Subtitle: How Cronin got duped and (almost) ruined UCLA basketball
Most here, given the return of Bona and several new highly rated international players, probably assumed we would most likely make the NCAA tournament. UCLA was picked for 3rd in the preseason Pac-12 poll and 28th in the AP poll. Few if any believed a losing season was possible.
However, just before the start of the season, I pointed out that the roster had serious flaws and that fans shouldn't be too optimistic and it would take Cronin's best coaching job ever to have a successful season. We got neither.
I will repeat and expand on the main points of that post.
(1) Lack of returning scoring. We had only 16% of our scoring returning. It has been extremely rare for championship quality teams to have less than 30% coming back. That should not be very surprising, but how about just making the tournament? The graph below shows the percentage returning for all 68 NCAA tournament teams last season. Only 11 had less than 30% of their scoring returning and one less than 20%. With the exploding transfer market now, these numbers will change, but they apply to all past seasons.
Returning scoring takes into account continuity and talent but doesn't factor in experienced transfers. UCLA had the 4th least experienced team in the country (average seasons with at least 10 games played per Torvick). Only two teams in the bottom 50 made the tournament.
However, having a very successful season without returning scoring and/or experience can be done.
If you look at the above graph, there is one team that made the NCAA tournament with less than 10% of their scoring returning. In fact they had ZERO returning scoring. But Utah St. started four transfers and a 3-star freshman and won the Mountain West conference regular season championship. All of the transfers were either from small conference teams or major schools where they were little used. Their coach, Danny Sprinkle just got hired by Washington.
The two inexperienced teams who made the tournament were Kentucky (5th least) and Duke (12th least). They did it by having the top two recruiting classes in the country. Even national champion UConn was relatively inexperienced (80th least out of 362).
(2) One-and-Dones At Cincinnati, Cronin was not able to recruit 5-star players. But at UCLA, two were willing to commit and he couldn't refuse them. Peyton Watson was by most measures a bust. Amari Bailey missed seven games with injuries, but came on strong at the end of the season. Watson came just before NIL blew up and Bailey already had large deals from his massive social media following. However, how much better would our team have been last season with an experienced soph and junior on the roster instead of the much less experienced players? We are now unlikely to get any more 5-stars due to NIL driving everything but these days even 3-stars are leaving early.
(3) Euros Here is where Cronin messed up. I'm guessing he missed on his top transfer targets due to being outbid on NIL. But almost every team we played had transfers, some from small programs and not that highly regarded who helped beat us. Many of those schools could not have had better NIL opportunities than UCLA. But instead of going after that type of player, he panicked and let Simovic influence him. Cronin figured he could get highly rated Euros and they weren't even allowed to get NIL. So he bought into that and brought in four overrated players without the chance to scout them repeatedly like the American players. How overrated? Most of the 5-stars and many of the 4-stars in that class were major contributors to their teams, many of them a lot stronger than UCLA. All of them showed up on 2024 mock drafts. Now, it is difficult to find them on 2025 mocks. These were not Cronin's type of players. For example, Brandon Williams had almost identical stats to the Euros. But he got to start many games. Why? Because he was a tough kid from NYC, not a soft Euro. Canka and Fibleuil came in with defensive reputations but couldn't even get on the floor under a defensive minded coach. What does that tell you? Some or all of the Euros might end up as decent college players, but they clearly were not a good fit here.
Euros historically have made little impact on college basketball. The best ones usually stay in Europe and play professionally there until they are ready for the NBA. Only two or three have ever been consensus All-Americans and won't be found on major conference All-Defensive teams. Only one has started for an NCAA championship team since George Zidek. Of the 340 starters on the 68 NCAA tournament teams last season, only seven were European born players who didn't attend prep or high school in the U.S. The seven also had nothing in common with our four. None came from any of the same countries and all were in at least their third season of college basketball.
Fortunately, Cronin has gotten back on the right track and is bringing in experienced domestic players. Why couldn't he have done that last year? Many were available that didn't require large NIL deals and would have helped a lot more than the Euros. You can no longer build a team by developing players over four years. If they are any good, they will leave early. Jaquez was a rare exception.
Next season probably won't need Cronin's best coaching job to be successful. We can be thankful for that.