Let’s hope that Mick Cronin is good at building bridges. Cronin ejected Steven Jamerson, his own center, in the second half of the Bruins’ 82-59 loss to Michigan State after Jamerson committed a hard foul on a breakaway dunk attempt.
There are two sides to every story, so let’s go through them both.
Cronin’s side
His team just embarrassed him in front of one of the most prodigious coaches in college basketball history. UCLA laid an absolute egg, trailing 43-23 at halftime and then 77-50 at the time of Jamerson’s foul.
Season-long failures
Cronin has been pleading with his team to show more effort for much of the season, then Jamerson shows extra effort at a time where it has zero impact on the outcome of the game and had a possibility of injuring Michigan State’s Carson Cooper.
Dangerous play
Jamerson made a play on the ball and didn’t do anything to deliberately hurt Cooper but that’s a play we’ve seen end badly before. In the 2019 NBA Finals, Danny Green went after a mid-air Klay Thompson, who tore his ACL after the collision. If Cooper would have been injured at the end of the blowout it would have been a travesty, that reflected poorly upon Cronin.
Defusing a situation?
Cronin, who was already at his wits’ end, didn’t even want to look at Jamerson, sending him to the locker room, as a public display of sportsmanship towards the Spartans and Izzo.
Jamerson’s side
UCLA is getting cooked on the scoreboard, your team is down 27 points on the road and now you’re about to give up a transition dunk that will cause the arena to erupt. Rather than succumb to that fate, you give it your all and make Cooper get his two points at the free throw line.
Cooper, who didn’t care for your hard foul, now gets in your face, and you hold your ground, refusing to cower. But this actually goes much deeper for Jamerson.
Michigan State history
Jamerson dreamed of playing for Michigan State, attempted to walk-on to the Spartans basketball team, even trying to become a team manager for the school. Those attempts never worked out in East Lansing. Jamerson instead played three seasons at UC San Diego before transferring to UCLA.
Tuesday was Jamerson’s chance to play at the Breslin Center, and it ended in humiliation.
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What’s next
It’ll be interesting to see how much Cronin plays Jamerson over the rest of the season, and if Jamerson is out on the court, how hard he’ll be playing after getting ejected from his head coach over a foul. Regardless of who’s side your on, it was an ugly moment for UCLA basketball.
This article originally appeared on UCLA Wire: The two sides of the Steven Jamerson-Mick Cronin sideline interaction
Reporting by Dylan McNeill, UCLA Wire / UCLA Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
