By Bill Koch
By the time Mick Cronin left Cincinnati for UCLA in the spring of 2019 it was easy for UC fans to forget what he had gone through to restore the UC program not only to respectability, but to a level of excellence that resulted in nine straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
By then, the conversation among many UC fans was that he didn’t go far enough in the NCAA Tournament or that his style of play was boring. The fact that his teams had won a school record 31 games in 2017-18 and had won 89 games in his final three years didn’t seem to matter all that much.
This is a refresher course of what Cronin inherited in 2006, when athletic director Mike Thomas chose him over interim coach Andy Kennedy to pick up the pieces from the mess left behind in the wake of Nancy Zimpher’s firing of Bob Huggins.
The following is based on my 2018 book, “The Forgotten Bearcats: How Mick Cronin and a Band of Unsung Players Saved Cincinnati Basketball:
Cronin was as prepared as anyone could have expected, given the situation. He had a semblance of a plan in that he knew he had to start with mostly junior college players. And he had a list of the ones he thought he could get who would at least make his first team respectable, if not fully competitive in the Big East.
Sure, he wanted to win as many games as he could, but he knew there were limits to how much he could accomplish in that regard. There were no limits, however, to what he could do to establish what he wanted his program to represent.
“That was my big thing,” Cronin said. “If I’m a fan or if I’m the administration, I want to know a) does this guy know how to give his team a chance to win with his coaching? And b) how hard do his guys play regardless of the situation? That’s what I tried to stay focused on.
“The one thing I learned being around winning teams prior to that is, you could tell when other teams have given up. You could kind of hear their players mumbling in February. You just can’t let that happen. And you hope that people notice, hey, these guys never give in. That’s who we’re going to be. That was my goal. We have to set the tone so when we do get good enough that’s what we’re about.”
With only two conference victories in his first season, Cronin had no choice but to embrace a close loss as a success. He didn’t see that as accepting defeat.
“There were games when you’d lose by 10 and you’d think we should have lost by 30,” he said. “But we only lost by 10 because of how hard these guys were playing and because of my game plan. That keeps you going. You know you didn’t win, but you really did.”
Still, losing wore on him. How could it not? Being continually overmatched and losing so much would wear on anyone who’s competitive. And Cronin is ultra-competitive. Plus he had risen through the coaching ranks in winning programs like Cincinnati and Louisville. Losing was foreign to him.
But during those times when he was frustrated, Cronin tried not to let his players see it.
“You’ve got to give an air of confidence,” he said. “Everybody’s looking to you, especially young people, so if you come in there ready to go, then they think, hey, this guy ain’t giving up, so I ain’t giving up.”
The Bearcats averaged 8,831 fans in a 13,176-seat arena in Croin’s first season, down from 9,301 the previous year under Kennedy and 11,059 in Huggins’ final season. Most of the fans who showed up were supportive, but some weren’t in Cronin’s corner, and didn’t hesitate to let everyone know how they felt.
“I was a little shocked when people would hold up signs to get rid of Mick,” said Cronin’s dad, Hep. “I would think, don’t they understand? They did not understand and it shocked me how stupid they were, what he had to go through just to field a team.
“He would never admit it, but it bothered him a little bit. He was worried about his job. I think he saw the light at the end of the tunnel if he could just survive, that he was going to be able to get players. But it was going to take three or four years to get to 20 wins. The more (fans) held up signs, it just motivated him more. He kept it a lot inside. It wasn’t easy, but he kept most of it inside.”
In Cronin’s second season, the Bearcats improved from 11-19 to 13-19 overall and from two Big East wins to eight.
A few weeks after the season ended, Cronin pulled off a huge recruiting coup when Yancy Gates, a first-team all-state selection from Cincinnati’s Withrow High School, committed to UC. Point guard Cashmere Wright, another top recruit, signed as part of the same class.
The Bearcats produced their first winning season under Cronin in 2008-09, going 18-14 overall, 8-10 in the Big East, but lost in the first found of the Big East Tournament to DePaul. That was followed by another recruiting breakthrough, the signing of Lance Stephenson, a McDonald’s high school All-American.
