Mick Cronin singles out officiating calls in loss to Illinois

The UCLA Bruins saw their seven-game winning streak get snapped in a tough road environment against the Illinois Fighting Illini. For head coach Mick Cronin, it was frustrating to watch his team’s comeback attempt fall short, especially given a call that he would have liked to get at the end of the first half.

Following the game, Cronin singled out the officiating. In particular, for the missed call before the half in comparison to how the rest of the game was called.

“As we got more comfortable and I got the right guys that could probe and pass, we start scoring,” Mick Cronin said. “Got back in it. Bas missed a good attempt to cut it to four at half. If he gets that to go — they could have called a foul. I mean, they called every foul on us jumping into guys. They could have easily called a foul on the last play of the first half.”

Both teams ended up getting called for 14 fouls on the game, though Illinois shot 20 free throws compared to 15 shot by UCLA. That difference, along with the Illini making 90 percent of their free throws compared to 66.7 percent made by the Bruins ended up being one of the key things separating these two teams.

When thinking about the attempted comeback, however, Mick Cronin did emphasize that UCLA’s defense was the biggest issue.

“So we get back in it,” Cronin said. “But the story of the game is defensively we got exposed. Our inability to guard the perimeter by some guys and their ability to spread you out because [Tomislav] Ivisic can shoot the ball and then we finally settled down to probe and pass and got our offense going and found a team — to get to your question for your comment about making a comeback — we found a team that could play at both ends, actually get a stop and probe and pass and find the open man and get a stop. Because there was a time we were probing and passing and scoring early in the half and we couldn’t stop them.”

UCLA has been dealing with an illness going through the team, which even kept Cronin away from the team for some time. Even with that and the extended travel from Los Angeles to Illinois, the Bruins did have their chances.

“It was a chance for us to execute late game, which we did everything until Dylan [Andrews] let [Kylan] Boswell split the trap. We were down with 28 seconds left. We’ve got to either foul or get that guy in that trap so we can get a hard trap and we’ve got to be more aggressive right there, but up from 2:28 to :28, so two minutes, was a timeout and we were down eight, 76-68,” Cronin said.

“And I told them, ‘You’ve got to score and you’ve got to maximize every possession. You’ve got to either get a layup or an open shot.’ On the other end, you cannot foul late in the clock, you’ve got to make them take a shot and get the rebound. You can’t give up a layup. So they did two straight minutes with great execution. So there was a lot of positives. You don’t always play bad when you lose. There was a lot of good tonight, but we did get exposed defensively.”

UCLA will have another road test on Friday when they take on the Indiana Hoosiers. That is a potentially difficult game for the Bruins as they look to get back to their winning ways.