We have all been hearing for a while how brilliant Cruz is in his "ground game". How efficient. How he uses the system to his advantage. How he didn't make the rules, but is just the best at playing by them. ..
The question you asked though seems to imply he did NOT actually have a great ground game for working the delegates. That he is an innocent beneficiary of a system that just happened to give him an advantage in delegate assignment and delegate loyalty beyond what he received from the voters. I am not sure whether you meant to imply this or not, but let us consider both viewpoints...
On the first view, At best the Cruz side ought acknowledge Trump simply out played him in the contest of campaign competence. That Cruz was penny wise but pound foolish. That he got rope-a-doped by a superior strategist who used Cruz's own strong suit against him.
On the second view, Cruz isn't as clever as people thought, nor as pro-active. I simply don't think this is the case. There is a lot of evidence that Cruz is very smart, very organized, and very ahead of the other candidates in the morally shady business of delegate wrangling
Trump looks like a whiney playground loser over this. He makes me sick.
Perhaps this is the way his opponents wished he looked, but the national polls after the Colorado stuff seem to show a bump for Trump.
What I am saying is Cruz did not make the rules. Had no control over what they did. He played by their rules and won. You can skirt around it all you want but Trump did not do any of that. He just thought he would skate in there and scoop the delegates for himself and when that didn’t happen he cried foul when there was none. It showed his incompetence and he threw a fit. If it had turned out favorably for him you wouldn’t have heard a peep from him. And he still turns my stomach. I do not want him as my President.