Mick Cronin’s team is far from the typical Bruins powerhouses of history, but it’s rode its March surge all the way to the final weekend.
The following written content by Pat Forde
INDIANAPOLIS — The on-court celebration was just about over when Mick Cronin found a bottle of hand sanitizer on the corner of the court. He picked it up, squirted some on his mitts, then grabbed a pile of East Region championship hats. He was going to throw them into the stands to family and friends amid the ecstatic UCLA cheering section when red-coated security guards rushed in to stop this heinous act of communal joy.
Cronin turned away with a laugh. Apparently the hats were viewed as potential health hazard, carrying COVID-19 or something from the Lucas Oil Stadium floor to the folks in the stands. Safety-first here in the men’s NCAA tournament bubble, a strange place where the strangest surviving team is Cronin’s Bruins.
He did get to join the fans in doing the UCLA eight-clap for his No. 11 seed, and did get to point out the legion of doubters who appraised his team with extreme skepticism round after round after round. “Nobody picked us,” the second-year coach at John Wooden’s university said. “Nobody believed in us. That’s how we like it.”
They like it, they love it, they get at least one more round of it. And with this latest heart-stopping advance comes a wild historical turnabout.
UCLA, gritty underdog winner of 11 national championships, is going to the men’s Final Four, where it will play monster juggernaut Gonzaga, winner of zero titles and a national non-factor until this century. The Zags will be favored by a million. It will be the final improbable matchup in an improbable season that seemed like it might never get to this last stage.
UCLA has sent some of the greatest teams in the history of the game to the Final Four—and now it will send one seeded 11th in the East Region and No. 44 on the overall tournament seed list. The Bruins were ahead of just two other at-large teams, Wichita State and Drake. They staggered into this tourney on a four-game losing streak and now have won five straight. Read more from Sports Illustrated.
