Mick Cronin says UCLA's 'comical' seeding is a 'direct result' of leaving Pac-12
Mick Cronin had a lot of reason to be happy Saturday night after UCLA‘s major blowout victory over California but the head coach of the Bruins was laughing about a different issue: his teams project seed at the NCAA Tournament.
The Division I Men’s Basketball Committee revealed its top 16 seeds for the NCAA Tournament as of this weekend and UCLA was No. 8, despite being ranked as the No. 4 team in the nation.
Cronin thinks he knows why.
“I’m going to try not to laugh and I would refer you to our administration,” Cronin said after the 78-43 win. “This will be the only time I address it. The reason I would refer you to Martin Jarmond, I think he’s here tonight, or anybody else is when we lef the Pac 12, it cost a lot of people millions of dollars and there was going to be fallout. I even talked to my old ad Mike Bohn about it. I think it’s a direct result of that. I’m not going to put the pieces together for you on how that affects that.”
Top 10
- 1Breaking
DJ Lagway
Florida QB to return vs. LSU
- 2
Dylan Raiola injury
Nebraska QB will play vs. USC
- 3
Elko pokes at Kiffin
A&M coach jokes over kick times
- 4New
SEC changes course
Alcohol sales at SEC Championship Game
- 5
Bryce Underwood
Michigan prepared to offer No. 1 recruit $10.5M over 4 years
UCLA is now 23-4 on the season and 14-2 in conference play with an undefeated home record. They also are the No. 1 team in the Pac-12 ahead of Arizona. Despite this, the Wildcats are ranked at No. 6 in the initial top 16 seeds for the tournament.
“If you asked for my one word answer on that ranking: comical,” Cronin said. “I’m not going to comment on it the rest of the year. When it goes to Big Ten fallout, I had nothing to do with us leaving the league but we’re gonna do you deal with the fallout of being the lame duck. Then in few years we’re going to deal with being the new guys. But I understand why, we had to do what we had to do. The world is changing. NIL is here. Soon players are going to get paid. They’re going to be deemed employees. The whole NCAA thing is going to change. So UCLA had to do what they did. Had no choice. But a lot of people lost a lot of money. You start seeing people talking about lose 10, 20 million per year over the next 10. There’s a lot of hard feelings. That’s my opinion. Imma coach the team. I’ll let Martin Jarman fight that fight.”