UCLA head coach Mick Cronin participated in a Zoom chat with UCLA radio play-by-play broadcaster Josh Lewin on Friday morning. Cronin, who just completed his first year as The Michael Price Family UCLA Men’s Head Basketball Coach, spent nearly 40 minutes speaking to Lewin in a video format that was available to UCLA season-ticket holders and donors who had RSVP’d in advance.

Below is a transcript of Friday’s (May 29, 2020) Q-and-A session.

Josh Lewin: How are you, since we last spoke in mid-March?

Mick Cronin: Everybody is good. I think there are a lot of other people struggling in our country, so I don’t complain. Encino is a beautiful place. It’s not Solana Beach. But no, everything is good. Probably the hardest thing for me is that my dad loves to come out [from Cincinnati] and visit. He’s 78. So, not being able to put him on a plane – I don’t feel comfortable putting him on a plane, just yet.

Josh Lewin: We’ve gone out to some of our fans and asked them to submit some of their questions, and we’ve tried to pick as many as we can. For example, we’ve got one from a “Bill W” – can you speak about next year’s roster and your impression of the new UCLA athletic director?

Mick Cronin: Well, the interesting thing is that I have seen Jaylen Clark play, I’ve gotten to know he and his family, as one of our two new players. And obviously Kenneth Nwuba redshirted but I got to see him every day in practice. As for Johnny Juzang, that is the wildest deal. I still haven’t seen him. We could walk to each other’s house. Everybody is doing the quarantine walks, you know, walking X amount of miles. We could walk to each other’s house. It’s absolutely nuts. I still have not seen Johnny in person.

Right now, as far as next year’s team, we are just looking forward to getting back in the gym. Probably the furthest thing from my mind is what our team is going to look like next year. We are still recruiting, actively. Some of it is well documented and some of it is not.

At the end of the day, for me right now, my focus has been so much on this year’s team. Getting them through the spring quarter, academically. When you are running a basketball program and you have – imagine a former player like a Bill Walton, and you are trying to make sure that he stays out of trouble and goes to class, but you’re in quarantine. You just have guys and we’re trying to run our programs, all across America, and we can’t see our kids other than in a Zoom meeting.

For the quarter schools, it’s harder. We are still in the spring quarter. The whole spring quarter for us at UCLA has, academically, been a challenge. You are trying to stay on top of your guys. Our academic people at UCLA, they have not had a day off. For us, all the people in Christina Rivera’s department under academics, it’s been a very trying time for them, I can assure you.

They are trying to stay on top of all the athletes and their eligibility, and you can’t meet with them in person. You can’t meet in person. We are trying to do everything off Zoom. So, it’s just been tough. That part of it is where my focus has been.

As far as next year’s team, you know, I’d love for us to be able to score a lot of points. I know that Bill W. is a big fan of that. He always talks about that and I agree with him. You’ve got to play defense to have a chance, but you’re never going to win a title if you can’t score. I whole-heartedly agree with him.

Our experience should help us next year. That was a detriment this year, as we had an extreme amount of inexperience. A lot of that will depend on Chris Smith’s status – is he back with us? You know, to have a guy who could be the preseason Pac-12 Player of the Year. If he’s with us, he has experience. But if not, we have a lot of candidates, hopefully, who will step up. No matter what happens, you still get to put five guys out there.

So, we will have more experience. I think that will be the different theme from last year to this year, as far as how our roster will look. Our experience should really help us.

Q: Regarding the Zoom calls, he saw that you had a special guest the other day [Kareem Abdul-Jabbar]. How cool was that?

Mick Cronin: Yeah, well, first of all, I do want to answer Bill W. from San Diego had mentioned our new athletic director. I’ve talked with him quite a bit, a lot of text. I’ve reached out with Martin [Jarmond], basically with how can I help him? You’re talking about moving to Los Angeles. I did it last year. I just went through it.

So I can help him in that regard. As far as our program, the job, everything, until he gets here, that stuff is on hold. He is a veteran. He’s a really good guy. He has great energy. We just need to support him and help him with his transition, all of us. You’re trying to move during a pandemic. Can you imagine taking a job right now?

