Mick Cronin gives blunt assessment of UCLA's struggles in loss to Utah

After playing much better over the past month, UCLA lost at the buzzer in brutal fashion to Utah inside Pauley Pavilion. The past five weeks of success did not excuse the poor outing versus the Utes, especially to Mick Cronin.

The 70-69 defeat to Utah clearly displeased Cronin based on his demeanor during his postgame press conference. When asked to share what his team could learn from that outcome, he made it clear that, by now, they should have learned enough from their previous 11 losses on the year.

“We’ve learned enough. We had enough losses,” said Cronin.

Most of Cronin’s obvious frustration fell upon the Bruin defense. That was especially the case in regards to their lack of discipline in how they scouted this opponent. They didn’t defend how they needed to which, in turn, led to 18 fouls and a performance from one of the Utes’ guards that they should have never allowed.

“Simple – scouting report,” Cronin said.

“Two things that I already said,” Cronin continued. “Too many bad fouls. Egregiously unintelligent fouls. And terrible scouting report defense against Deivon Smith. Terrible. Not keeping him out of the paint all the way to the end. It’s not like we didn’t know that he has been starting at the point since we played them, since (Rollie) Worster got hurt.”

Only giving up 70 points as one of the better defensive teams in the nation isn’t all too bad. It’s just that, in hindsight, doing so in a one-point loss makes you reevalute everything on that end.

For one, UCLA sending Utah to the line 18 times didn’t help. That’s even worse when Cronin described the whistles that sent them there like he did.

For two, letting Smith finish with 17 on 6-8 (75%) shooting and five makes from the charity stripe didn’t help either. While he was one of four Utes to finish in double figures, he also ran the offense with 10 assists.

Put those all together and, with 6.6 left, Utah was able to score just enough to leave Los Angeles victorious. Smith, as Cronin said, got all the way to the paint and at the rim off of the press break. Brendan Carlson then got the offensive rebound off of his missed layup and laid it in with one motion as time expired to win it for the Utes.

Cronin just thinks, at this point, UCLA should have known better considering how poorly that their season started. They’d been playing far better since they last met the Utes in Salt Lake City but, on Sunday, that just wasn’t the case, specifically in some key defensive aspects.