Mick Cronin was coming to a bit of a realization: His resume looked somewhat redundant.

        So when the opportunity came to leave the University of Cincinnati basketball staff to become Rick Pitino's associate head coach at Louisville, Cronin thought he had to take it.

        “I was looking to grow as a young coach,” the LaSalle High School graduate said. “Working for another potential Hall of Fame coach was appealing, and I needed to get out of Cincinnati, I guess.

        “If you're the athletic director at a school outside of Ohio and you look at Mick Cronin's resume and Mick Cronin grew up in Cincinnati, attended the University of Cincinnati, coached at Cincinnati Woodward (High School) and coached at the University of Cincinnati — here's a guy who never left home. So everything I'm doing is to prepare myself to fulfill my dream of becoming a DivisionI head coach.”

        When Louisville plays the seventh-ranked Bearcats on Saturday, it will be the first time Cronin, 30, is on the opposing bench.

        He will see players he helped recruit to Cincinnati for the first time since he left in April. He will shake hands with UC coach Bob Huggins, who hired Cronin as the Bearcats' video coordinator in 1996 and made him a full-time assistant coach a year later.

        Sure, he said, it will be weird.

        “I can't tell you how appreciative I am of everything he's done for me,” Cronin said of Huggins. “He gave me an opportunity as a young guy that was an opportunity of a lifetime. I felt it was time for me to move on. I don't know if Coach Huggins agrees or disagrees with how I did things. I didn't expect him to be happy about me leaving and going to Louisville.”

        Huggins certainly wasn't. He not only lost his recruiting coordinator, but Cronin left for one of UC's main Conference USA and longtime rivals.

        It was said Huggins heard of Cronin's interest in Louisville before hearing it from Cronin.

        “In our business, the rumor mill is unbelievable,” Cronin said. “It's very possible that somebody heard something from somebody else and said something to him. I can't control any of those things. All I know is, Coach Pitino contacted him and asked for permission to speak with me. Coach Huggins said OK. From what I was told, Huggins was very complimentary of me, which I appreciated.

        “When I asked him for permission to talk to Coach Pitino, he told me that he would never hold anybody back from doing what they thought was best for themselves, their career and their family. And that's 100 percent the truth. We were very close. I know that it was tough on me.

        “I don't know if there was a good way. That's one thing Coach Pitino told me. He could see that I was struggling with the situation in taking the job when I met with him. He said, "Look, if this is something you want to do, you need to understand you're not going to think of an easy way to do this. It's going to be hard.' He could see my emotional attachment to the guys and to Coach Huggins. And he was right, there was no easy way to do it.” Huggins has said little publicly about Cronin since, and when asked Thursday about his return to Shoemaker said: “All I want to talk about is basketball. That's it. I'm not getting into all that stuff. Mick's not playing. I'm a lot more worried about (Louisville guard) Reece Gaines.”

        Cronin said he and Huggins saw each other on the recruiting trail in July and spoke two or three times.

        “You can't be so close to somebody like that and see him and not speak,” Cronin said. “Was it unusual for me? Absolutely. Was I nervous about it? Sure. The more we saw each other, I think the better it was. Whenever we saw each other, we spoke. It's not like Coach Huggins and I are going to walk by each other; that's crazy.”

        He maintains that he never asked for the associate head coach's title at UC nor was money the reason he left (“They were more than generous to me,” he said).

        In fact, Cronin said he was surprised it became a hot topic on Cincinnati sports talk radio shows.

        “I'm just an assistant coach,” he said. “It's not that big of a deal. Case in point: They're seventh in the country, and it doesn't surprise me one bit.

        “Huggins is that program. That program was struggling badly without Coach Huggins and is a national power with him. I don't know if it was just because I was local (that his departure became news). I struggle with that. I hope some people there thought I did a pretty good job, but (former assistant) John Loyer did a great job. There's only one guy that they need to worry about leaving there, and that's Bob Huggins.”

Cronin chasing a dream in Louisville Huggins keeps team grounded

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