Yeah, Duke was 9-3 when K waved the white flag, but that team, minus Grant Hill and Antonio Lang, won two ACC games and finished 13-18. Its safe to assume K would have finished with a winning record that year, but Duke was pretty down in 95 and 96. The 95 game at Paully showed us that much.

But I agree with your larger point ……actual “losing” seasons are not acceptable. In fact, two straight years of missing the NCAAs is not acceptable. I think that is a big knock against both Donovan/Boeheim and it will be a huge knock against Howland if it comes to pass in 2011.

I think Izzo’s resume is particularly instructive following 01. That culmiated three straight years at the FF with a championship squeeezed in the middle. In 2002, Izzo lost Jason Richardson (SOPH), Zach Randolph (SOPH) and Charlie Bell, which is comparable to anything Howland has lost. And yet ….he still went 10-6 in the B10 and made the tourney. That is what a down year should look like …..not 5-13 in the P10.

is a hard one to figure. He has won the very weak Big 10 conference only once since 2001, but has been to the elite 8, final 4, and championship game in that time frame…

First off, I like the 92-93 reference above.

Two, you bring up a distaste for re-living Howland’s second year …. 2005. So I pose the following .. would you trade the 1/04/04 roster and signings to date for the 1/04/10 roster and signings to date? In other words, you didn’t know Ariza was leaving yet ….. but basically, Thompson, Hollins and Bozeman, with Afflalo and Farmer for who knows what is coming back plus Smith and Lamb?

Something is wrong with players changing schools and not much tenacity on the court. UCLA should never accept a losing season in BB. Ben Howland needs to look into himself and the program to see what is not right. It is not all the players fault. The coach is responsible for his players way of playing. He should consider what his players have to say. He doesn’t have to change but maybe some of what they say is right. He seems very stubborn to me. Anyway, I hope the BRUINS get it right and soon.

I have been defending CBH and think some of statements about individuals are a bit harsh. But at the end of the day Nestor is right, at UCLA a losing season is not acceptable and CBH will be at fault if that happens.

The way I feel right now, is that $c BB is flourishing, besides their so-called sanctions, and I am afraid that they will beat us in BB the way we are playing now. I don’t want to see that happen. Our players and coaches need to dig deeper and come out playing like UCLA BRUIN BASKETBALL TEAMS ARE SUPPOSED TO PLAY. GO BRUINS!!!

Some of the comments that Josh Smith made after committing make me believe that CBH has learned an important lesson. Although Smith will probably be a lottery pick at some point before his senior year, at least he’s honest about his goals. Based on his comment about coming off the bench to help the team next year, he also seems more interested in helping the team than certain recent recruits. If CBH limits his top tier recruiting to players like Smith, it’ll go a long way towards preventing another collapse in a few years.

the honeymoon may be over. What are three Final Fours anyway? You still end up losing. I’ll give that Howland guy three years, tops, to right the ship and prove he knows what he’s doing. Maybe five. I think we were way too tolerant when those fine student-athletes from Memphis were jumping over us. And if you can’t win with KL and all those other superstars, when are you ever going to do it? Clearly, the man is a fraud. His day is done, his time is up, and his Twitter is pathetic.

This is one of the more level-headed posts in a while… this is obviously a down year for UCLA standards but lets take a long range view and see if talent is actually growing and developing on this current team. I agree that a losing season should NEVER be acceptable but having suffered on campus through the lizard years right after 1995 with dreams of multiple runs in the tourney thoroughly squashed by disorganized, lazy, selfish play and coaching, i’m willing to give CBH and the program some leash.

Remember that CBH’s first two final four teams were not overwhelmed with talent. They honestly played way above their star ratings. Even now when the offense is executed we’re getting good looks, we just don’t have the horses with that IT quality right now to overcome bad bounces. But my feeling is that I’d still rather root for guys that are led by CBH than those dreaming about their first paycheck.