It’s not like, you know, jumping on planes and flying around to go and look at homes. I am trying to help him in that regard. I told him that you don’t even need to worry about basketball right now. We are in good shape. We are working on it every day. Basically, how can I help him? He has been great. He played for Jerry Wainwright at UNC Wilmington, a mentor of mine, so we have a very close connection.

Coach Wainwright is a legendary guy in the basketball world. We both have some Jerry Wainwright stories. I am excited about Martin joining us and just helping him to get comfortable. I just went through it. Hopefully I can be a resource for him, helping with his transition.

Q: Just to reset, we’ve got a bunch of questions that we want to morph into one. It basically talks about how last year was ending on such a high note. Your team was getting ready to play Cal in the Pac-12 Tournament and you guys seemed to have so much momentum riding into that game. So many things had been going right. How happy had you been with the players’ buy-in and improvement in the second half of the season?

Mick Cronin: I’ve done a lot of these types of interviews, since this whole thing started. Since the season has ended, everybody is looking for content so they all want you to do an interview.

It’s like we had two seasons. It really is. You were a part of it. I don’t know if I will ever experience anything like that ever again. We went from, I’m coming home in masks of depression wondering how we are going to win a game, to we couldn’t lose a game.

You are winning on the road by double figures against great coaches and great teams in sold-out arenas, like Arizona or Colorado. I am walking with Alex Timiraos to do an interview with you after the game, and I look at Alex and we’re laughing.

One month ago, we were one step from the Coronado Bridge and now we can’t lose. It was hard to describe. I believe this Josh, you have to give a lot of credit to our players. It’s hard for people on the outside to really understand how hard you have to play, mentally, to stay focused on details. Your mental conditioning and your physical conditioning – to me, that was the difference.

It was never a buy-in, never a bad attitude. We just were not in mental or physical condition to be able to play 40 minutes of basketball, to beat quality teams. Once we got our mental and physical conditioning there, we were able to do it. And when you get your mental and physical conditioning up to play at a high level, then your skill level starts to show and be more exposed.

You see Jake [Kyman] is making shots, Jaime is making plays, Tyger [Campbell] is dominating games with the assists and not turning the ball over. Not turning the ball over, the whole second half at Colorado, that’s impossible. But that is conditioning. So when you hear Bill W. [Walton] from San Diego talk about Coach Wooden and the secret sauce of conditioning, it’s mental and not just physical.

To have that toughness mentally, to play winning basketball, because it is almost like a tennis match where you are volleying back and forth. Who will break first and hit it into the net? And you would hear me talk all the time, Josh, about building our will, imposing your will on your opponent. Who will break first?

Usually the younger team is more mentally weak, not as physically conditioned, they’ll break first. That is what changed for us. But it took time. We had to go through all that to become the team that we came. It was a wild ride, buddy, I’m telling you. It’s tragic the way that it ended, but obviously there are things that are more important than basketball.

Josh Lewin: We’ll pull a couple questions together here – one fan says that you have done a terrific job of working with the team’s mindset and the toughness of these players. What are some of the drills and techniques that you have added to increase the toughness and what do you consider to be a successful practice setting?

Mick Cronin: You’ll have to help me with some of these repeats. I feel bad because we skipped over that question about Kareem. Really, for our coaching staff, we all grew up watching him – our players weren’t born yet – one of the coolest nights of our lives.

For me it is different. One of the neatest things about being the coach at UCLA is that I’m friends with certain guys. I can tell that Bill Walton is a friend of mine. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and I have a relationship. You know how neat that is? Mike Warren has become a very good friend of mine. He lives out here in the Valley, near Woodland Hills, not far from Encino. But Kareem was just awesome.

The neat part of it, Jaylen Clark and some of the other players said that their parents, when they had heard, you know you’re on Zoom and you can only see each other. But their parents could be sitting on the couch.

