tournament game

Was that really Aday Mara?

It was the most maddening part of March.

It was a Cinderella story that smelled like rotting pumpkin.

It was a big dance over the sensibilities of everything that is UCLA.

Seriously, was that really Aday Mara?

Aday Mara holds a Spanish flag and a piece of the net he cut while celebrating Michigan’s national title win Monday in Indianapolis.

(AJ Mast / Associated Press)

The biggest player on the giant national champion Michigan basketball team Monday night looked familiar, yet strange.

Familiar, because he once played for the Bruins.

Strange, because he wasn’t buried on the bench.

Meet Mick Cronin’s nightmare, a 7-foot-3 indictment of his embattled program, a monumental mistake that has spent three weeks eating at the heart of even the most dedicated Bruin loyalists.

In Michigan’s overpowering run in this tournament, Mara was everywhere.

Playing the previous two seasons at UCLA, Mara was nowhere.

In six tournament games, Mara had at least two blocks in five, scored in double figures in four and racked up 26 points with nine rebounds in the semifinal win against Arizona.

In his last 11 appearances as a Bruin last season, Mara never played more than half the game.

“One Shining Moment” is another man’s darkness, and so it was that after Michigan’s 69-63 title victory over UConn Monday night, Mara unwittingly milked his co-starring role in the tournament’s annual music video compilation.

In a brief closeup from an earlier tournament game, Mara was shown wagging his tongue in celebration … or was that in revenge?

It sure felt like the latter, as Mara’s nationally televised presence this spring repeatedly summoned one question about the current UCLA basketball culture.

How could the Bruins allow the cornerstone of the program’s future to just walk out the door?

Yes, Cronin isn’t the first coach to lose a star to the transfer portal, as Michigan became the first champion for which all five starters were transfers.

But Mara was more than a transfer, he was transformative, and everyone who had watched him roaming the Pauley floor during his sporadic appearances knew it. If Mara had stayed with the Bruins this season, they could have been at least a Sweet 16 team, maybe advancing to the Elite Eight, and who knows how much further, his presence alone changing so many things about the team in so many different ways.

Michigan’s Aday Mara dunks while Arizona players watch during the Wolverines Final Four semifinal win Saturday in Indianapolis.

(Michael Conroy / Associated Press)

His rim protection is powerful. His shot-blocking is masterful. His footwork is precise, his shooting touch soft and his overall game has been improving with his maturity.

Bruin fans loved him. Pauley rocked with him. Scouts fawned over him.

But Cronin never seemed sold on him, starting him once in two years, playing him about 13 minutes a game last season.

After which, Mara begrudgingly bolted.

“It was a hard decision to leave UCLA,” Mara told former Times staff writer Ben Bolch last spring, “because you saw every game — I was enjoying it, I was super happy because I saw all the crowd cheering for me, helping me a lot. Los Angeles is like a really, really good place, Westwood, so I’m going to miss that and I wanted to say that because it was a hard decision because it’s just after two years it feels like I spent a lot more time than two years, you know?”

When explaining the benchings, Cronin frequently talked about Mara’s matchup problems, conditioning problems, and illness problems. And to be fair, Cronin has often used his tough love with great success, turning marginal players into good ones.

But Mara was a potential superstar, and he wasn’t buying any of it.

“I had expectations when I came here that I didn’t achieve,” said Mara to Bolch. “Also, I think I felt like I was playing good, practicing good, practicing hard, you know, putting in extra work and until Wisconsin I never had the opportunity to show that I was able to play, you know? And once [Cronin] gave me the opportunity, I saw — not a lot, but I saw what I could do, so those are the two reasons.”

Ah, yes, Wisconsin. That game, in January of 2025, could have solidified the Cronin era. Instead, it eventually only served as another eventual milestone of regret.

In the Bruins upset of the Badgers, Mara had 22 points, five rebounds and two blocks in 21 minutes in the best game of his UCLA career.

That finally earned him a place in the rotation after weeks of being lost on the bench, and he played more than 24 minutes in three of the next four games including finding himself in the starting lineup for the first time.

But it was also the last time. Beginning in early February, he didn’t play more than 20 minutes a game the rest of the season, which, after he experienced such success in the Badger beatdown, he found increasingly frustrating.

After the season, there were reports that Mara asked for an inordinate salary increase while demanding that he set his own practice schedule. He denied all those charges to Bolch, saying, “I feel like that’s crazy.”

You want to know what’s really crazy? That UCLA would not work with him no matter what the demands.

One can only guess about the millions of dollars paid to top UCLA athletes, but the Bruin power brokers should have busted the NIL bank for this kid. Certainly, one can also speculate that the Spaniard was considered soft and wasn’t always in great shape, but he was still a teenager and in need of the sort of persistent patience not often shown in Cronin’s world.

Whatever, there was surely a way to put Mara on a path to his seemingly destined greatness. But the hard-nosed Cronin apparently couldn’t reach him while Michigan’s gentler Dusty May could and … hmmmm.

On Monday night, one of those coaches was celebrating while the other one was watching.

Who knows, maybe Cronin and his demanding, sometimes demeaning program will pick up another shiny seven-foot star from this spring’s newly opened portal.

Or maybe not.