Mick Cronin didn’t like what he saw from his players before the game.

What the UCLA basketball coach observed over the first 10½ minutes Saturday evening only deepened his concern.

His team seemed completely lost against No. 10 Illinois at Pauley Pavilion amid one of the most trying weeks of his career.

The coach had become the object of national scorn after throwing his own player out of a game last week and getting into a chippy exchange with a reporter afterward. What people were saying and writing appeared to impact his team.

“Everybody’s got all the answers behind the keyboard and these kids read this stuff and I’m oblivious,” Cronin said after his team rallied for a 95-94 victory thanks to Donovan Dent’s buzzer-beating layup in overtime, “but I didn’t like the look on their face before the game – it was almost like they had lost confidence.”

The Bruins fell into a 33-10 hole midway through the first half, looking as if they had given up on the season. Cronin said his players didn’t run one play they had practiced because they were so rattled by their massive deficit.

UCLA couldn’t get stops or prevent the Fighting Illini from getting offensive rebounds. Rather than provoking more anxiety, Cronin did his best to get his players to relax.

“I kept telling them, it’s your career, guys,” Cronin said. “Like, nobody’s in Ukraine carrying a rifle, man. Let’s play some ball, man. Play some ball.”

The Bruins did just that. They tightened their defense and executed at a high level on offense, taking their first lead early in the second half.

“We just showed our fight,” UCLA forward Eric Dailey Jr. said after finishing with 20 points and six rebounds. “Like, fighting for [Cronin], fighting for our team, fighting for this school — that’s what it comes to at the end of the day. Our toughness, our mental toughness, like, we really locked in.”

This was a reckoning for a coach – and a team – on the brink.

There were boos for Cronin during pregame introductions, though it was hard to tell if they came from UCLA fans or their Illinois counterparts who made up nearly half of the crowd.

The Bruins shrugged off the noise. Multiple players-only meetings possibly salvaged the season and redeemed Cronin.

“This whole week, we’ve just been together as a team,” Dent said. “Anything on the outside noise and all that, everyone can speak whatever; it’s all about what’s going on in the locker room. I think in the locker room, right now, we’re at our highest point together as a team, so it just speaks volumes to how we responded.”

This was a victory that UCLA needed for two reasons.

One, the Bruins needed to show they had not quit on Cronin to quell growing fan dissatisfaction.

Two, another Quad 1 victory was a must for a team with a flimsy NCAA tournament resume. UCLA had only two of those entering Saturday and remained on the bubble in every tournament projection. 

Trailing by 11 early in the second half, UCLA went on a 13-2 run ending in Dailey’s dunk to pull into a tie. A Xavier Booker putback shortly thereafter gave the Bruins their first lead of the game.

The push was sparked by defense as the Illini missed nine of 10 field goals at one point and made only 29.6 percent of their shots in the second half.

“Don’t tell me that we’re not capable of being a better defensive team,” Cronin said. “Don’t tell me we’re not capable of it because we did it to Purdue, we did it in the second half [against Illinois], we did it in overtime.”

Gutting it out with an ankle injury he suffered in the second half, Dent played a huge part in sparking his team beyond his game-winning layup.

He logged a double-double with 14 points and 15 assists while committing zero turnovers in one of the most impressive stat lines in recent memory.

The Bruins face reeling USC on Tuesday night at home in the first crosstown rivalry game of the season. The Trojans have lost three consecutive games, including a 71-70 setback against Oregon on Saturday in which they lost a six-point lead in the final minute.