Bruins' Cronin Gives Reasoning For Star's Limited Minutes

The UCLA Bruins coasted to a 36-point over Prairie View A&M on Tuesday night to earn their ninth-straight win. They did it mostly without sophomore guard Sebastian Mack, who only played 3 minutes in the game.

Dec 17, 2024; Los Angeles, California, USA; UCLA Bruins head coach Mick Cronin reacts in the first half against the Prairie View A&M Panthers at Pauley Pavilion presented by Wescom. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

The UCLA Bruins (10-1) earned another dominant win on Tuesday night as they dismantled the Prairie View A&M Panthers (1-10) by a score of 111-75. One of the Bruins' key stars, sophomore guard Sebastian Mack, uncharacteristically played just 3 minutes, taking just one shot.

Mack is usually a high-usage player who plays the point guard position and controls the offense for a majority of the game. Bruins coach Mick Cronin was asked postgame why Mack did not play much -- he did not mince words one bit in his answer.

"[He] wasn't ready to play, didn't deserve to play," Cronin said bluntly. "The second piece to that was he had a little knee swelling after the Arizona game, so I could send him a message as well as rest him because he had a little knee swelling. We obviously didn't need him tonight."

A parlay of an injury and being unprepared to compete were the reasons for his extremely limited time on the floor. Cronin also mentioned that senior guard Dominick Harris played just 5 minutes for the same reasons.

Before another question could be asked in the postgame press conference, Cronin began to elaborate on his original answer for Mack being sidelined. He went off on somewhat of a tangent, forming some speculation on where Mack fell short prior to Tuesday night's game.

"It's called accountability," Cronin said. "Now I know everybody else thinks I'm too tough on kids and all that, but I just don't know what world they're going to leave here and go in where you don't have to be accountable, and people are going to pay him. Right now, they get their scholarship, they can transfer, I can't get rid of them, they can go be a free agent, they can get more money, I got to pay them, now the school's going to have to pay them, the collectives. I mean, this is literally like 'The Wizard of Oz' or something in a movie right now, and when they got to play for a living, you better be damn good at it, you better be accountable or you're going to get cut, you're going to get fired from your job. So I just I figured I'd get him [Mack] ready, that's my job, I care about him."

Cronin does bring up an extremely good point in his lengthy response. Accountability is one of the main prioritizez for a coach like Cronin. He gets more joy and satisfaction out of coaching from teaching his guys how to be leaders and men, instead of winning conference tournaments.

It will be interesting to see what type of playtime time Mack will get on Saturday afternoon when the team travels to New York City to face off with the North Carolina Tar Heels (6-5) at Madison Square Garden. Mack will surely fix whatever issues have arisen and will be back in action.

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