We can’t have distractions coming from either good or bad.” He said, ‘You’ve gotta ignore criticism and also ignore praise to focus on doing the job.’ He’s so right. It’s almost like he knew the internet was coming with all of its criticisms. “Coach (John) Wooden was so far ahead of his time. The key, though, is not forgetting how we got here. That’s the baseline we’re trying to create. “Now we’ve done that and it’s who we want to be. “Coach (Rick) Pitino used to tell me about when he was at Kentucky, that the hardest thing to do was get to your first Final Four,” said Cronin, a disciple of Pitino’s who also has West Virginia coach Bob Huggins in his coaching tree. He implements a disciplined mentality, especially on defense.”
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“He brings out this fight in us and knows how to push each of us just right. “Our personality as a team comes from Coach Cronin because he cultivates everything in practice that people saw in the tournament,” Juzang said. The Bruins pushed then-undefeated Gonzaga to the brink of its first loss, bowing out of the national semifinals on a buzzer-beater in overtime. The brand of basketball wasn’t always pretty, but UCLA grew into a tough-minded group on the sport’s biggest stage and hardly played the part of a Cinderella double-digit seed lucky to be there. While the Detroit Pistons of the late 1980s were known for their defense and hard play – sometimes too hard – last March’s NCAA tournament run saw a team that outhustled nearly every opponent with a grind-it-out style. That “Bad Boys” reference is seemingly fitting.
“From a mentality aspect, it was more confirmation that we’re some bad boys.” “Getting all the way to playing in April last year, when everyone counted us out, it’s a testament to what we’re capable of,” said Juzang, who bypassed the NBA to return to Westwood for 2021-22, giving UCLA virtually everyone back from last season’s breakout squad. He and his teammates can thank the program’s third-year blue-collar coach - Mick Cronin - for reconstructing more of a gritty, defensive-minded identity that garnered the respect of the nation in reaching last year’s Final Four as a No. UCLA guard Johnny Juzang doesn’t see the Bruins as a typical blue-blood college basketball team any longer.
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