But for some of these parents, when Kareem came into this call and was going to be answering questions, the parents were running into the room, putting their ear up to the phone.

Obviously, Jaylen’s dad is from back East, so Kareem is his idol. We were making fun of some of the guys because they were nervous about asking questions. But they were star-struck. I mean, they were like, “Coach, you’re just sitting there rapping with Kareem like he is your buddy, but we are star-struck.” I told them it took me about a year to get there, too.

With the practice question, that’s the easiest question that I am going to get today. The most successful practice you can have is when nobody gets injured. Trust me, as a head coach. You have a better chance to win if your best players are all playing.

Our worst practice of the year was the last five minutes before the Arizona State road game. Jalen Hill [gets hurt]. That is the worst thing that you have happen in a practice. But the real answer, in practice, and I don’t remember who said this, you’re either getting better or you’re getting worse.

I’m not a big believer in naming captains. I think that leadership is the responsibility of every guy on the team. You are either leading people in the right direction by your buy-in, your voice, your effort, your attitude, or your silence is leading people in the wrong direction.

Your lack of hustle. You don’t have to say anything negative, but leadership comes from every guy on the team. It’s the responsibility of every player on the team. There are so many things that go on during a practice, to me, that are important, to where your team is getting better.

You might not make a shot that day. But you could get a whole lot better just by the guys learning how to treat each other and learning how to practice. Especially in your first year, like I was in.

You know, we spent months just getting to the point where we knew how to treat each other and we knew how to practice. How to go hard all the time. So, the question about did we change any stuff, I think where I’d give my assistant coaches a lot of credit, we were trying a lot of different things early in the season. And we had just decided that we needed to play just one defense and get really good at it. Our guys couldn’t handle some of the multiple – and they were trying – but they were struggling with it. Let’s simplify and get really good at one defense.

From that point on, we had to really get good at that. We changed practices so that we could just get really good at our half-court man-to-man and we didn’t do some of the other stuff that I had always done at Cincinnati. We had to scratch some of it.

As a coach, you have to forget what you want to do and figure out what your players can be good at. That’s my background from my dad as a high school coach. You’ve got to coach whoever walks into the gym, whoever enrolls in the school.

Some years, you’ll play this defense and some years, that. Some years your offense is better, depending upon who your better players are who enroll in your school, adjustments are essential to being good every year. Some teams may be good pressing teams, some teams may be good zone teams. I’m not a “my way” guy. I like to win. My coaching staff did a great job with the suggestions and the adjustments that we had to do with that.

Josh Lewin: So if we can throw in a quick follow-up there, as you are bringing back a lot of these same guys, will you try-try-again with some of that stuff? Do you re-circle and try to land the plane again?

Mick Cronin: I’d tell you that one thing with pressing and pressure defense, that’s in my DNA. We’d always practice it because it teaches guys how to play hard. It builds their conditioning, their mental toughness. You are never always going to be ahead.

I think that you need, when you have to employ the press, it can’t be totally foreign. Some teams, when they have to press, you can tell that they have never worked on it and they have no chance. Versus, even when we had to, we didn’t beat North Carolina but when we had to, we were behind and we put on [the press], it was obvious that we practiced it.

But I would love to be able to do some sort of consistent pressing. It was tough when we had two guards [Tyger, David] missed a year and six months and they weren’t in the greatest shape in the world to be able to be at the front of a press. And they were young, so our mental toughness wasn’t there to impose a pressing will on our opponents. I would love to be able to. We will definitely try. But you have to adjust based upon personnel. That is the most important thing.

You have to figure out what that team, in particular, can be good at. Pressing and pressure defense does solve the questions that we’ll get about playing time. When guys are playing really hard, they will need a second guy to come in. A game is a high-speed game nowadays, so you have to be able to put in a fresh guy in there. Guys are going to get a lot more fatigued in 2020 at the pace that the game’s played, especially if you are playing pressure defense.

