HOUSTON — Last month at Big Ten Media Day, Matt Norlander and I conducted interviews with various coaches and players, including UCLA’s Mick Cronin, who was visibly in a good mood. He smiled. He laughed — so much so that, later in the day, Norlander pointed out to me that Cronin, largely attached to an alternative reputation he knows he has, seemed happy and almost giddy when talking about his team.
I don’t remember the exact wording.
I didn’t take notes.
But what I remember is us laughing about how funny it would be if Cronin was in such a good mood because he was the first to know his 2026-27 Bruins were going to be better than anyone expected. I didn’t think much about this interaction after that afternoon. But then I went back to my hotel room Monday night – here on the University of Houston campus, where Kelvin Sampson’s Cougars started the season 1-0 with a 94-55 victory over La Salle – and watched Cronin’s postgame interview following an upset of Arizona with TNT’s Allie LaForce, and there he was smiling again, to the point that Brian Anderson, the elite play-by-play network, mentioned it afterwards.
Final score: UCLA 84, Arizona 75.
Is this Cronin’s favorite UCLA team? He didn’t say that exactly. But after what was the biggest win on what amounted to opening night of the 2026-27 college basketball season, the 55-year-old eighth-year Bruins coach looked like a big fan of what he and his team put together in Westwood.
“I didn’t have a bad day coaching this team,” Cronin said.
At some point, there’s a good chance he will. But it certainly wasn’t Monday, when Trent Perry made all 11 free throws he attempted and finished with 21 points, five assists and three rebounds in a win over an Arizona team expected to win the Big 12, according to the league’s official preseason poll.
“It’s a great win for us,” Cronin said before adding later, “we’re more athletic than we’ve been. (Freshmen) Nikola (Kusturica) and Joe Philon give us a dimension I didn’t have. They’re players above the perimeter.”
They could be part of something special.
UCLA sits at No. 14 in the CBS Sports Top 25 And 1 college basketball rankings updated Tuesday morning, where Florida remains No. 1 after Monday’s 77-67 win over Miami. Next up for the Bruins is Friday’s game against North Florida at Pauley Pavilion. UCLA will open the Big Ten portion of its schedule on December 1st at home against Oregon.
Rankings Top 25 And 1
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