All Ball Sports: UCLA Coach Cronin won’t make excuses. So, here they are
by Paul Teetor
As a general rule, I’m opposed to making excuses for bad things that can happen to any team in any given game.
As my uncle Alvin used to tell us street kids back in the day, “Never complain, never explain.”
But for this one time only, because UCLA Coach Mick Cronin won’t do it himself, I’ll have to do it.
I’ll explain why the Bruins lost to Gonzaga 79-76 in an instant classic Sweet Sixteen game Thursday night, and I’ll even make a few excuses in the process. The reality that it came two years after Gonzaga beat UCLA in an epic NCAA semifinal on a similar 40-foot buzzer beater just made this year’s loss that much more painful.
The reaction among UCLA fans was universal: Oh No, Not Again!!!! Freakin’ Gonzaga is so damn lucky!
For those UCLA fans struggling to process Gonzaga’s amazing, horrible, no good, very bad win on yet another ridiculously long heave to beat the buzzer, here’s how this epic game would have played out if UCLA had its full squad available.
In particular, how it would have played out if two Bruin starters – PAC-12 Defensive Player of the Year Jaylen Clark, and PAC-12 Freshman of the year Adem Bona, who also made the PAC-10 All Defense first team – had been able to play Thursday night.
First of all, Gonzaga’s Drew Timme, the mustache-twirling arrogant jerk who will turn 23 later this year and seems like he has been playing college ball since James Naismith first nailed a peach basket to a tree more than a century ago, never would have scored a game-high 36 points or pulled down 13 rebounds.
David Nwuba, the UCLA second-string center who was forced to cover him because Bona had torn up his shoulder in the PAC-12 Conference Tournament and then re-injured it in their second-round victory over Northwestern, did a decent job on Timme.
Coach Cronin’s game plan was to avoid the usual mistake of double teaming Timme when Gonzaga got the ball to him on the low post. His logic was solid – prevent the Zags outside shooters from getting open shots on smart passes from Timme – but as the game went on Timme started hitting everything he shot.
Nwuba, who looks like he spends too much time on the buffet line and not enough time in the weight room, was bulky enough and agile enough to stop his first move most times. But Timme always had a counter move, a second and sometimes even a third move and eventually he would manufacture an easy shot for himself.
He ended up connecting on 16 of 24 shots and was the only reason UCLA didn’t run away and hide in the first half, when they built up a 13-point lead and looked to have the game under control. Without Timme on the floor, the Bruins easily could have pulled ahead by 20 points or more.
Bona would have shut Timme down with his superior athleticism, quickness and agility. Timme, who enjoys playing the part of the villain that everyone hates, would have only gotten a few buckets with his endless series of pump fakes, drop steps and in-close bank shots.
But there’s a reason Timme has never declared for the NBA draft: NBA evaluators have told him he likely would not be a first-round draft pick due to his below-average athleticism and quickness. In other words, he’s the kind of “star” center that Bona is custom-made to put in lockdown and throw away the key.
The brutal truth is that Timme will never be an NBA first round draft choice no matter how many years he plays in college. There is now talk that he may take advantage of the fifth year of college eligibility offered to those who played through the Covid-19 season of 2020-21 and play for Gonzaga again next year.
But that won’t change the reality he must face sooner or later: he’s a ground-bound slow plodder and the NBA is a league of swift, agile high jumpers. The below-the-rim junk game that he uses to punish undersized college players will never fly in the NBA.
On the other hand, because Bona is a 6-foot-9 athletic marvel with superb quickness and agility, Bona will definitely be a first round draft choice whether he declares for the draft this year, next year or the year after. If he’s as smart as he looks, he’ll stay at UCLA for at least one more year to refine his offensive game, which is pretty primitive at this point. His offensive moves are way behind his defensive game, which is NBA ready already at age 19.
The germane point here is that Timme would have only scored half – or less — of his total of 36 points if Bona had been available to cover him from start to finish. But he wasn’t available, and while it sounds like an excuse – which it is – it’s also the truth.
But let’s say that someone else made up for the Gonzaga points scored by Timme that Bona would have prevented. Let’s say that the game came down to the final seconds with the Zags leading by two with 15 seconds left.
And let’s say that Bruin freshman Amari Bailey hits the same clutch three pointer to put the Bruins up by one point with Gonzaga calling a quick timeout to draw up a game-winning play with 12 seconds left.
