Reason and Consistency In The Message

As to the why such apathy, perhaps some of this could relate to the current decade (and counting) of ineptitude. People may be seeing this as the new normal. That is truly sad. When I was at UCLA, we lost 2 home games in my 4 years. And we were a top-10 football team twice. With that first-hand knowledge, I know that we are not where we belong. New fans in the same situation see losing seasons with alarming regularity in basketball, and a football program which measures success as appearing in the Fight Hunger Bowl and the EagleBank Bowl. This doesn’t excuse the apathy. Nothing does. But it may at least partially explain it.

As to the criteria we should be applying to coaching performance and when it is time for a change, I try to look out 4 years in the future. In both revenue sports, we should be nationally relevant (playing for final 4’s and beyond in basketball, playing in major bowls in future). Based on where the program is at a given point in time under the current coach, do we have a rational belief that the current coach will have us nationally relevant 4 years from now. If the answer is yes, keep him. If the answer is no, part ways and wish him all the best in his next job. And past success does not guarantee future performance (this is what the Howlers are missing).

It was this sense that we won’t be where we should be in 4 years that led me to vote NO in the poll. It has nothing to do with the Oregon St game, with the Oregon game, or anything like that. I actually reached that conclusion after the Stanford game, with the total game mismanagement, and the realization that this was not an isolated occurence, and that we would see more of the same ad nauseum (literally) unless CBH left. And the Cal game cemented my view, when a blowout was not a fluke. This is unacceptable, and change was needed then and is needed now.

As a final point, Nestor posted a very astute response to a comment I made in another thread, which really got me thinking (and not in a good way). I asked where are the AA’s, the AA2’s, the LRMAM’s. Nestor said that if AA had been at UCLA in Ben Howland’s later years (after the initial post-Lavin bounce), he might have sat on the bench. Nestor- please excuse if I am paraphrasing incorrectly. But my reaction was WOW. Howland absolutely has to go, based on that insight alone.

I believe in U.C.L.A. and I believed in Coach Howland. I really thought he would get us to to a national championship. Not with the consistency of Coach, but we would get there.

But the cacophony of disasters that has befallen us led me over time to regretfully conclude he needs to move on. We have become a minor league team for the N.B.A. That is all we have become—a minor league team.

A thief starts for U.C.L..A. We were blown out by Middle Tennessee Whatchamacallit. Talented players leave every year. Too many players are undisciplined and it shows on the court and away from Pauley. Talented players are recruited and they do not come through while at U.C.L.A.

And here’s the truth, nobody goes to the games. Last year there was only 1 sellout at Pauley. I guarantee you, there will be no sellouts this year. More people attended games when Lavin was “coaching.”

It was agony reaching the conclusion there has to be a change, but once I did, I knew I was right.

I think that if Howland were to be retained after the year, we will probably be a very good team next year. We have everybody back except Zeke and Jerime, two very good players coming in at postions of need in Anderson and Adams, and Josh might actually start to take this whole basketball thing seriously with his conditioning.

I am incredibly grateful for what Howland has accomplished here and had we not run into the best in college basketball 2 years in a row, I think we would have hung up another banner one of those years. He built our program back up with great players who were also great people in AA, DC, LRMAM, PAA etc.. I’m just a youngin’ at 20 years old so I vaguely remember ‘95 and wasn’t alive to see our dominance among college basketball like many of the other people here have. So for me, I will always hold Ben in high standing because he brought UCLA back to where it should be.

With all that said, this is UCLA. We only hang banners for championships, and as remarkable as those three Final Fours were, none resulted in a title. After this year, he will have had a very mediocre year, only making it to the 2nd round, sandwiched by two years of missing the tournament in his last 3 years. Howland has had a good number of poor personnel decisions and handled situations poorly no doubt but to me that doesn’t leave as bad a mark as these past 3 years have. There has been plenty of evidence outline on BN for why Ben should be let go but more importantly, we have been nationally irrelevant for 3 years now. Our claim to fame the past 3 years is an opening round win against a poor Michigan State team, and having the best walk on in the country (does anybody else miss Mustafa??) As evidenced in the poll, 41% of people think he should not be back next year, while 13% remain unsure. If you are the head coach at UCLA and your ‘approval rating’ is only 45% then I’m sorry but it is time to go.

