Mick Cronin’s UCLA men’s basketball team has spent the first two months of the 2024-25 season racking up frequent-flyer miles, with trips to New York, Nebraska and Maryland already completed.
When it comes to other teams’ potential travel woes, Cronin isn’t exactly sympathetic.
In a news conference Friday night following the Bruins’ 94-70 thumping of Iowa, Cronin was asked if he has noticed any “wear and tear” that Big Ten teams making the trip west to face UCLA and USC have shown and whether it’s comparable to what the Bruins have endured going east so frequently.
REQUIRED READING:March Madness bracketology update: Top seeds, bubble watch, teams on the rise and falling
After initially asking if the question was a joke, Cronin went off.
“Have you ever looked at the NBA stats, with the gamblers and what all those people do with west versus east?” he said. “Talk to (USC coach) Eric Musselman. Ask him that question. He coached in the NBA. Good luck west going east. Ask me UCLA’s record east of the Mississippi in the last 20 years because when I got the job, I looked it up for scheduling purposes. It’s under .500.
“We have to go back four times. The Big Ten teams get to come to Los Angeles, where it’s 70 degrees, one time a year. They don’t even have to switch hotels. We’re 12 miles apart. Are you kidding me? Please tell me you’re kidding me. Is this a plant? Is this a planted question? You cannot be serious. Meanwhile, we’ve seen the Statue of Liberty twice in the last three weeks while we were landing. We also saw the Capitol building. And we’re still got to go back. And then we’ve got to go back for the Big Ten tournament.”
In its first season in the Big Ten, UCLA has already had road games against Nebraska (about 1,500 miles from Los Angeles), Maryland (2,640 miles) and Rutgers (2,750 miles), along with a trip to New York for a non-conference, neutral-site game against North Carolina.
The Bruins still have road games remaining against Indiana, Illinois, Purdue and Northwestern, as well as the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis.
The Big Ten has attempted to mitigate the logistical strain for its programs by pairing games for travel purposes. Teams that come out to Los Angeles to play UCLA, for example, play nearby USC that same week. UCLA’s conference road swings have largely featured games between schools that are relatively close to one another, like Maryland and Rutgers.
After rising as high as No. 18 in the USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, UCLA’s victory against Iowa snapped a four-game losing streak, with three of those four defeats coming in conference road games. The Bruins are 0-3 this season in games played east of the Mississippi River.
REQUIRED READING:ESPN analyst Dick Vitale to make return to college basketball broadcast after cancer battle
Friday’s rant was the latest moment from the past few weeks in which the customarily blunt and occasionally surly Cronin has voiced his frustrations with something related to his team.
He described his players as “soft” and “delusional” following a 94-75 loss to No. 19 Michigan on Jan. 7. In the second half of a 79-61 loss at Maryland three days later, Cronin was ejected for arguing with officials. After the game, he said he was trying to get thrown out, noting that he was “sending a message” to the league and its referees.
Cronin is in his sixth season as UCLA’s coach and has led the Bruins to the NCAA tournament three times, highlighted by a Final Four run in 2021. For five of those seasons, though, he was coaching in the Pac-12, which came with a much more manageable travel schedule due to the relative geographic proximity of the teams in the conference.
In the Big Ten, in which Nebraska is the closest school not on the west coast, things are just a little bit different.
“He’s asking me to feel sorry because Iowa had to come to LA for a few days,” Cronin said.
