Here are UCLA's 12 losses this season:
(1) Arizona - A Final Four team we played close for most of the game.
(2) California - Neutral court game in their area played without Bilodeau.
(3) Gonzaga - Neutral court game in their area against a top-10 team and a #3 seed in the tournament.
(4) @Iowa - Sweet 16 team which only lost to Illinois, Purdue and Michigan at home. Skyy Clark injured and missed most of the 2nd half.
(5) @Wisconsin - Lost only two home games. Clark DNP.
(6) @Ohio St. - Lost to only Nebraska, Illinois and Michigan at home. Clark DNP.
(7) Indiana - Lost in double OT. Clark DNP.
(8) @Michigan - Final Four team.
(9) @Michigan St. - Sweet 16 team. Lost only to Michigan and Duke at home.
(10) @Minnesota - No excuses.
(11) Purdue - Played without Dent and Bilodeau.
(12) Connecticut - Final Four team. Played without Bilodeau.
Any reasonable fan looking at this list should conclude that the two main factors for the losses were injuries and a difficult schedule. Coaching would be a distant third. All but one loss had one or more of these factors:
* UCLA without a key player
* Opponent a high acheiving team.
* A road game in a difficult venue
Injuries were the most important factor in the losses. I don't want to hear about how Alabama made the Sweet 16 missing one of their best players. As someone pointed out, they made it by beating Texas Tech who was missing a better player. But while injuries are mostly beyond a coach's control, the Alabama player was kicked of the team for dealing drugs. While some of you might not care for Cronin's character, he recruits for character. When has one of his recruits ever been in worse trouble at UCLA than spitting on someone?
The other main factor in the losses was having to play in the toughest, deepest conference in the country. Had we still been in the Pac-12, Arizona was the only conference team that we couldn't beat. That would have meant probably four or more wins and a top-4 seed leading to a completely different outcome for the season. Blame our incompetent AD for selling out the team so he could make more money that he'll probably mismanage.
Wins matter, too. We beat two Sweet 16 teams, an Elite 8 team and a Final 4 team. Without the injuries this proves the team was quite capable of an excellent season.
As for coaching, there were only two real negatives on Cronin this season: Losing Mara (but some blame lies with Mara himself and Dusty May) and the incidents in Michigan which bothered the fans a lot more than the only ones who matter, the players who played some of their best ball after that. Some have been griping all season that Cronin can't coach offense. But the fact is that we finished a very respectable 27th in KenPom Offensive Efficiency, within plus or minus one point of UConn, Tennessee, Virginia, Michigan St. and Iowa.
Recruitng has become very complicated in the NIL era. Coaches have a salary cap to obtain players, but it's a different amount for every school. If you want a top player at a position of need (point guard last year, center this year) you have to overpay to outbid everyone else. But that leaves you less to pay for other positions. Anyone who has played Daily Fantasy Sports like Fanduel or Draftkings will understand that perfectly. That's why criticizing a coach for his recruiting isn't always fair since you don't know how much money these players are asking for.
So I get the impresson that those advocating for a coaching change don't have that much of a case against his actual on-court coaching, just the results. They want a coach who can contend for a conference championship and make a deep run in the NCAA tournament and we haven't been doing that. But every post Wooden UCLA basketball coach and every post-Donahue UCLA foootball coach has either been fired or quit. Changing coaches has only occasionally led to a temporary improvement if that. It's an institutional problem, not a coaching problem. The only elite coach UCLA was ever able to hire was Larry Brown and we couldn't hang on to him.
Sometimes seasons just don't go the way fans want due to various circumstances, some which have nothing to do with coaching . But that doesn't mean it was a failure. Only those with unreasonable expectations (by ignoring the above list of losses) have called this season a failure. A more accurate characterization is a disappointment. Failure implies not doing something we should have done. Disappointing is not doing something we could have done under different circumstances.