Thursday night, the nation watched as Mick Cronin and the UCLA Bruins bottomed out during a 90-44 road beatdown to Utah. The loss was UCLA’s fourth in a row, the eighth in their last nine games and the second-worst loss in conference history for the storied program.
Can a college basketball program get an intervention? If so, UCLA is desperately in need of one. Because right now, they look much worse than the “punch-drunk” description given to them by Cronin during the postgame press conference.
The craziest thing about Thursday night’s debacle is that it was actually a ballgame early into the second half. There was real hope for UCLA after a pair of free throws by freshman guard Sebastian Mack cut UCLA’s deficit to just six with 18:12 left in the game. The Bruins looked like they were building some steam.
From that point on, Utah went loco.
Reserve big man Keba Keita threw down some ferocious jams during a personal 7-0 run. Then, it seemed as if the Utes couldn’t miss, making nine threes in a hurry. By the time Utah coach Craig Smith took a timeout to call off the onslaught, his team had gone on a 54-10 run in just 15 minutes.
It was a beatdown of biblical proportions. One that Cronin — who detractors have criticized for historically shifting the blame off of himself — assessed with honesty, brevity and accuracy.
“We got our ass kicked (in) every way we could. Coaching, playing, hustle, everything,” he said after the game.
Clearly, this is a team in chaos. It’s hard to imagine that there isn’t more to their struggles than what they’ve shown on the floor. They’ve been too bad over the first half of the season for there to be any other explanation.
After years of stability and veteran NBA-level talent, change have hit the program hard. Welcoming a group of eight newcomers that includes seven freshmen (four of them from overseas) was always going to be a challenge, but Cronin was given the benefit of doubt due to his sustained success. This, in turn, led to optimism surrounding the team during the preseason. Now, that optimism is gone.
There are too many questions without answers. The Bruins are getting blasted online, their fanbase is up in arms and Cronin even admitted that his players are feeling embarrassed. While he’s not wrong to say that their problems revolve around their inability to hit open shots and control the glass, it has to go beyond that. There’s no obvious fix — whether analytical or from “the eye test” — that can turn things around in a hurry.
Cronin hasn’t suddenly forgotten how to coach. A group of talented players hasn’t just forgotten how to play ball. And one of the best programs in the history of college basketball didn’t just become a conference doormat.
So, what is the problem? Is there a way to sit this UCLA program down and force it to confront its demons?
In short, the answer is: “No.”
Unfortunately for UCLA, a basketball team can’t get an intervention. The only thing that can sober up this “punch-drunk” team is by getting some much-needed wins under its belt.
However, UCLA still has 15 games left in the final season of the Pac-12 conference. On the horizon, is a tough weekend trip to play the Arizona schools. This might not be the ideal place for the Bruins to try to right the ship, but the process has to start somewhere.
The Daily Dish is a daily college basketball column by a rotating cast of 247Sports writers on the biggest stories of the day in the sport and will run through the NCAA Tournament championship in April.
