Fifteen games into the 2023–24 season, the 6–9 UCLA Bruins men’s basketball team is running out of reasons for optimism.
The miserable Bruins lost for the seventh time in eight tries Saturday. This time, it was a home defeat to a Cal program that sat just 4–10 on the season and owned just two other Pac-12 wins since March 1, 2022. UCLA has topped 70 points in a game versus a Division I opponent just once since Nov. 15, and in that lone exception the Bruins scored 72 in a loss to Cal State Northridge. The disastrous start, combined with coach Mick Cronin’s frequent media antics as of late (including skipping the postgame press conference after the loss to Cal), have evoked images of how UCLA crashed and burned toward the end of the Ben Howland era in Westwood.
How did UCLA, fresh off three straight trips to at least the second weekend of the NCAA tournament, get here so quickly? And can Cronin, whose hire from Cincinnati was initially criticized for concerns about how his style of play and personality would fit in Westwood, right the ship?