To understand the problem with our program. My first reaction to any criticism or second guessing of CBH is to defend him. And, I do think that the coach will figure this situation out hopefully sooner than later. But the debate by this community has been terrific as it helped me to gain perspective and context. Watching games has been painful and I too have been at a loss to even begin to evaluate what the heck was happening in front of me. But, there are times, and this be one, where coaches need to coach even when they don’t have the talent to win. Player combinations, personnel packages, motivation and sheer will can get you wins when on paper you don’t deserve them. I’m hopeful, and confident, that CBH will navigate this year to a (barely) +.500 season and learn much in the process to make him an even better coach for the future.

Between this post and Bellerophon’s post, the discussion on coaching has been fascinating.

I recall that before the 2008 Final Four, there was a discussion on some basketball boards about who was the best coach in college basketball. I was ready to put CBH ahead of a lot of other coaches as we were ready to play in our 3rd consecutive Final Four. I discounted Roy Williams, saying that he only won with someone else’s talent after repeatedly failing with his own. Bill Self? A history of being unable to get to the Final 4 and win when it mattered.

But now, less than 2 years later, I’m not sure CBH can be compared to any of them. Obviously, he’s still one of the elite coaches in the land, but this season has shown some utterly inexplicable events that the other coaches mentioned in this post haven’t seen.

A few points I thought about:

1) Playing against one-and-done’s. Obviously we’ve been affected big time by having played against Rose in the FF, and we all know how that played out. On the flip side though, we had the benefit of having Love on our team, which without we might not have made it to the FF in the first place (remember, that was one tough Pac-10 year). Also, it’s not like UNC, KU, MSU etc. haven’t had plenty of impact one-and-done’s they’ve had to play against in their own conference and in the tournament. So on this point, I don’t think the one-and-done rule has hurt our ability to compete.

2) The ability to retain talent. This is one issue I think we have to look hard at. Bellerophon’s post hit on this part in whether CBH is able to maintain our excellence, and this is where looking at other coaches is important.

Looking back last season, KU entered the year with a ton of underclassmen, as their championship core was gone. And yet, they made it farther into the tournament than we did, eventually losing to MSU in the Sweet 16.

Also, after UNC stomped on the competition last year and lost their core, they’ve come back this year with mostly young players and are doing quite well so far early in the season.

So on that aspect, I do have to wonder how we were able to drop so hard from last year, when most other team’s haven’t had the same problem coming back from losing a lot of talent. Is it who we recruited? Is it our system? That leads to my third point…

3) Integrating our players early. This is a point I wanted to go in on more, and is closely related to team depth. This is one part of CBH’s coaching that didn’t dawn on me until this year, but has possibly begun to rear it’s ugly head. It’s his propensity to play seniority. Obviously, we don’t know what goes on in practice and so on, but this is also an issue that we might never have had the chance to notice.

Looking back at when CBH first came in, he had a bunch of players left over from Lavin, so it’s hard to blame CBH for wanting to give his own recruits more play time. Then again, given how devoid of talent Lavin had left us, it’s not hard to see why those recruits got more play time.

Of course, it’s not like Bozeman or Hollins were skill-less – they just never had an actual coach, and we saw that they did develop, and they did still have years more of play experience under their belt. AA and JF were given responsibility early on in their careers, and we saw how far they went their second year.

What we often forget is that during our first FF run, DC and LRMAM were key players. LRMAM quickly became a key player, and DC played key minutes as well. That being said, could that have been a product of depth? With a lack of talent left by Lavin (outside of Hollins and Bozeman), and an injury to Shipp (and no real PG to backup JF), it was also sort of inevitable those two got key time.

Farmar then made off for the NBA, but DC having had some key experience and being the only experienced PG on the team, stepped right in. Again, with a thin backcourt depth chart that year, RW got some key play time particularly when DC was out, albeit also with some disastrous results (WVU iirc).

When AA jumped to the NBA, RW was able to fill right in for our third FF run season. Again, the question here though is… were many of them getting the starting job because it was the right place at the right time?

