UCLA Basketball: Top Bruins Lottery Prospect Impresses Mick Cronin In Oregon Win

Mick Cronin was impressed by freshman center Aday Mara's efforts in his club's 71-63 victory over Oregon, per UCLA Communications.

“I thought Aday played great. His two post moves in the first half just rolled out on him. If you guys saw practice, you could see the frustration on every guy that tries to guard him because he makes every one of those. But he’s just young, it happens," Mara said. "[N’Faly] Dante is five years older than him at least. Aday doesn’t turn 19 until I think it’s April 7th or 8th. Dylan got him a couple great lob passes and he continues to get better. I told you guys this when we were struggling. People wanted me to pile on the guys and start talking about our talent and all that type of stuff." 

"We got great guys on the team and if you got guys that will listen, you just got to keep working with them," Cronin continued. "Aday Mara has a great attitude. I know a lot of people that said he was going to come here for one year. But he didn’t put that expectation on himself. And the truth is everybody that was around him told me that he was going to need multiple years here. The problem is other people write that stuff that make everybody think he’s going to be able to dominate and be a lottery pick. He didn’t think that. And I know the people – his parents didn’t think that. I know [Javier Mara], his dad who played in Spain, he definitely didn’t think that. Even though his English is bad, he communicated that to me pretty well. He continues to improve. … It’s a long year, guys. Long year. Everybody wants to rush to judgment. You got to give kids a chance to develop. And when they’re good kids, and they’ll listen, you got a chance as a coach.”