Will injuries ruin another Mick Cronin NCAA trip?
Cronin was a top assistant at Cincinnati in 2000, so he knows as well as anyone in the business how an untimely injury can break March. He was at the opposite end of the court, on the Bearcats bench, when Sporting News Player of the Year Kenyon Martin went from the high post to set a downscreen on a Saint Louis player and got his legs tangled with the opponent. Martin broke his leg, and the No. 1 Bearcats wound up exiting the NCAAs after the second round.
Now Cronin is head coach at UCLA, and he’s dealing with the absence of at least one consequential player, possibly two.
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In the season’s final regular-season game, the Bruins lost Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year Jaylen Clark to a reported achilles injury. In the Pac-12 Tournament semifinals, freshman center Adem Bona went to the ground chasing the ball and came up with a shoulder issue.
And yet even with those two players out, the Bruins delivered a spirited effort in the Pac-12 title game that nearly added a second championship to their season.
Will they have more need for heart in the coming weeks? Or might they actually get Bona back so they can have more players, less need for spirit?
Here's everything you need to know about UCLA and the entire West Region.
REGION BREAKDOWNS: East | Midwest | South
All-region team
F – Jaime Jaquez, UCLA
F – Jalen Wilson, Kansas
C – Drew Timme, Gonzaga
G – Mike Miles, TCU
C – Adama Sanogo, UConn
Best first-round game
Northwestern vs. Boise State
Northwestern’s Wildcats have this way of building significant leads and letting them slip away. And of going bucket-for-bucket through the course of 40-minute thrillers. And, on the rarest of occasions, making a comeback effort.
The Wildcats played two overtime games with Penn State, another 10 seed, in the last two weeks. Of their 12 Big Ten victories, six were by two scores or less. Every statistical measure suggests they should struggle to be competitive. But they manage to create enough baskets to complement their extraordinary defense.
It’s not always enough, but it’s always enough to make things interesting.
EXPERT PICKS: DeCourcy (Alabama) | Bender (Kansas) | Fagan (Marquette) | Pohnl (Kansas)
Seeded too high
No. 11 Nevada
The Utah State people are so happy Nevada is in the field. Not because it means a bigger check for everyone in the Mountain West. It’s because that means somebody with a worse resume than the Aggies made it.
At the final Bracket Matrix consensus published Monday morning, only 59 online bracket projections out of 190 included Nevada, compared to 181 that had Rutgers in the field. That’s 31 percent compared to 95 percent.
The committee — rightfully — did not punish Tennessee for the acknowledged season-ending injury to Zakai Ziegler, UCLA for the likely absence of Jaylen Clark or Houston for the uncertainty around All-American Marcus Sasser, even though each lost games that might have been won with those players available. But Rutgers was slammed for its performance following the injury to role player Mawat Mag.
Indeed, the Knights initially stumbled post-injury, losing six of their first eight without him. When they arrived at the Big Ten Tournament, though, they defeated an equally hungry Michigan team and then pushed NCAA No. 1 seed to a 5-point decision in the quarters. Rutgers had proved it was a capable team again and finishing with a 7-8 record against the at-large field (those teams that would be in the field with or without automatic bids). They lost five times to non-tournament teams.
Nevada? The Wolf Pack were 3-4 against the at-large field. They lost six games to non-tournament teams.
MORE: Print your 2023 March Madness bracket here
Seeded too low
No. 4 Connecticut
The committee seemed to pick and choose when head-to-head results mattered and when they did not. In the case of Clemson and NC State, the Tigers beat the Pack three times during the season, but you can guess which was in the field and which was not.
With UConn, Xavier defeated the Huskies twice and wound up as a No. 3 seed with the Huskies consigned to a No. 4. But UConn had higher rankings in both results-based metrics and predictive metrics, fewer bad losses and a victory over the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, Alabama.
Upset special
TCU over Gonzaga, round 2
The Zags have made seven consecutive NCAA Tournament Sweet 16s, a longer streak than anyone not named North Carolina or Duke has achieved since the field expanded. Carolina made it 13 consecutive years from 1980 to 1993, with five of those requiring only one victory to get there. Duke made it nine straight years, from 1998 to 2006.
Gonzaga and Mark Few are approaching, as rapidly as the rotation of the Earth will allow, the territory previously known only to Dean Smith and Mike Krzyzewski. It’s got to end sometime, and a second-rounder against a team with TCU’s dynamism at guard and physicality up front seems like the time. Often what are seen as upsets on the bracket result from a seeding mistake. Let’s just say by the end of the weekend the Zags might be wishing TCU had gotten the No. 5 seed its performance warranted.
HISTORY OF UPSETS BY SEED:
15 vs. 2 | 14 vs. 3 | 13 vs. 4 | 12 vs. 5
Best potential game
No. 1 Kansas vs. No. 2 UCLA, Elite Eight
It never hurts to get a couple of bluebloods on the floor with no option but to win or go home. Remember how much fun it was at the Final Four last year, with Duke playing North Carolina and then KU taking on the Tar Heels. Of course you do.
