Mick Cronin downplays lengthy travel with move to Big Ten

With UCLA and USC both officially set to leave the Pac 12 for the Big Ten Conference in 2024, the subject of travel from Los Angeles to the midwest — and further — is newly relevant again. UCLA men’s basketball coach Mick Cronin dished on the subject Wednesday evening after the Bruins waxed Maryland, 87-60, in College Park.

In a few seasons, that will be a regular road game for UCLA and USC, and not even the longest trip in-conference — Piscataway, New Jersey, to Los Angeles is a 2422 mile straight-line journey. Speaking ahead the slightly shorter return trip from Maryland (2299 miles) to the west coast, Cronin said it’s just a grin-and-bear-it situation.

“Look, the world has changed,” Cronin said. “You gotta embrace it and roll with it. They make nice planes for a reason.”

Cronin also said the long trips to and from home are made better when home is California. He added that places like Salt Lake City, Seattle and Eugene, Oregon, aren’t fast trips either — though those trips don’t require crossing several time zones.

“And when you live in California, it’s awesome. I’m not gonna — but trust me, when you turn left on Sunset to go to work, I pinch myself. That being said though, when you go anywhere else, everywhere’s kind of far. It’s not like when we play Washington it’s a quick flight. So, other than the ‘SC game. It’ll be exciting, it’s going to be tough. I’m well aware of that.”

Cronin said UCLA did ‘a great job’ with Maryland scouting report

Cronin applauded his team for how they locked into their scouting report following the massive win. He did admit Maryland may have been burned by this four-game stretch of their schedule. In the end, though, UCLA didn’t care because they wanted to prove a point about who they were defensively.

“Our guys did a great job with the scouting report,” said Cronin. “Again, psychology of the schedule. I think they were beat up. And we were revved up to prove that we’re a lot better defensive team than we were in Vegas. Our goal was to play great defense and hold them to one shot.”

The Bruins, now 9-2 on the season, had lost to a pair of Top-20 teams in Las Vegas during the Main Event. They allowed an average of 79.5 points to Illinois and Baylor in that two-game stretch. Now, with this challenge coming on the road, they showed major strides by holding Maryland to 40.4% shooting from the field and forcing 16 turnovers.

That was Cronin’s other big takeaway from last night. UCLA turned the ball over just four times to win the margin by 12 in the XFINITY Center. Pairing that ball security with their talent and defensive output is the recipe he’s looking for from his team to win these types of games.

“If we take care of the ball, we got plenty of guys that can score. Talents not an issue for us. All we gotta do is not turn it over,” Cronin said. “But, tonight, our mind was on defense. I thought, for the first time in a long time, we were trying to win with defense.”