The Bruins are set to return to practice Thursday, and a lot has changed since they last left the court as a team.
Johnny Juzan, Jules Bernard and Peyton Watson decided to go to the NBA Draft.Cody Riley turned pro abroad. Miles Johnson walked out of the game. Jake Caiman transferred to Wyoming. Jaime Jaquez Jr. underwent ankle surgery.
UCLA men’s basketball lost assistant coach Michael Lewis to replace Serbian native Ivo Simovic. The legalization of student-athletes profiting from names, likeness rights and likeness rights continues to grow exponentially after one year. The Bruins are set to move from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten in 2024, and the school’s physical education department as a whole has changed from a relatively stable position to a far more chaotic one.
Coach Mick Cronin has spent the past few months identifying each of the pressing challenges and deciding to make the most of the changing conditions.
“I am open to change and trying to find the best way to keep UCLA an elite program.
His replacement was one of the first items on Cronin’s to-do list, as Lewis agreed to take the head coaching job at Ball State before UCLA was kicked out of the Sweet 16 by North Carolina.
Cronin took Simovich in June, considering his experience in the college game was limited to brief assistant stints at small East Coast schools such as Loyola Maryland, UNC Charlotte and Hartford. Brought in and made out-of-the-box adoption. But more importantly, Simovic is from Serbia and has coaching, scouting and recruiting experience in both his home country and Spain.
With Simovic in-house, Cronin has already been able to carve out some sort of international hiring pipeline. Italian swingman Abramo Canca is just two months out of Simovic’s recruitment as he was added to this year’s roster, and five-star freshman big man Adem Bona has been on the team for the FIBA U20 Championship over the summer. Played for his Turkey.
“It’s something I always thought would be cool to do,” Cronin said. “It’s hard. I tried dabbling in Cincinnati, but I’ve learned that dabbling doesn’t work. You need people with connections on staff, and that’s their main focus.”
Cronin complemented Kanka’s game based on what he saw over the summer, highlighting in particular how his handles, passes and length would help him replace the roles of Juzan and Bernard on the wing.
Five-star combo guard Amari Bailey and four-star point guard Dylan Andrews make up the rest of the freshman class alongside Kanka and Bona. The depth of the backcourt will help ease the burden on fifth-year senior Tiger Campbell, who at that point still doesn’t have a real backup since taking over in 2019.
While many thought Andrews would take on most of these secondary ball-handling responsibilities, Cronin said Bailey, a top 10 recruit in the class of 2022, would be a high-level college-level player. I’m sure I have what it takes to be a point guard for the NBA.
“I do my own assessment, and I take a lot of pride in the success I’ve had with it,” Cronin said. “Amari Bailey is a great passer and a great ballhandler. Yes, I think both of them will really, really help Tiger.”
New faces surround a veteran roster that still has plenty of talent despite the loss of Juzang, Bernard, Watson, Riley, Johnson and Caiman.
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Jaquez has fully recovered from his ankle injury and is back to his normal self. David Singleton enters his 5th season in the rotation. Jalen Clarke, Cronin said, would have already broken out last year had it not been for the preseason concussion and midseason COVID hiatus, but he was finally able to do so this year.
Big man Mac Etienne and guard Will McLendon were sidelined last year with torn anterior cruciate ligaments, and Cronin said he would like them to join him in full-contact practice when practice begins Thursday. Even center Kenneth Nuuba, who only played a total of 235 minutes in his three seasons with Wood, seemed to have done enough work in the offseason to take on the challenge of a few minutes.
“He’s a man who’s come a long way, and when he comes a long way, he has to work harder than anyone else. ‘That’s been his focus all spring.'”
But perhaps the most significant change, more than injury recovery or an upcoming freshman, is the Bruins’ imminent move to the Big Ten. It’s still two years away.
Cronin has seen this before, although the circumstances are very different. Cincinnati was in his second year in the Big East when Cronin took over that program in his 2006.
Six years later, the conference disbanded after the Cronin’s Bearcats broke year-over-year records each season and advanced to the conference title fight and the Sweet 16. Cincinnati attended his conference with the Americans He Athletic, but Cronin said he had difficulty marketing recruits and to this day has held the Bearcats down.
Cronin acknowledged that UCLA’s participation in high-level conferences rather than low-level conferences would be a different kind of transition, noting that his team could face new hosts, increased travel, and an unfamiliar environment. I emphasized the adjustments made by
“With different teams just leaving different conferences, I think the important thing is they have to maintain their identity, so that’s going to be my focus,” Cronin said. However, we cannot lose our identity, our footprint, and our success factors.”
According to Cronin, his job has never been and won’t be easy, but he’s used to it now.
“There’s never been a time in your life where you didn’t work hard,” Cronin said. We built Cincinnati and the Big East collapsed and it was twice as hard and we got here and we had COVID and now it’s NIL.What I’ve learned is that now that I’m a California guy, people My line to is, “You just have to ride the wave.”
Cronin literally lives by that mantra and hopes to give Patrick Swayze the best in his “point break” impression, but he hasn’t been able to surf since undergoing surgery on his right knee over 30 years ago. He said he didn’t.
Instead, he’ll have to stick to his coaching hoops for the time being, guiding the Bruins through an ever-changing future.
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