The Seat Is Warm, Pressure Is On Ben Howland To Fix The Mess He Has Created At UCLA

Just because DG offered up some boilerplate quotes to a clown like Splashme, we should take them seriously. Okay. Whatever.

Before bringing up an old piece, look through the archive to see if it has been discussed before. As has been noted that was an “unambiguous vote of confidence” which is not news at this point of time. I’d be shocked of DG said anything else in public at this time.

I just hope he has the heart to continue competing given I believe Smith will see a ton of minutes next year at the 5 and AS may have more upside given his athleticism.

was questionable. The SC guard reached and barely tide MM up. Call could have gone either way. He got pulled right after that.

I’m serious. Well, maybe not necessarily at point full time, but since none of our points really are real point guards (TH is our purest facilitator with MR being the next best passer), why not throw MM in there with MR, TH, ND (more as a third ballhandler) and RN. That lineup (at least for a few minutes) has me more excited, especially for rebounding/length/defensive purposes, than any lineup featuring JA or ML at this point.

We lost a lot by not playing Lane and Moser the entire season. Yeah, that really worked out well and justified those 35+ mins game for Rago.

You might have Dragovic type of feelings for Anderson but it is kind of funny that you developed those after watching him only for 2 years and despite the factors that Anderson has been playing injured all season.

Anderson was atrocious last night. He hasn’t been good this year and he clearly didn’t put in the work this off-season. Yet I am not giving up on him. I didn’t give up on Ragovic till the end of his third season and I probably would have been okay with him if he was used sparingly at 15-20 mins per game, while bringing other players along.

But the hate on Anderson while giving Dragovic a pass is just absurd and kind of idiotic. I would tell you that in person.

I didn’t imply that he had them all at the same time, merely that he’s had enough NBA talent to win a national title. That Florida team was an all-time team, but we should’ve beaten Memphis. We had the talent to beat them, but he was outcoached by a huckster who doesn’t even really coach. That game has been analyzed here time and time again so I won’t revisit it.

I might be in the minority here, but I attribute the improvement of DC, RW, and LRMAM to the players more so than the coach. The players are the ones dedicating their lives to their craft. The players spend more time working on their game in the offseason than they do during the season. RW left when he should’ve as evidenced by his high lottery draft selection. LRMAM and DC were both rated higher the year before they entered the draft.

What exactly makes RW and DC “diamonds in the rough?” Was it because they were 3-star recruits according the recruiting publications? Just because they were rated as “3-stars” doesn’t mean they were 3-star talent. It just means they didn’t get the exposure as 15 and 16 year-olds that others who played on more visible AAU teams or high school programs received. It’s also because UCLA didn’t recruit either of them until late into their senior seasons. Had UCLA recruited them during their junior years, that attention alone would’ve raised their ratings in the recruiting publications. Case in point: JA, who was an early commitment in his junior year. By the time he graduated high school, he was the 2nd highest rated recruit behind JH in that bust of a 2008 class until the 11th hour signing of JMM. When I watch RW and DC light up the NBA, I commend the athlete more so than their college coach. I might even wonder what might’ve been had we not featured them in an offense that’s generously described as methodical. As N has pointed out frequently as of late, CBH wasn’t the one who discovered them, it was Kerry Keating. Furthermore, I wouldn’t be so quick to attribute KL’s dramatic in-season improvement to CBH as much as I would KL’s progressive acclimation to his teammates and the conditioning required to play college hoops.

I love PAA and LMR but they’re not on the same level as DC, RW, or LRMAM, who are NBA starters. PAA and LMR maximized their talent and ability and we are lucky to call them our own. At the same time I think that they were fortunate to play with truly great players who made it possible for their contributions to shine, otherwise we might be casting them in the same lot as MR and Brickovic, who are role players forced to carry an elite program.

CBH’s achievements do speak for themselves. He’s proven himself three-times over as one of the premier program builders and rebuilders, but the jury is still out if he is a “maintainer.” He took NAU to the tournament. He resurrected the Pitt program and the UCLA program. Is it coincidence that Jamie Dixon has taken HIS Pitt program to greater heights in college basketball’s preeminent league since CBH left? It’s a valid question.

I never said CBH wasn’t a great coach. He is great at what he does. I’m just not as confident as I used to be that he’ll get us that 12th banner. I don’t think he can recruit the kind of transcendental players that can get us through March. I agree with you that if we can get players to stay 3 or 4 years, we’ll be in better shape with the exception that they are players that could leave after 1 or 2 years but stay 3 or 4 as opposed to players who stay 3 or 4 years because they’re not good enough to leave earlier. Otherwise, if we’re going to go the “mid-major route” and rely on experience, then we’re going to have to accept these years of growing pains like we’re having now. It’s incredibly difficult to keep players in school. DC is the RARE exception. Even AA, who is absolutely beloved, left as soon as he possibly could. He tried to leave after his sophomore year with JF, but he couldn’t get a first-round guarantee.

Our program’s precipitous fall has me baffled, and how we got here and how we get back are complex processes that we as fans on the outside can only discern and extrapolate.

Ken Pomeroy’s site has very different numbers.

We have no idea how this team would have performed if he was limited to 15-18 mins a game. This team developed a sh!tty identity around Rago because Howland convinced himself that this dude was a “leader” and one of his best “shooters” in the team, even though the numbers and on court performance never agreed with Howland.

That his real name could be OC Observer, in which case we all failed. If that’s the case, my apologies, Mr. Observer.

keep it up….

Are just weird to me. I understand why, but it just doesn’t sync up in my head. We seem to have a baseline number of people that show up for football. Throw in the fact that we continued to make mediocre bowl appearances meant that the financial pressure wasn’t on Morgan Center to get rid of CTS, although the direction the program was heading might have cratered that program if he wasn’t ousted when he was. With basketball, the bottom seems to drop out really quickly, and what should scare Morgan Center and DG is that last year was supposed to be the image of a down year, and you could already see the trendlines falling wrt attendance. If there really is a lag time on results to attendance, as I suspect there is, then we may have not seen the worst numbers yet. I think it’s clear that compared to the CTS ouster, places like BN or DD will have a relatively minor role compared to the cold hard numbers.

Such horrible basketball IQ and so many unforced turnovers. It is painful for the Bruin faithful to watch. We aren’t fickle, we care too much.