We deserve better then that and I just don’t think we will get that with Ben consistently. A new coach will have new Pauley to work with and will inherit a very good team in addition to all the other advantages we all know come with being the head coach here. Will a new coach have 3 straight runs to the Final Four? Maybe, but probably not because it is almost impossible to do. What we need is someone who will keep us in the Top 10 every year and have us as the dominant program on the West Coast and handle our program as it should in respect to dealing with players, parents, alumni etc..

So thank you for showing me what UCLA basketball is supposed to be Coach Howland. I will always be grateful for those 3 great years, but unfortunately you haven’t done enough since ‘07-’08 to have the privilege of leading our basketball program anymore. I wish you all the best, let’s remember the good times, but ultimately it is time to move on.

I asked this in a previous post but didn’t get a response. Who exactly has the power to fire Block? Aside from the athletic department suffering in the past few years, the overall academic standard of UCLA has also declined or rather has not kept pace with USC. This means that Block is not doing a sufficient job in more than one phase of his position. So I think he is the person that we should be focusing our attention on, because a fish rots from the head down.

A person is a student before he or she becomes aluminuminuminum. The student body is largely comatose. It could be awakened, but that would take leadership. The student leadership, at least from what I can see, are more like collaborators in the prison camp – willing to do whatever it takes to not offend the powers that be in the athletic department. The student leaders willingly sell out the other students for their leadership perks. My evidence for this is the Pauley seating sell out. That was not fixed by students, even though it was totally an issue about students.

The leadership at Morgan Center could fix this, and could fix it easily, but obviously the leadership has no intention of creating any interest in the product they’re selling. An excited, informed proletariat would start demanding excellence, and that would be the end of the morally corrupt people who are in charge of athletics at our university.

Put someone in charge who is held accountable, and it would probably take about a month to create the kind of excitement that existed when Coach and Tommy Prothro were reporting to JD Morgan. Put me in charge and the current basketball fiasco would be fixed in a second. We would play on campus in a temporary structure (a huge tent) in the middle of Drake. Games would be free for students and alumni both. There would be no more of this baloney of playing our home games at just$c.

That’s what I would do my second five minutes on the job. My first five minutes would be throwing the tenured bureaucrat losers out on their collective butts. They do not deserve to be associated with UCLA athletics, and I don’t care if Chianti Dan wasw a “warrior” when he was a baseball player. He’s forfeited the right to call himself a Bruin because of the shame he’s brought on the university.

OK, who’s next on the soap box here in Meyerhoff park.

I wanted Howland to stay before Oregon State Game, and I wanted Howland to stay despite the Oregon game. I came into this season not expecting much, mainly because of how the season was set up. Having no real home games, being on the road for every single game, all of that factored in with an anemic athletics program that barely tries to have students participate essentially gave the entire basketball a huge disadvantage through out the whole season. That, combined with Josh Smith’s poor conditioning and the team’s poor dynamics produced a huge disadvantage for this team as a whole. While others are playing their 13th week of basketball, this team is essentially on their 7th week as a team. Plus, there’s the whole issue of Duddly Dan picking the successor. Sometimes it’s far better to just bite the bullet till the cancer is removed.

I was 21 when he won his final one. Has it really been 35 years since Coach Wooden was here? I grew up when UCLA basketball was the greatest thing ever. It was a birthright. I thought it would always be that way. For me, any discussion of Howland, or any other basketball coach at UCLA, always comes back to Coach Wooden.