Josh Lewin: We’ve had some questions come in, where it’s clear a lot of Bruin fans have liked your admiration for Coach [John ] Wooden. For example, we saw that his favorite diner [VIP’s Café] was in danger of closing and you came through to help and keep it open. You did that because of Coach Wooden. What do you take from Coach Wooden’s teachings, even if he may be gone but his spirit lives on?

Mick Cronin: From having been here, and quarantine time to read a lot of books on Coach Wooden, I would say that there is Coach Wooden where you try and learn about him as a basketball coach. And how can that help and make you a better coach? And then the other side, it’s Coach Wooden’s legacy of his retirement, really from 1976 on, Coach Wooden. What he meant to UCLA and the community. That’s a whole different person. He had a major impact on our country, thousands and thousands of coaches – from the books, the Pyramid of Success – and so it’s almost like two different people that you’re reading about and studying.

From the basketball side of it, the thing that fascinates me the most is the pressure that he was under. He knew that once he won a title, how that pressure would magnify. He knew that once he was able to sign Kareem out of Power Memorial, and in Seth Davis’ book, he understood what was going to follow.

That if anybody got – it’d be the equivalent of getting LeBron James if he had gone to college. You’re expected to win the title, for one year. But with Kareem, it was going to be three years where you’re expected to win the title. That pressure is real.

The difference now is probably that we are paid so well for it. Back then, you weren’t. It just wasn’t reality back then.

Coach Wooden’s life as a coach fascinates me the most. Everything that went on, coaching in the civil rights movement, in that era. Being a history major, and the stuff that was going on around young people and activism and here you are, a buttoned-up disciplinarian coach trying to continue to win national championships.

The Watts riots are going on. The stuff that was going on in the South, you know, obviously the riots and Detroit and everything going on in our country it was a powder keg and then here you have this guy running this program who is like a machine.

In reading the books, you really felt it. But I can’t imagine being a part – that he lived that and how stressful that must have been for him. How many people coach at a high level in basketball and understand these things? And I get it, we make plenty of money, but we are human.

Learning that human side of the journey that he went on was fascinating to me. Just trying to win every year. And the expectation level, it just got way out of control. That was extremely hard on him. The way that he could get through it.

Thank goodness that he was able to keep his health through all of the pressure of trying to win a title every year or it is a bad season. It’s just unbelievably high stressed. I mean, can you imagine the stress? The gift to the rest of us was all of Coach Wooden's post-retirement, of what coaching should be all about, what sports should be about.

Josh Lewin: What types of qualities do you look for in a recruit?

Mick Cronin: Well, I think the biggest thing, because people on the outside – in recruiting, you can’t immediately assume, “Why aren’t we recruiting this guy?” Well, he may have no interest or we may have too many people at his position.

We have so many young guys on the wing that, even as much – Johnny is a great kid and wanted to go to UCLA, but he was asking me how we’ll play with pressing and running and a spread offense so that we can get everybody enough opportunity on the wing. That is a factor.

Today’s recruit knows your roster inside and out. Everybody is a click away or now a touch away on your touch screen. But everybody is a touch screen away from knowing everything about your roster.

It’s not that you couldn’t recruit certain guys, it’s that may be a place where they can just go in and start and lead the team in field goal attempts. That’s part of it. But don’t think that people aren’t being recruited. It just might not be the right fit.

I think that talent is the most important thing. That’s why you’re going to watch a recruit. He has to have a skill level, a talent level. Then the second thing would be what type of person is he and his family? Are they looking for an experience that is about winning? Are they looking for an experience about where they can grow as a person? Do we have similar beliefs in what the college experience should look like, even if it’s for one year? How to help each other to all have success? Talent one, character two.

Josh Lewin: OK, I’m curious. Over your left shoulder, that’s either a golf club or a banjo? A pool cue? I’m just curious what else is happening at the Cronin household right now.

Mick Cronin: That is a leather guitar case from when I won Coach of the Year one year, they gave me this Gibson guitar over here that I can’t play. But my name is on it. Now when Sammi [daughter] was young and I won Coach of the Year one year, Gibson guitars are in Memphis and anyways it’s a pointless story, but I used to mess with her and say, “Aw yeah, I learned how to play the guitar and I took lessons.” She was really young. I couldn’t trick her even at like five years old. She knew I was full of it then.

