Bumped. Would be interesting to read others grading of Ben Howland's performance at UCLA year by year. GO BRUINS. -N

In concurrence with BN poll I have put together a year by year assessment of the program.. feel free to add yours.  I am curious how people viewed each season:

2004 – (Inc) too soon to grade for me
2005 – (A+) different attitude had taken hold
2006 – (A+) thanks to emergence of Hollins
2007 – (A) showed our guts, but offensive inability gets exposed.. especially when you just can’t stop a team like Florida you have to generate good shots.
2008 – (B) too much talent to get owned in that final 4 against Memphis, this is when I began to really grow concerned about our bouts of stagnation on offense.
2009 – (A-) unlike most I actually think he did a decent job given the talent.. this should have been a decent down year type of season. We just had no interior defense with Aboya improving remarkably, but stuck as a center we couldn’t hope for much more than what we ended up with. In hindsight this grade could be lowered I suppose given that our frosh got very few minutes. The grade for the current year to date and his over all grade are after the jump.

2010 – (F) zero improvement from game 1 up until now. Some players at times look more comfortable, but as a team we look totally clueless. That had led to an uneven effort which is frustrating beyond belief. They are making the game of basketball look so hard out there at times. I would argue are uneven effort is also directly correlated to a player like ND. If we are stuck relying on his good shooting to win us games then we are in serious trouble. I would rather go in the direction of good basketball players and size. We need to get the other team on their heels and get early fouls on other teams bigs. No settling for jumpers. I would also starting getting youth much more experience. This season is dead from a postseason perspective. I don’t want a Lavin pac10 tournament run if its not earned unless of course we miraculously started playing games like it means something and its fun out there the 2nd half of the season.

My overall grade counting this half season would now be a B. Coming into this season probably between a B+ and A- which is the minimum I would expect of a coach at UCLA. A solid B or B- for me would indicate a coach on the bubble. How we finish this season and next season are obviously critical to our long term health with CBH now. I approve in the end, but not my alot.