Since 1975, I have never been fully happy with the program. I’ve “settled” a couple of times, including after Howland’s Final Fours.

In some ways, I don’t blame the alumni for their apathy. After all, it’s L.A., tons of other things to do here, we’re not the only game in town, most people aren’t locals anyway, Howland got us to a few Final Fours, Rick won us a Rose Bowl, the chancellor should fire Guerrror, blah, blah, blah.

Digging beneath all that, here’s what I think’s at the core.

UCLA is a public university. It does not support its students well while they are there, and the Alumni network is weak after graduation. Many of my friends agree, our UC degrees are nice, but never gotten a special favor because of some alumni connection. Not to say the degree isn’t valuable. Even now, you can get an outstanding education at a UC, and there is no limit to what you can achieve. But it will not be some old boy network connection.

My friend and his wife, both of whom went to grad school at UCLA, just sent their daughter to USC over UCLA because they think in today’s world, the business and social connections will be better. I find that shocking and sad, but I actually understand it.

Speaking about the head, without getting into the politics, one of the problems with the meme “government is bad” is that it depletes funding for public education, including our universities. Funding was a problem when I went to school in the 1970’s. As far as I’m concerned today, it is a national tragedy. Our athletic department is part of the university. Therefore, a starving university takes the athletic department with it.

So, I understand that under Guerror and the current administration, things have gone from bad to worse. And if we can remove them, and hire better coaches, things will get better. However, I think that apathy will always be a problem, and it will be very difficult to bring the program back to where it can compete among all the entertainment products in the difficult L.A. market.

Which brings us back to the original outstanding questions raised by gBruin. I appreciate him having raised these questions. As more time passes, what we the general Bruin public seems to be willing to accept a lower and lower standard as it competes with the other products in the marketplace. I’m glad BN draws a line in the sand.

Go Clippers! (that’s a joke because they just got Chris Paul, so the bandwagoners have a new place to go, Unless they lose this year, in which case they can jump onto the next bandwagon)

should be set. The standard set by Coach Wooden is not attainable and has at times led to unrealistic expectations. I don’t think most people expect that anymore, but there are a few around that still do. Coach used to tell the story of the fan that came up to him after the his final victory in the 1975 championship game and told him that he made up for last year (1974) …where they had lost in the semi-final game in 2 overtimes to NC State.

What is realistic?

1.UCLA should be the dominant program in the PAC-12, year in and year out. We aren’t going to win the league every year but we should be the program that sets the bar.

2. UCLA should display the consistency seen by Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky and UConn. There may be a down year from time to time, but very rarely. We should be a consistent player on the national scene.

So, are we there now? We were, a few, short years ago. CBH got us there. Some on here think he is on the permanent downside of his career. I don’t think that is a settled issue. Some have mentioned the high number of transers as showing his inflexibilty to adapt to his players and coach accordingly and mention his inflexibility in playing a zone defense this year.

Coach Wooden NEVER played a zone defense at UCLA, with 2 exceptions. 1-the 2-2-1 full court zone press that became a man-to-man defense once the ball passed mid-court. The 2nd time was against Elvin Hayes and Houston in the Final Four when he played a diamond and one defense with Lynn Shackelford guarding Hayes.

I believe that Howland’s main errors in the last couple of years have been in recruiting. He did not recruit Howland-type, selfless, defense-minded players. Many of them transferred away. He did not recruit leaders like Afflalo and Farmar. He did not recruit talented but relatively unheralded players like Collison, Westbrook, Mbah A’Moute and Aboya. Howland has also lost a couple of talented assistant coaches that helped with recruiting.

It looks like he has addressed some of his recruiting issues, but the jury is still out While we do have 2 highly sought recruits coming in, we need to add a couple more for this to be a successful class. They need to be his type of players and they need to possess the quickness and athletic ability to play Howland defense.

Yes, I believe he has earned more time. But he must fulfill the reasonable expectations outlined above and start developing his players again. It all starts with recruiting.