Josh Lewin: We have one fan asking, if you were to take 10 three-pointers from the top of the key, how many would you make?

Mick Cronin: Well, am I warming up, can I get loose? Haha. So yeah, I’d say 10 years ago, the answer was 10 for 10. That’s 10 years ago when I was 38. Probably since then, I’m going to go 6 for 10. Mike Lewis will go 10 for 10. He is the younger guy on the staff, still. I’ll catch him shooting after practice. I am worried about making 10-foot putts and not 22-foot jumpers. So 10 years ago, 10-for-10.

Josh Lewin: A couple of people have asked us here, when it comes to getting former players involved and keeping them involved, I mean, what’s the tipping point? Ideally, you’d want everybody in the pool. But everybody gets a voice. And at the end of the day, it’s like a cacophony where everybody has a different idea of what the program should look like. How does that work and how do you feel that’s coming along, getting everybody unified?

Mick Cronin: I think, well first of all, I tell guys all the time – like I’d said earlier, Mike Warren and I are buddies, he laughs at me and we have a real relationship, which I appreciate, and I told him right away, I said, “Hey look, I get it, I’m going to do to things as a coach that you aren’t going to agree with.”

That’s what I love about Mike. He speaks his mind. I have great respect for him for that, and for Kareem, for being who they are. When you get a bunch of guys in a room that played and coached basketball at all levels, everybody is going to have an opinion.

I tell guys, “Hey look, I get it.” But support the Bruins, ultimately. I second guess myself as soon as the game is over. I’ll blame myself for every loss. I don’t sleep. That is the way you can get better – self-analysis. I have no problem with that. Unifying us as a Bruin community and family, that does help recruiting and it makes our program more attractive so that we all get the ultimate goal of winning.

When I left Cincinnati, I said that I wanted to thank especially the people that maybe didn’t think I did a great job coaching, because you still came to the games. You still supported the team. That is the most important thing.

Hell, I don’t think I’m a very good coach sometimes. But the former players, they’re going to have opinions, Josh. They played. That’s what makes it interesting for them. If I get second-guessed, you can’t be thin-skinned.

I’d be second-guessing them if they were coaching. So there is nothing wrong with that. We have an unbelievable former player base. Alex will get mad at me, he doesn’t like us saying that word “former” because you’re always a Bruin.

I just love the fact that they care and even if their opinion isn’t positive, just the fact that they care and support the team. I’ve said before, “Second guess me, but support the kids. Support the players. It’s tough on them, especially in this day-of-age with social media.” And you just can’t get to everybody, Josh.

That’s my biggest thing. I want my message to be, “We want you around and the doors are open.” But I can’t be best friends with 500 guys. There is only so much time in the day. Especially how with every recruit, they’ve got four or five people you have to call around to recruit. There are only so many hours in the day. But you do want guys to know that they’re appreciated. The doors are open to them. That is what I have tried to do. And even with that, you aren’t always going to go 100 percent.

Josh Lewin: You know, you look at last season and maybe it is a metaphor for what we’re all going through right now. The year 2020 started out horribly, with what happened with Kobe [Bryant] at the end of January when we were getting ready for a game in Eugene, one of the worst days for everybody. Then it got worse from there, somehow. But in the thick of it all, you guys really proved – you, the coaching staff and the players – it’s a cliché thing to say that it isn’t how you start but how you finish.

There’s a real truth in that. UCLA lost in late December at home to Cal State Fullerton, losing at home to Stanford in mid-January, but then things really started to change. By March, sure enough there is UCLA ready to pounce and things were looking up.

In a weird way, hopefully, everybody in the Bruins’ community can look at that small example of what can happen when you just stay positive and believe a little bit. Your attitude has been amazing. You are coaching skills, but you’re also coaching positivity, and I’d just like to say thank you for doing that.

