Mick Cronin cracks joke about assistant coaches amid team-wide illness

Any season is a marathon, not a sprint. With that come some ups and downs and unique challenges. Lately, the UCLA Bruins and head coach Mick Cronin have been dealing with an illness going through the team, creating issues.

Now, with UCLA preparing to go on another long road trip, Cronin is hoping that UCLA is going to be able to put the illness behind them. At the same time, he’s still recognizing that it’s a very difficult issue to manage on campus right now.

“You hope, tough to say,” Mick Cronin said. “I heard the women’s team had somebody out. I heard football had like 30 guys deal with it the last couple of weeks. They got 100 guys in that building. Tough to say.”

At that point, Mick Cronin decided that, while the illness is serious, it’s not so bad he can’t joke about and took a shot at his assistant coaches, suggesting they might need to get sick to lose a little bit of weight.

“A few of my assistant coaches could stand to lose a few pounds, so maybe,” Cronin joked. “You know, I don’t need it. I don’t need it.”

UCLA has been battling illness for a little while, particularly in the week leading up to their game on Saturday against the Penn State Nittany Lions. At one point four players —  missing Skyy Clark, Tyler Bilodeau, Aday Mara, and William Kyle — were all missing practice along with Cronin himself. The culprit was suspected to be norovirus, which is a particularly unpleasant illness to battle.

To battle it, UCLA reportedly turned to old COVID-19 protocols for social distancing, making the decision to have players shoot at their own individual baskets and food being eaten to go.

Despite that illness breaking out throughout the team, UCLA took care of business against Penn State. They won 78-54, dominating outside of a few seemingly lethargic runs. Even with that, the Bruins outrebounded the Nittany Lions and turned the ball over just four times compared to 18 by Penn State. With that, UCLA won its seventh game in a row, moving to 9-4 in Big Ten play and tied for fourth in the conference standings.

Now, still not entirely healthy, Mick Cronin and UCLA will hit the road. On Tuesday, the Bruins will have a tough road test against the Illinois Fighting Illini. After that, they’ll head to Bloomington to play the Indiana Hoosiers before returning home again.