With or without its full lineup, the Bruins are going to fight to stay in this thing. And KU is expecting to have back coach Bill Self after he missed the Big 12 Tournament to undergo a successful heart procedure after experiencing tightness in his chest.
The floor would be filled with All-Americans (Jalen Wilson of KU, Jaime Jaquez of UCLA), young NBA prospects (Gradey Dick of Kansas, Adem Bona of UCLA) and damned good college point guards with Final Four experience (Dajuan Harris of KU, Tyger Campbell of UCLA). What more could you want except to have both of these teams able to reach the Final Four — which would have been possible had the committee placed Kansas in the Midwest Region, where they should have been.
Best potential player matchup
Mike Miles, TCU vs. Tyger Campbell, UCLA, Sweet 16
Not many guards get the better of Campbell, who is shrewd, competitive, relentless and intelligent. The only ones who’ve bested Miles this season were those lucky enough to be playing against the Horned Frogs during the eight-plus games he missed with injuries this season.
Miles had to fight through two different absences to deliver 17.3 points per game. It made sense for backcourt partner Damion Baugh to take command of the offense on a more regular basis because it offered a degree of consistency to the attack, leaving Miles to function more as the team’s primary scoring option.
It’s unlikely Campbell would face off against him if Clark were available to handle the job. And that still might not be the case given the rise in efficacy of freshman Amari Bailey. But Campbell might be the one to deal with Miles on the game’s biggest possessions.
Get to know
Saint Mary’s guard Aidan Mahaney
The Gaels have had plenty of terrific players since the great Patty Mills left for the NBA in 2009, but Mahaney might be the most exciting prospect to wear their uniform in nearly 15 years. And coach Randy Bennett didn’t have to travel all the way to Australia to get him!
Most of the greatest Saint Mary’s players in Bennett’s came to California because of the program’s excellent connection to Australia. That’s how Mills came to be a Gael, as well as guard Matthew Dellavedova, big man Jock Landale and forward Clint Steindl. But Mahaney is from Lafayette, Calif., which is… eight minutes from campus. That’s a much shorter plane flight.
Mahaney is a 6-3, 180-pound shooting guard who his 41.2 percent of his 3-pointers and averaged 14.5 points as a freshman. The only high-major program that shows up on his 247 Sports recruiting profile is Stanford. Maybe everyone knew he was going to stay home; he was a high school teammate of Bennett’s son Cade. Or maybe they all missed. Mahaney rarely does.
Don’t be surprised if …
Iona’s appearance becomes all about Rick Pitino’s next job
When Pitino was hired in 2020 to become the Iona coach, he told the New York Post, “I took the job wanting it to be my last job.” Well, if you expected that to be true, you were, shall we say, optimistic.
Because Pitino is Pitino, ambition eventually was going to get the better of him. He now is nearly six years removed from his dismissal by Louisville after his Cardinals program became involved in a second NCAA scandal in four years. Those close to Pitino always have insisted to me he was emphatic about rules compliance and the problems that developed there were more about inattention to detail in his late-career years.
It is a different era in college sports now, and Pitino still has his touch. He’s made two NCAA Tournament appearances in three seasons at Iona, with teams that have gone 12-6, 25-8 and 27-7. He’s as good as there ever has been.
It’s logical that St. John’s will want him. Iona gave him a job when no one else in college basketball would have him, and he was the one who said he would stay. No one made him.
MORE: Updated odds to advance for every team in 2023 NCAA Tournament
Sleeper team
No. 7 seed Northwestern
It’s highly unlikely the Wildcats will be hanging around this tournament long. They play defense with anybody, but the offense that never was elite now has two slumping wings in Chase Audige and Ty Berry.
Audige has one double-figure game in his last six games and is 6-of-24 from 3-point range in that stretch. Berry has reached double figures in half those games and is 8-of-33 on threes.
We are telling you why Northwestern isn’t likely to advance, because that’s what makes them a sleeper. They are in nearly every game they play, and nearly every game they’ve played of late has been against an NCAA Tournament team. Since Feb. 12, every game but one has been against a team that’s now in the field save one, a March 5 victory over Rutgers, which should have made it, as noted earlier.
One game at a time, it’s conceivable to see the Wildcats to beat Boise State and then battle with No. 2 seed UCLA for a spot in the Sweet 16.
It’s unlikely. That’s why we call the Wildcats a sleeper.
Final Four pick
Connecticut
These Huskies can take a nap at any time. That’s how they came to lose seven Big East games even after rising to the top 5 in the polls and remaining among the most prominently rated teams in metrics such as the NET and KenPom.com
They have regained their form, for the most part, although they were unable to finish off a comeback against Marquette in the Big East Tournament semis last Friday.
UConn is a team with size, depth, an NBA first-round prospect in wing Jordan Hawkins and the sort of high-end performance on both ends of the court that suggests the Huskies could be national championship material.
We’re not going to be that ambitious with UConn just yet. But they looked in this bracket like a team that could make a run to Houston. So they lost to a terrific Marquette team at the Garden in the final seconds? The 2014 national champs lost by 33 points to Louisville on the final day of the regular season, then again to the same team by 10 points in the American conference tournament final.
Three weeks later, they celebrated a national title. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again. It means it could.