Mick Cronin calls out UCLA point guard play in loss to North Carolina

UCLA fell to North Carolina 76-74 on Saturday, blowing a 16-point lead at Madison Square Garden. Coach Mick Cronin zeroed in on exactly where things went wrong after the loss.

Simply put, UCLA wasn’t good enough at the point guard position.

“Hard to win when two things — when your point guard play is -14 and you turn it over late in the game,” Cronin said. “And he’s -14. And you miss eight free throws in the second half. Two of those front ends of the bonus from your other point guard. Hard to win. Hard to win.”

Backup point guard Skyy Clark finished 0-of-2 from the free-throw line, missing the front end of two one-and-ones in the contest. That was costly.

He would ultimately foul out from the contest, which was unfortunate for UCLA because he was taking care of the basketball. He finished the game with four assists and no turnovers.

Meanwhile, starting point guard Dylan Andrews struggled a bit down the stretch. He turned it over three times and finished -14 in the contest.

That, coupled with a nice lineup change by North Carolina, was enough to make the difference in the game against UCLA.

North Carolina uses four-guard lineup vs. UCLA

North Carolina trailed UCLA by 16 points on Saturday in the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden before a late lineup change by coach Hubert Davis helped spark a comeback.

The Tar Heels began running a four-guard lineup, which helped take some of the attention away from star RJ Davis.

It’s a lineup change Hubert Davis said he’ll absolutely go back to in the future after its success against UCLA.

“Yes. I mean the lineup change that we made in the second half, I just felt like they were just loading up on RJ and he had got it going offensively, as well,” Davis said. “So just having multiple scorers out there I thought would be really good for us because it puts teams in a situation do you want to go big or do you want to match up with us?”

UCLA couldn’t quite figure it out and the four-guard lineup went off for North Carolina.

Ian Jackson scored a team-high 24 points off the bench, while Davis scored 17, Seth Trimble added 12 and Elliot Cadeau notched eight. That was enough to overturn the big deficit and come away with the 76-74 win.