Mick Cronin has UCLA Bruins embracing the John Wooden way

UCLA coach Mick Cronin celebrates with players during the second half of the Final Four game against Gonzaga.

Sports Columnist

April 5, 2021 7 AM PT

It’s easy to believe UCLA’s magnificent march to April and the Final Four began last season, Mick Cronin’s first in a chair that has been too sizzling hot for many of the coaches who had to tread in John Wooden’s large footsteps.

Responding to his team’s weak defensive effort in an ugly loss to Cal State Fullerton at Pauley Pavilion on Dec. 28, 2019, Cronin told players they couldn’t wear practice jerseys bearing the UCLA name. They hadn’t earned the privilege of wearing those letters, hadn’t shown the humility and team-first mentality to lift the program back into the national conversation. He had done something similar at his previous stop in Cincinnati, but it was a bold move for a coach who still was trying to win his players’ hearts and minds.

It struck Kris Johnson, a member of the Bruins’ 1995 NCAA championship team and loyal fan, as being over the top. “I was like, ‘This guy, Mick Cronin, come on. He’s coming from Cincinnati and you see his histrionics. He’s an acquired taste,’” Johnson said.

Johnson’s first impression changed rapidly.

“He made the kids earn the jerseys back by embracing the tradition of UCLA, understanding what the legacy was here at the school and knowing that they’re representing something bigger,” Johnson said. “They earned the jerseys back through their hard play, through their dedication in practice, showing the coaches that they were worthy.

“I felt like that moment set the tone.”

Fifteen months and a pandemic-canceled 2020 NCAA tournament later, the Bruins’ symphony reached a crescendo Saturday in a gutsy 93-90 overtime loss to mighty Gonzaga. It took commitment and cohesion to go as far as they did after finishing fourth in the Pac-12, to survive a play-in game, to understand what’s expected of UCLA players and to embrace that instead of fearing it. It took an improbable 40-foot bank shot to beat them. By no definition were they losers.

“It was an unbelievable performance. It ripped our hearts out,” said Ann Meyers Drysdale, who led UCLA’s women’s team to a national title in 1978, won an Olympic silver medal in 1976 and was inducted into the basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.

Still, it was infinitely better for these Bruins to have lost in the Final Four than never to have been there at all. Meyers Drysdale, who affectionately refers to Wooden as “Papa,” credits Cronin for respecting Wooden’s legacy and the Bruins’ storied past without being trapped by it and, with this unexpected thrill ride, putting his own twists on a program that urgently needed to be revived.

“The best thing is that he has them playing to the best of their ability, and that’s all you can ask,” said Meyers Drysdale, a vice president of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury. “Papa never talked about winning. Papa said your success is your peace of mind knowing you did your best in what you’re capable of becoming. And I think Mick has established that also.”

Was this the guttiest of gutty little Bruin performances? That’s tough to say. Johnson’s 1995 team barely beat Missouri in the second round, prevailing on a full-court dash by Tyus Edney in the waning seconds. In the 1975 semifinals against Louisville, the Bruins had to rally to force overtime and won on a dramatic shot by Richard Washington. They beat Kentucky in the final for Wooden’s last title.

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA - APRIL 02: Tyger Campbell #10 of the UCLA Bruins practices ahead of the Final Four.

UCLA's historic Final Four run

Like this season’s Bruins, the 1980 team under coach Larry Brown defied low expectations. Those Bruins had lost three starters from the previous season and weren’t expected to do much but they upset top-ranked DePaul and reached the final, where they lost to Louisville.

“There were a lot of similarities,” said Kiki VanDeWeghe, a senior on that team who’s now executive vice president of basketball operations for the NBA. “You saw through the year lots of growth. I thought Mick did a tremendous job, a fantastic job getting the team to play together. They played hard. They were a team that, towards the end of the year, you had to beat. They weren’t going to beat themselves. They came to play every single night. They played you hard on defense, they had good size that could really shoot and play together as a team.

“And one thing you could tell is they just believed, and if I can draw some common threads between the team I played on in 1980 and this team, it’s we just both believed. Nobody gave us a chance. They were in the First Four and they took an undefeated Gonzaga right down to the wire and it took a miracle shot to actually end the game. Being a UCLA alum I would love to see it go a different way but it was a fantastic game. It was a fitting ending. It was everything you could possibly want in a tournament game.”

Johnson, who conducts sports interview shows on Instagram Live and his YouTube channel, said the Bruins’ four-game losing streak to end the season proved to be a blessing, not a curse. Close losses that often hinged on one play made them stronger, and Cronin boosted their confidence.

“You have to lift them up. You can’t always tell them what they did wrong. You have to tell them what they did right, also,” said Johnson, son of former UCLA and NBA star Marques Johnson. “Cronin’s style, it’s tough. I’m old school so I’m a believer in that type of style. ... I just feel like the kids were totally bought in to the whole Cronin gospel.”

Cronin acknowledges the debt UCLA owes to Wooden but he’s not dragged down by it.

“The legacy gives you a great foundation to build on,” VanDeWeghe said. “I think that’s what Coach Cronin has done. I think he’s embraced it. He does things his own way and he is himself, which is fantastic and is building on that legacy. It’s got a great history. It’s a fantastic place with great supporters of the program but you’ve got to come to practice every day. You can’t just kind of go out there thinking the name is going to beat somebody — you have to put the work in, and his teams put the work in.

“I put it as a positive that we all were lucky to play with the foundation that Coach Wooden and all the great Bruins that went before us laid down.”