Mick Cronin Is Stuck In Baby Mode

UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin had a lot of big feelings Tuesday night, during and after his team’s 82-59 blowout loss to Michigan State.

As the Bruins trailed by 27 points with just under five minutes left in the game, Michigan State’s Carson Cooper caught an outlet pass and rose up to dunk, only to be fouled by UCLA’s Steven Jamerson II. It was a hard foul, and ruled a flagrant, but nothing beyond the pale. An enraged Cronin must have read it differently, because he immediately sent Jamerson to the locker room. (A lot of the coverage of this incident has emphasized that Cronin ejected his “own player,” as if it were possible for a coach to eject an opposing player, but I digress.)

Cronin justified Jamerson’s banishment during a postgame media scrum. “You know, true toughness is how you compete and how you go to work everyday,” the coach said. “Steve’s a good kid, he made a bad decision, but if you wanna be a tough guy, you need to do it during the game, for a blockout, for a rebound. So I was thoroughly disappointed. Guy was defenseless in the air. I know Steve was trying to block the shot, but game’s a 25-point game, you don’t do that.”

Later in that same scrum—at the 3:15 mark of the video above—Cronin had a bizarrely pissy exchange with a reporter who asked about the opposing student section, which had taunted the visiting team with cheers of “Xavier Booker,” a UCLA center who had transferred from Michigan State and last night logged two points and two rebounds in 25 minutes of play:

Reporter: What was your thought with the student section chanting Booker’s name?

Cronin: I could give a rat’s ass about the other team’s student section.

Reporter: I just meant the overall way that you—

Cronin: I would like to give you a kudos for the worst question I’ve ever been asked.

Reporter: All right, I’ll take it.

Cronin: You should take it. You really think I care about the other team’s student section?

Reporter: No, I don’t think you care about the other team—

Cronin: Are you raising your voice at me?

Reporter: No, I’m just—

Cronin: Yeah you are. Yeah you are. Come on, dude.

Reporter: I’m not raising my voice—

Cronin: Yes you are, everybody’s standing here listening to you. This is on camera, they can hear you.

Listen for yourself and determine if the reporter “raised his voice.” Cronin is in his seventh season at UCLA, and the team, which has been demolished in two straight games including Saturday’s 86-56 loss to Michigan, is currently at risk of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons. It’s certainly more convenient to focus on a bad foul or reporter’s question than it is your own job performance.

“I guess he upgraded that to a flagrant 2, huh?” Michigan State coach Tom Izzo joked after the game, about the Jamerson incident. “That’s the first time I saw a coach do it, but that sounds like Mick. So, he’ll get that straightened out.” The situation is grim when even Izzo is scoring points off you being a weird hardo.