Assess Ben Howland's Job Performance As Head Coach Of UCLA Basketball

but i was wondering before i head out if there will be a gameday thread for the televised womens basketball game against USC today (2:30pm, FSN). With Oregon getting swept this weekend by the Arizona schools, the winner of today’s game takes sole possession of 2nd place in conference, so it’s huge. I know this is OT, but hopefully it can be a nice distraction for those still frustrated over yesterday’s performance.

This poll is going to be far more telling one year from now. His next recruiting class will make or break it. If this slop continues next year then its hot seat to ejection seat.

For the record, I’m a Butler grad, but also a Bruin fan. As you guys know, BU has been a fine mid-major program for 15 years. I saw all the games in the Anaheim Tourney and frankly was surprised by the Bruins talent in comparison to West Va., Minnesota, Clemson and Texas A and M. The Bruins and Bulldogs played an excellent game which we won in the last second. But honestly, I thought we had better talent than the Bruins – which is astounding. My brother observed about the Bruins: “I can’t believe that UCLA has no one who is a pure shooter” and “I think UCLA is a bunch of really good sixth men.”
I think Ben Howland is a fine coach, but he really needs to find a couple of guys who can just shoot the damned ball. Our old coach at Butler used to say — “Putting the ball in the basket corrects a multitude of sins.” Be nice if BH recruited a couple of Klay Thompson’s. Go Bruins! (and Butler!)

…I would have given Coach Howland an “A”. I bought into everything he was doing with our program.

And I still believe he will bring us back to elite status in the next few years. I wish I could see it happening next year. I can’t.

What disturbs me most is our carelessness with the basketball and our lack of heart defensively. We look like a High School JV team on our fast breaks (in the rare occasion that we actually HAVE one). Have we had even ONE break this season that looked like this…Outlet, pass, pass, layup or dunk? Just one? I can’t remember it.

Defensively, we just don’t seem to care if the opposition gets to the rim or has a wide-open look at a 3. WE JUST DON’T CARE. We don’t play help defense anymore, we don’t sell out or take charges, we don’t swarm to the ball in trap situations. I don’t believe we lack the athleticism to do this…I think we lack the heart.

Earlier this season someone posted about Coach Howland needing to stay away from the four-star prima donnas (Jrue Holiday, Drew Gordon), and go back to finding those “heart” guys who are underrecruited elsewhere (Westbrook, Mata, et al). I agree. I’d rather suffer another season of losing while knowing that we are building something strong with a bunch of kids who care, then have an 18-win, 6th seed NCAA team next year that plays with a little flash led by two or three players who are more concerned with improving NBA draft position.

While this year is a painful debacle, I am reluctant to say that the same coach we have been calling a genius and savior over the past few years has now become a goat. His 3 Final Four appearances in my opinion have given him some “buffer” points for me. While I agree that a losing season can never be acceptable at UCLA, I’m confident enough in CBH’s abilities, as proven by his track record, to stick it out with him. Hopefully the development of this year’s freshman class, together with the infusion of next year’s talent, will be enough to bring us back to the top of the Pac-10 where we belong.

Differentiating between hot seat and at risk of firing is semantics. Once the heat really starts on CBH it could impact his recruiting. And recruiting is the only way out of this.

I said it earlier in the year….no one knows is CBH can sustain a program or just turn it around. He has absolutely earned the right to find out at UCLA.

This season is ugly. I mind the losing less than the lack of effort and the lack of intelligence. Will these guys ever to learn to pass the ball crisply? I am sure CBH and staff tell the team to pass precisely…but…..

“At the midpoint of 09-10 hoops season, what is your assessment of Ben Howland’s job performance in his 7th year as the head coach of UCLA basketball (7-10), heading towards its only 3rd losing season since 1948 (Lavin is responsible for the previous 2)?”

first of all:
‘what is your assessment of Ben Howland’s job performance in his 7th year as…’ clearly indicates it is an assessment for JUST this season. You cannot say it counts for both after you’ve already singled out just this season.

secondly:
wow, what an amazingly biased question. “how is he doing? don’t forget this might be only the third losing season since pre-wooden days! oh, and just to make sure you know that’s a bad thing, Lavin (a guy we all hate) had the other two!”

amazing.

CBH proved to me during the final four runs that his system works IF he has the players to make it work. But, it is also painfully clear that this system does not work regardless of who the players are. CBH, like most coaches, are truly only as good as the players they recruit.