Now we come to the part where the basketball gods conspired against the Bruins. Start with this undisputed fact: the Zags only trailed by one point, so they simply needed a two-point basket, not a three-pointer from long distance, to win the game.
But Gonzaga Coach Mark Few, for some crazy reason that he still hasn’t explained, drew up a play designed to get their best outside shooter, Julian Strawther, an open shot from more than 10 feet behind the three-point line.
Why go for a super-long three-pointer when you only need two points to win? That’s a question that will forever linger over this game as it enters the history books, a question that Few has not really answered beyond cliches about getting their best shooter an open shot.
UCLA Coach Cronin did not have Clark, the best perimeter defender in the country, available to shadow Strawther, who he had to figure was going to take the last shot if they didn’t go inside to Timme.
So, with Clark out and David Singleton playing on a bad ankle he sprained against Northwestern, Cronin was forced to assign freshman Dylan Andrews to guard Strawther. As the Zags brought the ball up court with the clock winding down to zero, Andrews gave Strawther a big cushion, figuring there was no way he was going to take a 3-pointer from 32 feet away when they only needed two points to win.
At this critical juncture in the game, there is no doubt that Clark would have been in Strawther’s jersey from the moment he started moving up the court. He would have given him no breathing room at all, much less room to get an open shot from anywhere on the court.
That is the crucial difference between a tested veteran who is an elite defensive player and a freshman playing in the biggest moment of the biggest game of his life: the freshman is going to play it smart, play the percentages, and sag off from the shooter until he gets to within two-point range.
And that’s exactly what Andrews did: he went under the pick and left Strawther wide open from 32 feet. Most college players would miss that shot, no one would ever second guess Andrews for sagging off the shooter, and UCLA would hang on for the win.
But Strawther hit his instant-legend shot, and Bruins fans who had already begun celebrating when Bailey gave them the lead with 12 seconds left had the air knocked right out of them.
It couldn’t be happening yet again, could it?
Yes, it could.
So there you have the first two excuses, both valid: Bona wasn’t available to prevent Timme from having a career night, and Clark wasn’t available to prevent Strawther from hitting one of the biggest shots in NCAA tournament history.
But aside from the last second heroics from both teams, the reality is that this game was lost in the middle of the second half, when UCLA’s 13-point lead evaporated. They didn’t score a single bucket over an 11-minute span.
As Coach Cronin said, “There were a lot of open shots that didn’t go down. Wide open shots. We just couldn’t hit anything for the longest time.”
Why did the Bruins have such a prolonged cold spell after dominating the first half? To anyone watching the game with a critical eye, it was obvious: the Bruins ran out of gas. They were playing with dead legs. Their five starters – slick point guard Tyger Campbell, gritty forward Jaime Jacquez, sharp shooter David Singleton, super freshman Amari Bailey and sub center Nwuba — all played crazy minutes.
Nwuba, who hardly played all year because Bona was such a tower of power for the Bruins, logged 32 minutes and was running on fumes most of the second half. Campbell, who missed several of those point-blank shots that Cronin was lamenting, played 38 out of 40 minutes. Bailey, who opened the game red-hot, cooled off in the second half while playing 34 minutes, until he hit that last-second three-pointer that looked like a game winner. Singleton, who was playing on a badly sprained ankle, opened the game by drilling a corner three and then only hit one more shot while playing 38 minutes.
Jacquez, the PAC-12 Player of the Year, led the team with 29 points in 39 minutes while connecting on 12 of 25 shots. And it was Jacquez who led the Bruins comeback in the final two minutes, twice driving hard to the hoop, scoring and getting fouled to complete a three-point play.
But in the end the Bruins incredible 10-point comeback was eclipsed by Strawther’s 32-foot shot that will go down in UCLA infamy just behind the 40-foot bank shot that Jalen Suggs hit two years ago to prevent the Bruins from reaching the NCAA championship game.
The day before this game, Coach Cronin was asked how the absence of Clark and Bona would affect the game.
“If it doesn’t go our way, I’m not going to come in here and say we lost because those two guys weren’t playing or these three guys weren’t playing,” Cronin said. “We’re still going to get to play 5-on-5. You’ve got to be tough enough to figure it out if you want to win.”
And after the game Cronin was true to his vow: no excuses.
So we did it for him.
I think this one time Uncle Alvin would have been OK with it.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor