In Reply to: I'm not calling for a coaching change posted by Cachorro on February 06, 2026 at 15:17:06
as he lets on. Go through the top-20 teams and look how they acquired their coaches. It's not all sweet-16s and Final Fours (though, a quick correction to your post, May actually made a Final Four in 2023). And he's not even considering hot/respected assistant coaches w/o HC experience at big programs ready for their big break (See Tommy Lloyd and Brian Dutcher) or top NBA assistants like BYU's Kevin Young.
Yes, there is no sure thing, and you'd have to trust UCLA's AD to conduct a competent search and find a diamond in the rough. We could very well do worse than Cronin. At least with Cronin you know you're getting a good defensive coach, a guy who works hard and lives and breathes the game, and he's almost certainly going to field a decent team with a shot at making the tournament most years. But it's hard not to feel like he's lost all the momentum he had early in his tenure and that we've sort of plateued in bubble-land.
Personally, I've lost nearly all excitement for and interest in UCLA basketball, but that's just as much (and probably more) a function of the NIL landscape than real dissatisfaction with Cronin.