And, not only have we recruited players with less talent and less heart than in the past, we have recruited guys who did not fit or buy into this system (Stanback, Holiday, Gordon). What coach/program can withstand losing as many players to the NBA as we have PLUS the transfers? As was previously noted, we are left with a team of sixth men, of role players.

It will help us next year to lose Drago and Keefe. And, although MRoll had a horrible game last night, he will me sorely missed next year because at this point, we have no one capable of replacing his offense. To expect either of the two incoming freshman to be any better than our current freshman is a stretch. And, I haven’t seen the JC point guard play but again, to expect a JC player to come in and make an immediate impact at the D1 level is asking a lot, even though he almost has to be an improvement over JA.

So, I am unsure because I do not see any way we can improve significantly enough in one year. And, if we have two terrible years in a row, can we expect to recruit the type of talent it takes to win the Pac 10 and make future runs at final fours?

So a solid dissatisfaction vote.

And I am talking about overall performance, not just this season. Part of the problem for me is that I am a self-described “typically spoiled UCLA basketball fan” in that I grew up watching Coach Wooden’s teams. That being said, I don’t expect a championship or final four appearance every year. What I do expect is for UCLA to be a serious contender for national honors more often than not. An “off” year should be what we experienced last year or in Coach Howland’s second year. Years like this year should be unheard of. Remember that we never saw anything like this before the last year of Lavin.

Coach Howland did a great job in rebuilding the program after the disaster that was Lavin. Three straight Final Fours was a great accomplishment. But it seems that he is unable to attract sufficiently athletic players to the program to keep it at a high level. Either he chooses not to recruit those players for various reasons or they don’t want to play in his system, it is hard for me to know. In looking at the team that took the floor yesterday, it is hard to see anyone who looks like a first line player. I think UCLA may have the lowest talent level of any team in the Pac 10.

I don’t buy the excuse that the current level of talent is because Coach Howland has lost players to the NBA. That could explain a year like last year, but not something as bad as this. Look at SC’s situation: they have lost a lot of players before their eligibility expired over the last few years, lost their coach, lost their recruiting class and still fielded a much more athletic and talented team than UCLA. The current low level of talent simply can’t be excused.

What are UCLA’s prospects for the future? There are no juniors on the current team and only one of the sophomores seems any good, Malcolm Lee. It sounds like he may go to the NBA next year and from his comments to the media does not seem to be on the same page as the coach. While Reeves Nelson tries hard and Honeycutt looks to have some talent, I really haven’t seen signs that they or the others on the team will be marquis players like Farmar, Afflalo, Westbrook or Love. Will Smith or Lamb be such a player when they come in next year? We have to hope so and also have to hope that the current freshmen will develop. Recruiting is going to have to pick up big time over the next couple of years for things to get better. Based on the last few years of recruiting, I don’t have confidence that Howland can do the job but we’ll see.

I think his best days are behind him. He will have difficulty recruiting elite talent after this year, and his stubbornness will be his undoing as every coach in the conference has a book a mile long on what he does, and it never changes. He is joyless and unhappy, and I can’t imagine anyone saying they would want to play for him after his second disappointing season in a row (this one as a disaster).

Further, he has poisoned the team with his playing of favorites and different standards of accountability for different players. Of particular concern is his holding freshman to higher standards than seniors… Freshman who make mistakes get pulled. Seniors who make mistakes get unlimited playing time. I am surprised people can’t see this team has tuned him out completely. That’s why there has been zero improvement.

Ben’s a good enough coach to get us back to some Steve 16s, but the days of final 4s are over unless CBH does something he has not shown a willingness to do: Change, Adapt, and Grow.

Watching the Trojan win on Saturday was painful in the extreme, considering that USC lost its best recruits after Floyd resign. BH has shown he can coach and win and this year’s team is one that simply cannot play the BH way. The problem, it seems clear, is the level of talent on this year’s squad. Not recruiting a point guard this past season was a major mistake, given the level of incompetence JA has shown on the point,
It seems to me you have to bring in a point guard every year, just like a football coach needs to bring in at least one QB every year, It seems that bringin g in a bunch of frontliners one year and a bunch of guards another is not the road to success. BH’s early years here showed he could identify and bring in top talent. His signing of RW was a great move, so good that RW ended up being a two years and out player, drafted in the first round one spot above above KL. One does have to wonder whether you can work in the long-run interest of the team bringing in players like KL and JH. I hope BH can turn this around, because of his accomplishments with the program, although I’m not overly pleased with the offense we are running. At this point he needs to consider playing the freshmen and Bobo more.