The top four bruins last year were Malcolm Lee, Tyler Honeycutt, Reeves Nelson, and Josh Smith. Lee and Honeycutt left and got guaranteed contracts even though they were drafted in the 2nd round, which is unusual. We all know what happened to Reeves. We all know what happened to Josh – the twinky did it. Josh was looking at a chance to be player of the year in the conference and make millions. Instead, he had an extra mudd pie. Every meal. And between meals, too.

You take the top four players off any team and of course it is a rebuilding year. It takes time for some players to develop and be comfortable even at Duke, Kentucky, or Kansas. Also, I think Lazeric Jones got dramatically full of himself when suddenly promoted from 5th banana to top banana, at least in his own mind. So Howland has been dealing with that and I thought moving Jones to off-guard was practically brilliant after he immediately responded with 10 assists and only 1 turnover. Unfortunately LJ has a game or two playing under control and he starts seeing himself as Michael Jordan again. Is that Howland’s fault? It would be more apt to blame the summer pick-ups games with the pros. I see Howland taking steps to try to fix the problem. I read quotes in the LA Times and other places where Howland effusively praises LJ when he is unselfish and putting the team first. If LJ plays every game like he did last game, the offense will be much better because really, LJ hurts the team when he plays like he wants to play.

The bruin’s other main problem this year has obviously been on defense. I attribute this mostly to two factors: (a) the Bruins having only one player taller than 6’3" and shorter than 6’10" who plays at all, and (b) a recurrance of Howland Fetish Syndrome (HFS), wherein he sees all the positives in a player and none of the negatives, and inexplicably plays a Wear at SF. Certainly HFS has surfaced before and it has cost Howland dearly, and I could see it bringing him down some day. But probably not today, as long as he shows some flexibility and adjusts, which all indications are, he has.

I blame Howland for having HFS, and being too rigid on the offensive side. I feel he needs to fix those two things. However, I cut him some slack and am willing to be patient for the following reasons:

1. he is a great defensive coach, when not suffering from HFS

2. I’m assuming the latter disease is curable with healthy doses of ridicule.

3. He does periodically say aloud “I should not play Wear at SF… I should not play Wear at…”

4. Part of the reason Powell hasn’t played as much as I or anyone else would like is because he had two injuries (concusion, ankle).

5. I think he has been doing sensible things in terms of bringing LJ down to earth

6. JA has actually IMPROVED in his time here.

7. Many other bruins have actually IMPROVED in their time here!!

8. I still remember the Dark Ages of Larry Farmar and Steve Lavin. I swear that players left UCLA far worse than when they arrived under Lavin. Under Harrick and Howland, I have watched players get better as the season goes on.

9. Most recent recruits have been solid citizens: Tyler Lamb, Norman Powell, Anthony Stover. Even Josh seems like a nice young man, limited only by his craving for ding dongs. It’s time to stop bashing HOwland for Drew Gordon and Reeves Nelson if it seems that he has corrected the problem.

10. John Wooden went 14-12 in the 1959-1960 season. It seems to me that many here would be calling for his head if you had been around back then. John Wooden arrived in Westwood in 1948 and didn’t win until 1964. He may have left perfect but he didn’t arrive perfect. He had to work his way through a couple of things. He had to figure stuff out.

I was so enthusiastic about Lavin being fired because my god, all he could do was recruit. Players left UCLA worse than when they arrived. At least in Howland I see players getting better. I figure if a coach can recruit and make his players better, in the long run everything will work out fine. The NBA loves Howland’s players and Kyle Anderson signed here because the NBA loves Howland’s players. You add Kyle Anderson to who we have returning next year and suddenly our big hole at small forward is filled and Tyler can play SG.

