Don’t cancel those season tickets just yet.
Yes, UCLA lost a basketball scrimmage against severely shorthanded San Diego State.
No, Bruins coach Mick Cronin wasn’t trying to win. Not even close.
“I used it as a practice,” Cronin said Tuesday of the closed scrimmage earlier this month.
Cronin tinkered with his lineups, using eight different groups of five players, the mass substitutions resembling hockey shifts. The point was to find his best lineups approaching the season opener against Rider on Monday night at Pauley Pavilion.
Saying he “got educated,” Cronin noted that his best offensive and best defensive lineups are different and that the players on the court at the end of games might differ from the starters.