When Mick Cronin rewatched what might need been essentially the most excruciating lack of his profession, doing so solely as a result of he wanted to scout the identical opponent for a rematch the next season, the ultimate sequence was pleasing.
UCLA’s Johnny Juzang prolonged his proper arm to snag a rebound and rose towards the basket for a putback that tied the rating in opposition to Gonzaga with 3.3 seconds remaining within the time beyond regulation of their 2021 Remaining 4 traditional.
Round that second, Cronin pressed pause.
That meant Jalen Suggs by no means took the inbounds move, by no means frantically dribbled only a few steps previous halfcourt and by no means launched the shot that bounced off the backboard and thru the online, breaking the guts of each Bruin.
“That shot?” Cronin instructed The Occasions this month. “No, I’ve never seen it.”
Two years later, within the NCAA match’s Candy 16, the Bulldogs gave the UCLA coach one more reason to selectively watch the replay. Just a few moments after Amari Bailey’s three-pointer gave the Bruin a late lead, Gonzaga’s Julian Strawther received it again with one other game-winning heave on the sting of the March Insanity brand at middle courtroom.
What are the probabilities the identical opponent crushes your soul twice in basically the identical manner?
“Yeah, I know,” Cronin mentioned when reminded. “I mean, it is what it is. Hopefully, the ball bounces your way sometimes.”
Saturday can be place to begin in opposition to the group that has tormented Cronin essentially the most. He’s 0-4 in opposition to Gonzaga with the Bruins — and suffered one other bitter time beyond regulation defeat in opposition to coach Mark Few’s group in 2009 whereas teaching Cincinnati — heading right into a nationally broadcast conflict between No. 22 UCLA (10-2) and the No. 14 Bulldogs (9-3) on the Intuit Dome.
By nature, coaches have a tendency to carry on to losses greater than wins; it’s what drives them to maintain pushing, making an attempt to be the group on the opposite aspect of the ledger. Invariably, the hardest losses are those that finish their season.
“At UCLA,” Cronin mentioned, “I’m 9-3 in the NCAA tournament and all three of our losses were brutal.”
Over a profession spanning three faculties and 22 seasons, Cronin has received 490 video games. Probably his three most painful losses — two in opposition to Gonzaga and one in opposition to North Carolina — got here throughout the final 5 seasons. All had been within the NCAA match.
Gonzaga guard Jalen Suggs celebrates after making the profitable basket to remove UCLA within the NCAA Remaining 4 on April 3, 2021.
(Michael Conroy / Related Press)
Cronin mentioned the 2021 Gonzaga loss was tougher to abdomen than the 2023 Gonzaga loss as a result of the latter setback got here with prime defender Jaylen Clark and beginning large man Adem Bona sidelined due to accidents.
“It would have been an unbelievable win without those two guys,” Cronin mentioned. “To me, we were a massive underdog and I don’t know how much gas we had left in the tank playing without those two guys. So I don’t know how much further we’d have gone.”
The Bruins may as effectively have been shorthanded within the 2021 Remaining 4 matchup on condition that beginning guard Jules Bernard wakened that morning with a nasty case of meals poisoning. Severely weakened, he took simply three photographs and completed with 5 factors in 18 minutes.
“Those are the things that bother me more than crazy shots or anything like that because the injuries, it’s like, you know, you can’t prepare for it, you can’t plan for it, there’s nothing you can do about it,” Cronin mentioned. “It just happens.”
A yr later, in opposition to North Carolina within the Candy 16, ahead Jaime Jaquez Jr. missed his remaining 9 photographs whereas taking part in on a badly sprained ankle that he had injured solely days earlier within the remaining minutes of a victory over Saint Mary’s.
“I was just about to get him out” of the sport, Cronin mentioned with a darkish snort.
UCLA remained in glorious place to beat the Tar Heels even with Jaquez mainly taking part in on one leg. The Bruins led by three factors with lower than two minutes to play, then all the things that might go unsuitable for them did.
UCLA’s Tyger Campbell, left, and Jaime Jaquez Jr. react in the course of the remaining seconds of the Bruins’ 73-66 loss to North Carolina within the Candy 16 of the 2022 NCAA match.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Occasions)
A Caleb Love three-pointer was off the mark, the ball bouncing off the rim and inside an inch of going out of bounds earlier than North Carolina teammate Armando Bacot made a wild, over-the-shoulder save on to Love, whose subsequent three-pointer went in. Love added one other three-pointer, Jaquez’s chilly streak deepened with three extra misses, and the Tar Heels went on to win by 5 factors.
It was a sequence harking back to final weekend’s recreation between the groups, when the Bruins misplaced a 16-point lead throughout a 76-74 setback in opposition to the Tar Heels within the CBS Sports activities Basic. In fact, a December defeat by no means hurts as a lot as one in March.
“I just think that that team,” Cronin mentioned of the 2022 model that misplaced to North Carolina, “we were deep enough that we could have won the title.”
Cronin acknowledged the problem in processing the repeated heartbreak, saying “you’ve got to grow up and be mature.”
“Yeah, it’s not easy to deal with, but look, I’ve got pretty decent perspective in life,” Cronin mentioned. “I’m the son of a high school coach who rose to be the coach at UCLA. So if I start complaining, I don’t think many people are going to listen, nor should they. Like, nobody’s feeling sorry for me.
“So, I mean, I just think sometimes it’s not in the cards; hopefully, one day it’s in the cards for you. All you can do is keep working at it.”
Apart from, certainly one of Cronin’s greatest failures led to maybe his biggest success. What might need occurred if his Cincinnati group didn’t blow a 22-point lead in opposition to Nevada within the second spherical of the 2018 NCAA match?
“That one, I kind of put in the can,” Cronin mentioned. “Yeah, it was brutal, but if that didn’t happen I’d probably still be there. They’d probably have given me a lifetime contract or something crazy like that and I’m not here. I probably wouldn’t be the coach at UCLA.”