If next year’s team underperforms, I could understand calls for his head. But this year’s team lost its top three players, four if you count Josh turning into the Pillsbury Dough Boy, and five if you count LJ turning into “what, you expect me to PASS?!” That’s a lot to deal with. So I cut him some slack, partly because of all that happened, partly because I was always wondering who was going to play SF, and partly because I see improvement. I see him taking sensible steps to fix the problems and I see those steps working. The only exception is Josh Smith – but if someone would rather have another slice of cheese cake than make $5M/year, I don’t know what to do about that. He’s a good kid, he may grow out of it. In the meantime, I would probably play Stover more, because I would hate to see him transfer.

OK, I wrote this long reply and it looked great in preview but I apparently failed to hit the “post” button so I guess it’s gone forever. Here is the reader’s digest version:

1. I get it, you think Howland is limited and will never move beyond a certain level

2. I don’t know. His deficiencies are obvious and I have pointed some of them out. However, unlike hopeless cases like Larry Farmer or Steve Lavin, Howland strikes me as the kind of person who tries to improve himself. He has admitted most of his mistakes and he seems to be trying to move forward.He is the anti-Lavin.

3. The NBA loves him and whereas elite players didn’t want to play for him after Jrue Holiday, now they are interested again because of “the UCLA factor.” This is an important development.

4. You get a Kyle Anderson and a Shabazz Muhammad (I’m not saying this will happen) and I think it will be surprising how good his offense will suddenly become. When your offense includes Alfred Aboya and Lorenzo Mata and LRMaM, maybe a little structure isn’t unreasonable.(OK, but Kevin Love should still have gotten the ball more)

5. Howland got the first crop of players based on what he did at Pitt (#2 the year he left). Then he got the next crop based on what he did with the first crop. Then they got embarrassed in the final fours and he got a rep for having a boring offense and had the disastrous Michael Roll year after that, during which he made numerous, unforgivable to barely forgivable mistakes. Since then the program has been in recovery mode.We all know this. It hurt recruiting but things are looking up.See #3.

6. I never thought the team would be good at the start of the year. I always thought it was going to take some time to figure things out. I always thought this year would most closely resemble Cedrick Bozeman’s senior year, where they started off pretty rotten but wound up making the tournament and surprising people.

7 The defense and offense are both getting better. If the improvement continues they will be “good” by the end of the year. I know, “good” means “mediocre” to the faithful, how dare I even think in such puny terms. However, Howland will get a lot of credit for turning it around, at least from prominent recruits, if not from anyone here.

8. of course, it is possible that the improvement won’t continue. But I still retain a morbid curiosity. If this causes you pain and frustration, well, I’m sorry. Although perhaps I have a morbid curiosity about that, too. (think “Princess Bride”)

9. It’s possible I’m completely full of shit, but I want to see how it all comes out before making a judgement. (badaboom).

I want the bruins to hoist championship banners as much as anybody. It is just plain wrong to assume that just because someone disagrees with you it means their standards are lower. I disagree with you because whereas the author says he sees nothing but decline, I see a lot of UP, one really bad year, and a gradual recovery, with a couple of bumps. I see a coach who is intelligent, who is obsessed with improving, who fell out of favor with elite recruits because of a “plodding style” but is getting renewed interest. He has made some bad decisions but I think he is learning. I think he is a better coach than Roy Williams and I can see him winning a national championship someday. I would prefer he do it here. That is the only difference of substance between our opinions.

I always like your posts because they come more from the heart and are less “demanding” than some of the other posters.

I think CBH is a good coach. These last few years have a been a headscratcher and who doesn’t want the best at UCLA all the time? I would welcome a change here if we can be assured we’d get something better than CBH. That being said, I have 0 faith that Chianti would find a top tier replacement and do not want to hope for luck (Mora maybe) for our success.

Personally, I would keep the focus on Chianti Dan unless this pressure to get rid of Ben will actually make Chianti do his job – which is highly unlikely. I don’t think CBH goes anywhere unless we experience a couple 0-50 moments.

Why exactly was Banjo’s post deleted? Because it was too whiny?