Mick Cronin: Well, I appreciate that. I am the son of a high school coach, so he didn’t coach for money. You are trying to impact young lives. The most important thing that we’ve talked about is that you realize the power of staying together. You always have a choice of how you are going to react to a situation. And you can choose to blame others or you can choose to get better.

Sometimes, it is crazy how in basketball, it isn’t like football where power wins out and there are five teams that have a chance to win the national championship, probably, and that’s it.

Our game is so wild because of three-point shooting. That, you know, there were times where I was thinking, what did I do? What did I do? Does anybody ever miss a shot against us?

Even Bill Walton said, “Can you believe how good Fullerton played against you?” Now, that’s a credit to their players and to Dedrique Taylor. As bad as you are when you’re watching, every mistake that you’ve made, they make a shot.

Stanford, same thing. Now the same Stanford team that couldn’t score against Cal in the Pac-12 Tournament – the last game that was played in the Pac-12 this year – the same team couldn’t make a basket. Couldn’t miss in Pauley Pavilion [in January].

What you learn as a coach, it is wild, the ups and downs. You have to have enough fortitude to do what is right, to keep teaching and keep coaching. It is a metaphor for the guys because their lives aren’t always going to be peaches and cream.

You’ve got to try and teach kids to define success for themselves. Not to let others define it for them. In my job, the hardest thing is that everybody defines success of a basketball player at UCLA, or at any school in the top 40 or 50, of making the NBA. It’s unfair. It’s unfair.

Fewer than three percent get there [to the NBA]. You have to try and help young people get through that “I’m doing my best. I play at UCLA. We win. We almost won the Pac-12. I give great effort. I’m a good guy. I’m doing great in school, like, I’m a success.” But society comes at them with, “Well, if you are not on an NBA Draft board then you’re a failure.”

That is the hardest part of our job. It’s unfair to our players. So, as I’m viewed as this tougher guy, I’m intense because I’m an Irish idiot, but I am vehemently, almost violently protective of what our guys go through. It’s extremely unfair.

You are not a failure if you don’t play in the NBA. You are normal, actually. Abnormal is the NBA. I mean, are you trying to say that certain guys like Andy Hill aren’t successful? I mean, he was the president of CBS. He played at UCLA. He didn’t get in [the games]. He got his degree. I mean, how many people were president of CBS?

This is what our guys face today, Josh. All high-level players face this. You have to try and make sure that those guys know, “Hey, Jules Bernard, you have become our best defender and we are winning games because of you.” So like that night when we beat Utah [on the road], it was great that we won. I was so happy for him, personally. You know how well he wants to do. He works so hard. He gives up his body more than anybody on our team.

Our guys will laugh because we call him Crash in practice, he’s always running into people. But no matter how big of a fall he takes, never would he sub out of practice. But you know that he wants to do even better than he was doing. When he has that big night, you are so happy for him. That’s the joy. Those are the things about coaching because I know Josh, I’m with these guys and I know the pressures that they’re under. It is very real for our players.

Josh Lewin: We thank you for your time. Continued success to you, Coach. These are certainly weird times. But you are doing an amazing job of keeping everybody together and pointed toward something happy. Hopefully, we’ll all be together soon even though we don’t know what that will look like. We’ll have some basketball. We will win some games and churn out some more great citizens into our country.

Mick Cronin: It’s all going to be OK. We all have to hang in there and stay positive. I am a big believer that it isn’t about what’s going on, but it’s about how we react to it. Maybe it’s a message that we all need to treat each other better. That good health and Mother Earth isn’t something that is promised. We need to be thankful for it and to take care of it better and to take care of each other better.

Obviously, it’s terribly unfortunate that the virus has killed 100,000 people, but again, how will we react to it? It’s all going to be good, I think when this is over with someday. It’ll be a better place, maybe, where there is a lot more humanity and caring about humanity in our society. It will be a better place for my daughter and for young people. Just, we need everybody to stay positive out there. The Bruins will be back. We will all be back in Westwood. I miss Westwood. I know that.