In Reply to: Just listened to his latest podcast posted by Cachorro on April 22, 2026 at 10:34:27
a pretty good coach right now. He's not flashy. He's old school. He's not the best recruiter in terms of highly ranked(?) players, but brings in good basketball players. He knows what he's doing. He brings in solid basketball players and from what I've seen solid citizens as well. His players like him and mostly want to stay.
His teams always compete. He gets them to play hard. And his teams almost always play better than the sum of their parts. Usually those measurements are determined by superficial or merely analytical things and don't take into account the value of a team playing hard together. Only a good coach can achieve that and it seems that Cronin has been achieving that his whole career.
I think if UCLA sticks with this guy (as long as he doesn't self destruct) it's only a matter of time before he achieves the kind of success we all wish for. If that happens the basketball world (including recruits) will see the value of Cronin's methods. Perhaps then he can have a string of highly successful seasons. I don't like everything about him, there are things that bother me, but it's not always greener ... I think highly of him as a coach and I do believe that he can be highly successful and bring one or more national championships to UCLA. I think he's that good.
Cronin has been at UCLA for 7 seasons. He's made the tourney 5 times and would have made it 6 times if it wasn't for the pandemic. He's had one final four and 2 sweet sixteens. With some luck (mostly injuries, but not just that) he had his team poised to make 2 or maybe 3 (I forget) more deep runs. That's pretty successful already, but I believe he is even better than that.