In Reply to: Aday Mara + Berke Buyuktuncel are still undefeated. posted by Michael.Walter.Cronin on December 22, 2025 at 16:01:27
again, just my opinion, but I believe Cronin felt he was protecting Mara and bringing him along slowly (in part due to injuries but he had commented several times about talks he had with Mara's father about giving the 7'3" kid a chance to develop at his own pace.
I believe Mara was the post for this season and all Cronin believed he needed from the transfer portal was a backup for that position. But the pace of development rankled the young man and some in his entourage during that time back home. And no doubt Cronin didn't handle Aday's return very well - at least, not successfully. And that left Cronin in scramble mode for this season.
With the result that we're left lacking in the post and that caps our ceiling 'way below what we - and imo he (Cronin) - thought and hoped it would be.
I expect he's learned some lessons on how to handle potentially touchy players - most five stars anyway, players who expect to take college by storm and skip right off to the NBA. Cronin may understand the barriers and what is required to make that leap a LOT better and more realistically than these 18 year old kids and their enablers but he can't just sit back secure in the knowledge that he knows best in the long run because losing Mara doomed what otherwise might well have been an Elite Eight team and perhaps even Final Four.
The others, okay, good for them. It didn't work out for them at UCLA and they moved on. It happens. But - again, just my opinion - it was the break with Mara that doomed our early hopes for this year and also Cronin's as I think his thoughts and heart are stuck on Jaime's last team that lost a terrific force inside and the nation's best defender to injuries that dropped it from a real NC contender to a heartbreaking loss earlier than that. He has that team as a model but players like Jaime Jaquez are very few and farther between