Food for Thought: Should Howland Already Have a Title in Hand?

Just because someone is a future NBA player, it doesn’t mean they were great in college. We know that well enough (Jrue Holiday). But it also goes the other way too. CDR didn’t do anything in the NBA, but he was a star in college, averaging 18 ppg. Dorsey was a beast in college, gobbling up almost 10 rebounds a game. But just because he was too short for the NBA doesn’t negate how good he was in college.

Maybe Howland is better at scouting pure NBA talent than college talent. And maybe he’s worn out his welcome. But to judge whether we should of won the National Championship based on what players did 3-5 years later is a little ridiculous.

I’m not a fan of Ben, and this post is damning, but that’s what makes winning the NCAA tournament so difficult, its one and done. In the title game were a five game series would UCLA have won? Maybe. With one and done the better team doesn’t always win, just the better team that night.

I hate Ben Howland and I want him fired more than anyone but I’ll give him a pass for not winning a title. Those 2 Florida teams were just better than ours. They were just better than we were. Even though we were a better team than Memphis on paper, we definitely didn’t play like it in that game. Kevin Love looked out of shape and couldn’t keep up with Memphis’s fast pace. Darren Colinson played like crap in that game. Westbrook was carrying the team during that game. Howland did get out coached but that’s not a surprise because he’s always being out coached. What he should’ve done doesn’t even matter at this point, he needs to be fired immediately. He’s ran this program deep into the ground and his time was up after the 09 season.

Is Derrick Rose better than Kevin Love? I’m not so sure.

Brown had Rocket Rod, Darren Daye, Kenny Fields, Pruitt, Mike Holton, Mike Sanders, Mark Eaton, etc. That was my 1st year at UCLA and it still sticks in my craw that we came up empty. Anyway, is Howland’s performance any worse than Brown’s? I’d say CBH faced two very good FL teams and they were not an inferior team in any way (as much as I hated watching Noah).

CBH does not adapt his style of play to his talent and does not adapt his coaching in game. He has been trying to get an out of shape 5 to play man defense all year and wonders why he fouls out of every game. With a good/decent well practiced zone in a bad Pac12, we probably are tied for first right now. This has been going on forever, I love that he took us to 3 FFs, problem is other than CJH we have not had any decent coaches. Thinking of CJH, he won it all with far LESS than CBH had for all three of his FF runs. At least if you use this NBA logic.

He obviously wasn’t a scrub as a college player.

I agree with you on the Florida teams and the Memphis team.

But I think CBH did not make it on pure talent alone to the final fours. I think he got unlucky on the first final fours. Noah is one of the most unique players in the NBA now and was so then. How can a guy that big be that quick and coordinated? Horford was and is a polished true big guy. Brewer was a great defender. They were a better team that did it twice. On the positive CBH side, I wonder if he could have won a championship or two if Florida did not exist or at least if everyone left after the first time as has happen on most championship teams for a while.

CBH also improved those players. Bozeman does not get a whiff of the NBA with out CBH. Neither does Hollins. I also think he made a better player out JF and Luc. I am not sure three of those guys get to the NBA or that JF gets more than a wiff without CBH.

I do think CBH did a good job coaching those teams. He out coached Calipari in the ugly 50-45 game as well.

But maybe the wheels started to come off in 2008. One small point. Why was Shipp shooting so much on that team? Josh Shipp had two less shots than Westbrook, 17 less than Love and more than DC? Why wasn’t Love used more?

Since then it has been rough. But look, I do think he did a very good job with those first two final four teams and IMO I don’t think it is fair to say otherwise.

There were adjustments he certainly didn’t make. Although, I think you’re underrating how good a college player CDR was. I thought all 4 teams that year were very good and very equally matched. Then again, Ben did get himself outcoached in the Texas A&M game early in the tourmanent, which we damed near lost, and which would have been unforgivable.

But we just had rotten timing as to Florida 2006-2007, which was IMO the best college BB team of the last decade, and then got doubly burned by the ridiculous fluke of all four of the NBA ready Gators coming back to school, mailny because, other than Brewer, they were all from wealthy families. They were just a nightmare matchup for us: tall hyperathletic big men Horford and Noah, solid point guard Green, defensive whiz Brewer, and then when you’d finally, maniacally played enough defense to hold them for 30 seconds on a possession, that little dead-eye f***er Humphrey would drop a three-pointer on you.

Also didn’t help that in 2007, the refs called two ridiculous ticky-tack fouls on Afflalo in the first two minutes, and then for the rest of the game, let Horford and Noah go MMA on us without a call.

Just about any other team comes against us in those two years, we have at least one, maybe two more banners in the rafters.

Reminiscent of Coach’s first national championship caliber team, in 1955-1956, a juggernaut led by Willie Naulls. Unfortunately, those two years exactly coincided with the two championship years of the best college BB team of the 50’s, the USF squad led by Bill Russell and KC Jones.

Too bad we didn’t have that KL, RW team in 2010: frankly any one of the 2008 Final 4 would have wiped the floor with the mediocre Duke team that won it all that year.

The Howland fatigue is getting to me, honestly. Our coach has lost his way.

I know some people can hold their noses, celebrate mediocrity and find some silver linings, even if they look tin foil to many, in our troubled basketball program. To each his own, just to be fair. But if a team seems to have resigned itself to second tier status consistently, and consistently underperforms, especially against conference leading opponents, I have to say this is absolutely on the coach.

If you don’t mind the language now. We showed him our hearts, and he showed us his
a _ _ . Enough said.

I don’t mind the fact that he hasn’t won a national championship. I actually think the community would be fine if he went to the last two weekends of the tournament every year. I think that if he did that, he would have support because 1) the feeling would be that eventually he would bring one home and 2) everyone understands the nature of the single elimination tournament.

I think the most condemning point in all of this is comparing where we were to where we are. Over the past few years, I’ve always felt like things would get better the next year as I saw progress over each year. You can look at any individual issue and give an excuse for it or debate it out. With recent discussions on this board, the Cal game, and this thread, it’s really cleared up that it’s time for new leadership, and has been for a while. I think the most compelling arguments for Howland staying are his success and the upcoming recruiting class. That’s really where the arguments end, and those aren’t even very compelling. You can argue about preparing kids for the NBA, his ability to game plan and prepare, etc., but those really haven’t panned out over the last four years. Even with the 2008 class, I think an elite coach at an elite program finds a way to clean house and rebuild quickly. I think you find a new coach, and give the new coach patience to rebuild the program with the incoming class/current system. The transition has been laid out nicely already on this board.

The 2008 team did have enough talent to win a national title that year.

So did basically every Kansas team in the past decade, etc. North Carolina had the most talent in the country last year. Connecticut had “one guy” (Kemba Walker), just like you claim Memphis did (which is untrue). Can you name anybody else on the Syracuse title team besides Carmelo Anthony? The tournament can be VERY random, and I think it’s a pretty poor indicator of how good a coach truly is.

Not that I’m excusing Howland for this abysmal season, which is 100% his fault, and is damning. I’m just saying that the argument shouldn’t be based on his team’s performance in 1 game.