt the Bruins, but they showed once again how difficult it is for any team to beat them, even at less than full strength. Best of luck to the departing seniors and those deciding to turn pro early, and hope next season's team will have continued, if not even greater, success. Go Bruins!
The truth is that they blew leads and had scoring lulls all year. They picked the worst time to fall flat.
Pretty good observations below re this heart-rending loss. If I'm Cronin, I'm scheduling Gonzaga each year until we get them out of our system. It's getting to be like Notre Dame under the vapid, glory-seeking Digger Phelps only Few is much, much nicer.
You gotta believe that Cronin built this team and the two other tournaments that were held during his four seasons. He loses some awfully good seniors but none of them were "one-and-done" deserters and he's rebuilt the program and is on track to attract some pretty good talent to Westwood. (Who knows what the B10 exposure will do for talented kids in the Midwest who don't want to freeze their asses off in the Winter?)
..anyway, Cronin is a lifetime .692 coach who's been to the tournament a lot at Cincy and will go a lot more at UCLA. He cherishes the job, reveres the tradition, and loves recruiting.
Check out the Wiki on NCAA Men's D1 basketball. Notice whose trophy room they showed because of all the hardware UCLA has. Cronin will bring #12 home someday. Meantime, he'll put out team that are fun to watch as this one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NCAA_Division_I_men%27s_basketball_champions
..thanks for the memories, guys!
A tough loss... Not much more to say, really. Up. Down. Clawed back with a never quit mentality. Daggered from nearly half court. This team taught me a lot about competitive spirit. Respect and love.
Yeah, we got tired.
I was at work last night and successfully avoided any news of the game and the rain of texts on my phone, so I turned on the replay when I got home at 1am to see it fresh. What a high, then a long slow decline, then a roller coaster, then all the hope in the world, and finally an absolute knife in the gut. I couldn't go to sleep for an hour, and I woke up this morning still feeling sick and numb.
Thank you to this team for an amazing run. You have been a credit to our unprecedented Bruin legacy, and I have loved cheering you on, and always will in the future.
But personally, this will always be a "what could have been" year for me. With a healthy Bruin roster, that game is a blowout and we're game planning for UConn today. Do you think we get outrebounded like that in the second half with Jaylen and Bona in the game? Do you think Timme has free rein down low with Bona patrolling the key? Do you think Jaime and Tyger are that gassed at the end with a couple more guys to split some minutes over the game? Do you think Gonzaga lobbing in another freaking miracle deep last second 3 makes a dent in the result? We had a legit shot at #12 this year, and it all went away with a couple fluke injuries in the last 3 weeks. We can talk about depth and development and overreliance on veterans and rotations and all of that. For me, if we had a healthy roster, we could have overcome all of those things with room to spare.
This is even more painful because I expect we will lose our top 6 players in JJJr, Tyger, David, Bailey & Bona, and Clark next year, and so, especially considering our recruiting prospects, we will never have as good a look at a title like this again for a long long time. Heartbreaking.
Another what if year and second guessing by us armchair qb's.
Is this peak Cronin?
I hope not, but how does one recover from such disappointment? I'm in a depressive funk.
Was looking at Rivals' ranking of next year's (2023) recruiting class compared to this year. UCLA is currently rated 19th with no five stars, two four stars and one three star. Given the likelihood that the only returning starter may be Clark, if he can recover from his injury and be effective, and nobody from the transfer portal as yet, it will be a heavy challenge for Cronin. Further to Clark, assuming it is an Achilles injury, that is one of the most difficult injuries to overcome and judging from the ACL injuries (I know that is different) of Mac, McClendon and Tyger, the first season back from injury was not a great season.
After the first 2 loses in LV this season, I still predicted we would be in the Final Four. This was our best chance in a long time to hang #12. It takes some luck to win the National Championship in a single elimination tournament. Unfortunately, the only luck we had was bad with the injuries. I'm really depressed that I won't be watching us play tomorrow. But I love what Cronin has done with the program, especially after the last clown we had as a head coach.
Overall it was a successful season with lots of fun games to watch. Cronin has done a good job as a coach with his defensive intensity getting better every year. The offense got better this year too, and I think it was an impressive season turning the program in the right direction.
My few quips on the season overall:
- the point guard has to look at cronin as they run the ball up the court every time. Let them play on their own sometimes
- cronin is so critical of his players when they make mistakes to the point of embarrassment on the court. I understand there are high expectations, but these are kids and sometimes everyone gets so scared to make a mistake that they stop playing basketball on the offensive side
- I know your seniors are the most trust worthy option, but the 10 minute lulls of the Jaime and tyger show got really old and often allowed teams to get back into games throughout the season. That was no different in the Gonzaga game
- Bailey was amazing and should have been incorporated into the Jaime and tyger show at the end of the season. In the Gonzaga game it’s like they forgot he was on the team even though he carried them for large stretches of that game. Just give him the ball and let him be a part of the plan… didn’t happen
- the bigs had no offensive game development. They can all dunk and oop, but they need to be developed like timme is. Where is the offensive development for the bigs?
- cronin criticizing his players in the media is completely unacceptable. Dylan Andrews is a freshman who played very limited minutes all season which is coaches fault in the first place. The end of game Hail Mary 3 from the logo is a perfectly normal progression. Nobody is expecting that shot. And watching that shot real time everybody I was with was excited when he let the low percentage deep three go… it happened to go in and that’s basketball.
- in the Gonzaga game, why didn’t the bigs hack timme all game long. They should have started by setting a precedent of who was the boss… instead, they let him score at will and build confidence… get in his head and hack him down. Everyone I talked to thought that would be the plan to get in his head early. Instead, he dominated. Just a part of basketball, but they should have at least attempted to set a precedent and they didn’t…
Again, happy with the season and hope those things get cleaned up. The biggest qualm is the open on court criticism that scares players that if they make a mistake their going to be publicly humiliated by their coach who is twice their age… I don’t see other coaches belittling their players like cronin does. It might make them better players in the long run, but takes a lot of the fun out of the game… better luck next tourney, see you next year