Mick Cronin is familiar with improbable postseason runs.
The Bruins’ coach is just three years removed from following a first-round exit in the Pac-12 tournament with the second First Four to Final Four run in March Madness history.
But heading into this year’s conference tournament, his squad needs to get lucky in Las Vegas even to have that same opportunity for a March miracle.
Well outside the March Madness bubble, Cronin and No. 5 seed UCLA men’s basketball (15-16, 10-10 Pac-12) will kickoff the Pac-12 tournament against No. 12 seed Oregon State (13-18, 5-15) on Wednesday afternoon at T-Mobile Arena. The Bruins enter the conference championship bracket knowing a perfect 4-0 showing and tournament championship is their only route – via an automatic bid – to the NCAA Tournament.
“There’s no time for that (extra preparation) … you’re not going to all of a sudden change,” Cronin said. “What I’ve been trying to do knowing this was the case for the last three or four weeks, since we lost to Utah, is trying to prepare in any time we had to be able to play these games and be able to try to win this tournament.”
UCLA enters the must-win tournament after needing a 59-47 win over Arizona State in its final game of the regular season to snap a five-game losing streak. The aforementioned one-point loss to Utah jumpstarted the stretch that also included three losses of at least 12 points and a home defeat to USC – a team that entered the contest sitting at 4-11 in conference play.
Sophomore forward/center Adem Bona said the team can take advantage of the fact that the postseason is a new opportunity.
“Going into the tournament, everyone’s coming in with a blank canvas,” Bona said. “It’s a new beginning. You don’t have to worry about what happened before. … I think that’s the mindset going in.”
Bona and the Bruins will begin their tournament against another team looking to find success in a new opportunity, as the Beavers enter the win-or-go-home affair having lost nine of their final 11 games to fall to the bottom of the conference standings.
Ironically, it was UCLA that kickstarted Oregon State’s worst stretches of the conference campaign.
After the Bruins’ opened Pac-12 play with a win over the Beavers, Oregon State lost five of its next six games to begin its conference campaign at 1-6. Then a Feb. 1 loss at Pauley Pavilion jumpstarted the Beavers’ seven-game losing streak to start the month.
“They’re similar to us – of the 355 teams or whatever’s in Division I, there’s about five teams that are young and we’re two of them,” Cronin said. “I know we won both games (against Oregon State), but we could’ve easily lost. Those were games.”
If UCLA makes it 3-0 against Oregon State this season with a win Wednesday, Cronin’s team would face No. 4 seed Oregon exactly 24 hours later.
Junior guard Lazar Stefanovic, who is entering his third-career Pac-12 tournament, said the competition’s neutral-site and four consecutive days of games make the experience drastically different from the regular season.
But above all else, Stefanovic said his younger teammates must prepare for the heightened focus needed to be victorious in win-or-go-home games.
“You don’t have space for mistakes anymore.”
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