Cronin

UCLA coach Mick Cronin expects his team to embrace lofty expectations that follow the Bruins any time they take the floor during the NCAA tournament.

The program has won an NCAA record 11 national titles and made 19 Final Four appearances.

No. 7-seed UCLA’s (22-11) push for another deep NCAA tournament run begins Friday against No. 10-seed Central Florida (21-11) in Philadelphia in the East Regional. If the Bruins win, they will face the winner of No. 2 Connecticut (29-5) versus No. 15 Furman (22-12).

Cronin was hoping the Bruins, who flew home from the Big Ten tournament in Chicago on Sunday morning, would get a break and open postseason play Friday rather than Thursday. He recalled playing in the American Athletic Conference tournament championship on Sundays and still getting assigned Thursday NCAA tournament games, but Purdue coach Matt Painter told Cronin on Saturday night that he should be in line for a Friday NCAA tournament opener and the forecast proved accurate.

Cronin said the universal UCLA program focus on NCAA tournament success drove his decision to hold forward Tyler Bilodeau and guard Donovan Dent out of a 73-66 Big Ten semifinal loss to Purdue on Saturday night at the United Center. Bilodeau’s injury was a minor knee sprain suffered in the win over Michigan State on Friday, while Dent suffered a minor calf strain early in the game against the Boilermakers. Both are expected to be ready to play Friday.

“Tyler could have played [against Purdue.] You know, Donny could have played. They would have been playing hurt,” Cronin said after the loss to the Boilermakers. “I wouldn’t have played them in a regular season game. I just try to take care of guys.”

The coach said the extra minutes played by Eric Freeny, Xavier Booker, Steven Jamerson II and Brandon Williams will help the Bruins when the full lineup is in place for NCAA tournament games.

He called the team’s effort to push eventual Big Ten champion Purdue valiant, but the games ahead in March simply mean more to the Bruins.

“With all due respect to the Big Ten, you could see how hard our guys are trying to win,” Cronin said. “But our guy are well aware, because they practice under 11 banners that say national championship every day. They warm up under another banner with 19 Final Fours on it. We don’t even have one with conference championships cause there’s 36 or something. There’s so many. So [this] week is what it’s about for us.”

UCLA enters the tournament on a 4-1 streak, looking especially strong since the calendar hit March.

“I was happy with the way we competed,” Cronin said when asked whether he learned anything about his players during a spirited Big Ten tournament run. “… We got talent, we just haven’t always had our mind on defense, which is very rare for teams that I coach. We got great guys. Since March 1 or whenever the heck we played Nebraska, it’s been a noted change in our team, we’ve just got to keep it up. And we’ve got to get some rebounds out of the five spot.

”… We’re at UCLA, no matter who we take the floor against in the NCAA tournament, we’re going to be the ones wearing the baby blues and four letters. So we believe in ourselves.”

UCF is coached by former Duke star Johnny Dawkins. Point guard Themus Fulks is a key leader for the Knights, earning third team All-Big 12 honors after averaging 14.1 points and 6.7 assists per contest during the regular season.

UCF posted top-25 wins over Kansas, Texas Tech and Brigham Young.

Call it the Mick Cronin Say Something Nice Challenge.

Not something nice-ish, not a chocolate-covered diss or an insult teased as affirmation. Just a compliment, no chaser.

It’s not impossible, it turns out.

“We have great guys,” Cronin said about his team, which demolished USC 89-68 at Galen Center on Saturday to finish the season 21-10. “I have to make myself yell at some of these guys, because they’re such good guys. And I did that by design.”

He’ll have a funny way of showing it, but Cronin likes the guys he recruited or plucked from the transfer portal. He really, really likes them.

They put up with him, after all. They get him.

Coming after an impressive 72-52 triumph against No. 9 Nebraska on Tuesday, Saturday’s victory launched his Bruins men’s basketball team into tournament play, starting with a third-round Big Ten tournament game Thursday, and then the NCAA tournament.

And, no, the controversial coach won’t likely be excused from his post anytime soon. Not with another four years on his contract, a current buyout price of $22.5 million and now a not-terrible finish to this strange season of all peaks and valleys and no plateaus.

The Bruins are on the way up at the right time, even playing enough defense for Cronin’s taste — though, of course, he’s prepared for that to change.

“I’ve been around these guys for five months,” he said, “so I know that the fight is not over with that. We can go right back to who we were, which was a bad defensive team.”

What can you say? The man’s service might be questionable, but his backhands are unparalleled.

UCLA coach Mick Cronin talks about the Bruins’ win over USC on Saturday.

His opening statement the last time UCLA clocked USC, 81-62 on Feb. 24: “Proud of the guys, they got the job done …” and, wait for it, “I’m well aware you’re going to ask about rebounding, and as I tell people, you can’t be great at everything. And we’re surely not.”

There was the time he actually fell on the proverbial sword after his team’s 86-74 loss to Ohio State: “Blame me — blame me,” he said, only kidding: “I recruited ’em, I signed them as free agents.” (The bums!)

He isn’t exactly dropping jewels of inspiration suited to be posted in classrooms beside John Wooden’s “Pyramid of Success.”

But after five up-and-down months with him, his players say they’re cool with Cronin, who has shaken off what feels like an annual wave of national criticism. This time it hit after he booted his own center Steven Jamerson II from a game at Michigan State on Feb. 17, overreacting because he mistook a clean basketball play for something else.

UCLA coach Mick Cronin shouts instructions to a player during the Bruins’ win over USC on Saturday.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“I’ve adapted to how he coaches and how he runs stuff,” said Donovan Dent, the Bruins’ sure-handed point guard who had 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting to go with his seven assists without a turnover Saturday.

How does he coach? “Fun, very fun,” Dent laughed, acknowledging that, yes, “absolutely” players have to have some thick skin if they’re going to play for Cronin.

“He can get on you,” Dent said, “but he just wants the best for you.”

“I mean,” forward Tyler Bilodeau said, “he’s intense. Coach Cronin has no off days, he is who he is every single day. You gotta respect that.”

And Cronin’s bait-and-switch bit? It would kill at a comedy club, but working a locker room? Maybe he’s found the right audience of young athletes.

“I’m at a point in my career, I want guys who are good guys,” said Cronin, whose team went 17-1 at Pauley Pavilion and 4-9 away from it. “I don’t want to be fighting with guys, I don’t have the energy for it. I won enough games, it’s not worth it.”

Well, about that.

The Bruins will have made the NCAA tournament five times in Cronin’s seven-year tenure with the team, and they’ve advanced to the Final Four and twice to the Sweet 16. But the Final Four run was six seasons ago, and in the past two years, UCLA made just one tournament appearance and got only as far as the second round.

That hardly seems sufficient for a UCLA program that’s regularly supposed to be breathing rarefied air without caveats or qualifiers.

But he thinks he’s found the right players to roll with his punchlines, and to play defense too.

“We can keep winning games,” Cronin said, “if we stop the other team.”

Wouldn’t that be nice?