I bring this up because his is where we start seeing CBH favor the veterans over the newcomers. Obviously, Love was inserted in quickly, but his talent would have been impossible to miss. However, look at the other player’s recruited once CBH had two recruiting classes under his belt… we rarely saw Wright, Dragovic, Stanback, and somewhat Keefe etc. during their time here. Sure, part of it was that they didn’t play well with the system, but a lot of it also seems to be that CBH simply didn’t give them play time because there wasn’t a need to, as in the case of DC, RW, etc. when there was thin depth / injuries or because they simply weren’t his players.

Looking back at last year, we see exactly what happened. Aboya, Keefe and Dragovic got a lot more play time than they had ever been used to the two years prior, and we saw very little of any of our freshmen.

Until this year, I might have given second thoughts on this being an actual issue, but now it appears to be a real key issue. Some senior players are getting way too much play time for seemingly unexplainable reasons, and we rarely get to see some of our 09 class contribute.

Now I understand when a player isn’t fitting into the system or the game, and the game is close, that you don’t play someone new and risk a loss. On the other hand, looking back at CBH’s track record, it does appear that he doesn’t like to integrate young players in unless there is a dire need (usually being a depth issue).

An example of this is UNC… their championship core was good enough that they didn’t need to play any of their freshmen. But Roy Williams still played Zeller, Davis and Drew and despite losing their championship core, they have come back this year and are very very competitive. Also, looking at their other key contributors this year, we see many other players that got a lot of play time even while Hansbrough, Lawson, Ellington etc. were the key core players.

Or look at MSU’s run last year, when they were willing to integrate Roe and other young players into the rotation, or how their other key players were utilized early on in their careers. Or look at KU this year, and how they’ve utilized a one and done like Xavier Henry in…

Not just from a developmental standpoint, but from a confidence standpoint, sitting on the bench a lot can be a big big killer for young players, and certainly lead idle minds to think of transferring. And that leads to another point…

4) Our issues with depth. It seems every year, we have some sort of depth issue popping up one way or another. During our last two FF runs, it was at guard – and this year, it was at guard too. Granted, we’ve had the most turnover at those positions as they are the positions that have jumped to the NBA the most, but the other side of the depth issue is that a lot of players don’t get a lot of play time.

This ties in closely with point #3 of mine, but it seems that CBH’s reluctance to play certain players means we rely too heavily on a few key guys while others rarely get a few minutes, if any at all. Looking back, CBH has definitely preferred playing the defensive minded bigs – LMR, PAA, and Keefe were all given a lot more play time than their counter parts, largely because they were better defensively. That being said, has this has hurt the development of defense of other players (such as Dragovic, and now possibly JMM and Lane)? And we know that CBH has in the past pulled players for lapses on defense, which means play time can be hard to get down the line.

5) I wanted to just add that the point that some people have made about CBH and the athletic department making UCLA more marketable and I absolutely agree with that point. A lot of recruiting can be done simply by appearing approachable and marketable, and a lot of coaches out there are willing to market themselves, which no doubt helps their recruitment.

All in all, this year and next year will be telling to see whether the issue at hand is with our players themselves, or if there is a issue in the coaching system itself that CBH needs to identify and fix.

i made this point last year in a post.

CBH success has been in turnaround situations. He got NAU, Pitt and then UCLA going after troubled years. In the corporate world, he would be knows as a turnaround specialist (though the analogy is a little weak given NAU nor Pitt were never a BB houses).

UCLA is the first year that CBH had had to transition from turnaround to SUSTAIN and MAINTAIN success. That is a different skill set that getting a program going for 4 years. This might be the first time he has really had multiple recruiting classes that had to jell together. And, because of his accelerated success at UCLA, he has more pressure and lots all the stars as noted above.

In the corporate world, it is not uncommon that turnaround specialist fail in the sustain mode.

I believe that means that CBH will need to learn new skills and tweak things that have worked for him before. He is going to need to adjust some.

But he has clearly earned the time to make those adjustments.