The Best College Basketball Coach In The Game Today

Some kid named Michael Lemaire put up a post on Bleacher Report (an "open source" fan site where pretty much anyone with an account can put up their own posts) on five best coaches in college basketball.

Guess who was number 1 in Michael's list of best coaches in the game today:

There are so many different reasons I could choose as my top reason why Howland is the best coach in college basketball today.

But, the number one reason Howland is the best coach is how he has revitalized the once stagnant UCLA program in such a short period of time.

The Steve Lavin years in Westwood were a disaster. Lavin was incredulously unable to convince high caliber high school players to play for the Bruins, and he suffered some embarrassing losses that were unheard of for a program with so much history, and in 2002-2003, Lavin and the Bruins finished 10-19 for the first losing season for UCLA in 54 years.

Enter Ben Howland.

Left with a dearth of talent thanks to the incredible ability of Lavin to NOT get good players to play for one of the nation's most respected college basketball programs. Howland struggled his first year, finishing 11-17.

But in his first year recruiting, his class consisted of Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Lorenzo Mata, and Josh Shipp, all of whom were key contributors to the Bruins success over the past few years.

Since then the recruiting has not been as heralded, but Howland has turned less talented players in downright superstars. Russell Westbrook was just a three-star recruit, and now he is most likely a lottery pick.

Howland's record with UCLA now stands at 126-45 (.736). But the most impressive piece of the his resume is UCLA's three consecutive trips to the Final Four, something that has been been replicated only rarely.

The one knock on Howland of course is that he has never won a National Championship. and has only been to the championship game once in those three years.

It pains Howland I am sure, but he should be proud that very, very few coaches have achieved the sustained success that Howland has achieved over the past three years.

Whats truly scary is that although the Bruins are losing Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook Howland has signed the #1 recruiting class for 2008 according to Rivals.com, and so they aren't very far off from returning to the top of the heap, if at all.

Howland's trademark is tough, in your face, man-to-man defense, which seemingly all of his teams have embodied, and what has made Russell Westbrook such a hot commodity.

He preaches the fundamentals, his players buy into the scheme, and he has had success...that's why he's the best.

Well we can't really disagree.

One note though.  Michael writes that Howland's recruiting classes since the one featuring AA, JF, LMR, and JS has not "as heralded" until the one coming next season. The class featuring DC, MR, LRMAM, AA2, and Ryan Wright was in the top-15.  Although the class was not as heralded as Howland's first class it turned out to be more than productive.

The subsequent classes under Howland weren't in the top-10 because of their small sizes due to scholarship availability, while they did feature cornerstone recruits such as Keefe, Westbrook and Love. Now Howland has the consensus number 1 recruiting class in America coming in and he is also methodically positioning himself for another great recruiting class for the 09-10 season.

Anyway not a biggie. Still a solid writeup by Michael.

GO BRUINS.