In 2010-11, Cronin’s fifth season at UC, they went 26-9 overall, 11-7 in the Big East and played in their first NCAA Tournament since 2005. Eight more NCAA Tournament appearances would follow before UCLA came calling in 2019.
Still, for all of Cronin’s success, the Bearcats were never able to get past the Sweet 16, a level they reached only once in his 13 years. The frustration among UC fans reached a boiling point when UC suffered a devastating loss in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament when they squandered a 22-point lead with 11:37 remaining, and fell to Nevada, 75-73. The loss was especially painful because that team undoubtedly was Cronin’s most talented at UC, and had the best chance to make a deep run in the tournament.
“I’ll never get over that,” Cronin told reporters a few weeks later at the team banquet. “My responsibility is different than most coaches. Very few people are coaching at their alma mater and in their hometown and grew up a Bearcat fan, where their father was a varsity letter winner and their mother grew up on campus.
“My responsibility and the weight of that is on me…I can’t possibly express it to you, how much I bear that burden of getting back to a Final Four.”
Now Cronin has finally arrived in the Final Four, not as the UC coach, but as the head coach of the storied UCLA Bruins. He didn't have to start from scratch like did at UC, but he had to teach his new players the value of playing hard and relying on defense. After what he had been through at UC, that must have seemed like a walk in the park.
It has taken him only two years. When the Bruins upset top-seeded Michigan in the Elite Eight on Tuesday night, they did it with the same bruising, defense-oriented style that Cronin taught John Williamson, Jamual Warren, Deonta Vaughn, and the rest of the Bearcats on his first UC team 15 years ago.
It worked in Cincinnati, although not always to the satisfaction of Bearcat fans. And now it’s working at UCLA, where the fans couldn’t be more pleased, if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Facebook post is an indication.
“The UCLA Legacy Lives on with Coach Mick Cronin," Abdul-Jabbar wrote. "Bruins we are in good hands."
By the time Mick Cronin left Cincinnati for UCLA in the spring of 2019 it was easy for UC fans to forget what he had gone through to restore the UC program not only to respectability, but to a level of excellence that resulted in nine straight NCAA Tournament appearances.
By then, the conversation among many UC fans was that he didn’t go far enough in the NCAA Tournament or that his style of play was boring. The fact that his teams had won a school record 31 games in 2017-18 and had won 89 games in his final three years didn’t seem to matter all that much.
This is a refresher course of what Cronin inherited in 2006, when athletic director Mike Thomas chose him over interim coach Andy Kennedy to pick up the pieces from the mess left behind in the wake of Nancy Zimpher’s firing of Bob Huggins.
The following is based on my 2018 book, “The Forgotten Bearcats: How Mick Cronin and a Band of Unsung Players Saved Cincinnati Basketball:
Cronin was as prepared as anyone could have expected, given the situation. He had a semblance of a plan in that he knew he had to start with mostly junior college players. And he had a list of the ones he thought he could get who would at least make his first team respectable, if not fully competitive in the Big East.
Sure, he wanted to win as many games as he could, but he knew there were limits to how much he could accomplish in that regard. There were no limits, however, to what he could do to establish what he wanted his program to represent.
“That was my big thing,” Cronin said. “If I’m a fan or if I’m the administration, I want to know a) does this guy know how to give his team a chance to win with his coaching? And b) how hard do his guys play regardless of the situation? That’s what I tried to stay focused on.
“The one thing I learned being around winning teams prior to that is, you could tell when other teams have given up. You could kind of hear their players mumbling in February. You just can’t let that happen. And you hope that people notice, hey, these guys never give in. That’s who we’re going to be. That was my goal. We have to set the tone so when we do get good enough that’s what we’re about.”
With only two conference victories in his first season, Cronin had no choice but to embrace a close loss as a success. He didn’t see that as accepting defeat.
“There were games when you’d lose by 10 and you’d think we should have lost by 30,” he said. “But we only lost by 10 because of how hard these guys were playing and because of my game plan. That keeps you going. You know you didn’t win, but you really did.”
Still, losing wore on him. How could it not? Being continually overmatched and losing so much would wear on anyone who’s competitive. And Cronin is ultra-competitive. Plus he had risen through the coaching ranks in winning programs like Cincinnati and Louisville. Losing was foreign to him.
But during those times when he was frustrated, Cronin tried not to let his players see it.
“You’ve got to give an air of confidence,” he said. “Everybody’s looking to you, especially young people, so if you come in there ready to go, then they think, hey, this guy ain’t giving up, so I ain’t giving up.”
The Bearcats averaged 8,831 fans in a 13,176-seat arena in Croin’s first season, down from 9,301 the previous year under Kennedy and 11,059 in Huggins’ final season. Most of the fans who showed up were supportive, but some weren’t in Cronin’s corner, and didn’t hesitate to let everyone know how they felt.
“I was a little shocked when people would hold up signs to get rid of Mick,” said Cronin’s dad, Hep. “I would think, don’t they understand? They did not understand and it shocked me how stupid they were, what he had to go through just to field a team.
“He would never admit it, but it bothered him a little bit. He was worried about his job. I think he saw the light at the end of the tunnel if he could just survive, that he was going to be able to get players. But it was going to take three or four years to get to 20 wins. The more (fans) held up signs, it just motivated him more. He kept it a lot inside. It wasn’t easy, but he kept most of it inside.”
In Cronin’s second season, the Bearcats improved from 11-19 to 13-19 overall and from two Big East wins to eight.
A few weeks after the season ended, Cronin pulled off a huge recruiting coup when Yancy Gates, a first-team all-state selection from Cincinnati’s Withrow High School, committed to UC. Point guard Cashmere Wright, another top recruit, signed as part of the same class.
The Bearcats produced their first winning season under Cronin in 2008-09, going 18-14 overall, 8-10 in the Big East, but lost in the first found of the Big East Tournament to DePaul. That was followed by another recruiting breakthrough, the signing of Lance Stephenson, a McDonald’s high school All-American.
In 2010-11, Cronin’s fifth season at UC, they went 26-9 overall, 11-7 in the Big East and played in their first NCAA Tournament since 2005. Eight more NCAA Tournament appearances would follow before UCLA came calling in 2019.
Still, for all of Cronin’s success, the Bearcats were never able to get past the Sweet 16, a level they reached only once in his 13 years. The frustration among UC fans reached a boiling point when UC suffered a devastating loss in the second round of the 2018 NCAA Tournament when they squandered a 22-point lead with 11:37 remaining, and fell to Nevada, 75-73. The loss was especially painful because that team undoubtedly was Cronin’s most talented at UC, and had the best chance to make a deep run in the tournament.
“I’ll never get over that,” Cronin told reporters a few weeks later at the team banquet. “My responsibility is different than most coaches. Very few people are coaching at their alma mater and in their hometown and grew up a Bearcat fan, where their father was a varsity letter winner and their mother grew up on campus.
“My responsibility and the weight of that is on me…I can’t possibly express it to you, how much I bear that burden of getting back to a Final Four.”
Now Cronin has finally arrived in the Final Four, not as the UC coach, but as the head coach of the storied UCLA Bruins. He didn't have to start from scratch like did at UC, but he had to teach his new players the value of playing hard and relying on defense. After what he had been through at UC, that must have seemed like a walk in the park.
It has taken him only two years. When the Bruins upset top-seeded Michigan in the Elite Eight on Tuesday night, they did it with the same bruising, defense-oriented style that Cronin taught John Williamson, Jamual Warren, Deonta Vaughn, and the rest of the Bearcats on his first UC team 15 years ago.
It worked in Cincinnati, although not always to the satisfaction of Bearcat fans. And now it’s working at UCLA, where the fans couldn’t be more pleased, if Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Facebook post is an indication.
“The UCLA Legacy Lives on with Coach Mick Cronin," Abdul-Jabbar wrote. "Bruins we are in good hands."
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