UCLA Basketball: What's Gone Wrong with Ben Howland and the Bruins

Ben Howland’s Bruins are in an utter state of flux.

Pure and simple.

For a program with the history and allure of UCLA, anything short of competing for Pac-12 Championships and making noise in the NCAA Tournament is a complete failure.

With a current record of 10-9, UCLA will be lucky to make the N.I.T.

Why is that?

Howland had led the Bruins to three consecutive Final Four appearances between 2006 and 2008. And, he did so while churning out NBA players yearly. Since that magical run, the team has seen a substantial drop in the quality of play.

Poor recruiting, a mass exodus of transfers who’ve performed exceedingly well at other schools and a stubborn persona has Howland in his current predicament—mediocrity.

UCLA has arguably been hit by defections to the NBA harder than any other program of recent years. Throughout Howland’s tenure at UCLA, he has lost nine players to the NBA before their eligibility was exhausted.

It is curious to note that, while a few of them were sure-fire first round picks—Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook, Jrue Holiday—, about half of those players—Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Trevor Ariza, Malcolm Lee, Tyler Honeycutt—chose to ultimately become second round picks and didn’t seriously entertain the idea of staying on campus for another season.

If you look at schools like North Carolina, for example, they currently have three projected first round picks—Harrison Barnes, Tyler Zeller, and John Henson—that chose to come back to school this season because they love their college experience so much.

At UCLA, it seems as if the players can’t leave soon enough.

This ultimately falls on Howland and his personality.

Sure, he isn’t known as the warmest person, and he is definitely not one to make concessions or suck up to players, but some sort of tact needs to be employed so frequent roster turnover doesn’t happen every year.

It is no real fault of his own, but his personality doesn’t exactly screams "enthusiasm." As a result, recruits would much rather play for younger, more exuberant coaches—a la Sean Miller and Josh Pastner.

Now in no way am I discounting Howland's coaching ability. He's highly respected and a wonderful x's and o's guy.

But in the current landscape of the college basketball scene, a certain schmoozing is required in order to, not only appease your players, but to lure big-time recruits.

That's just the nature of the beast.

Howland has tried to remedy this by hiring 32-year-old coach Korey McCray this season as an assistant in order to connect with kids more and to enhance sub-par recruiting.

Prior to UCLA, McCray had been running the very successful Atlanta Celtics AAU Program, with an impressive collection of alumni now in the NBA currently.

Secondly, the roster currently is a peculiar mess.

It is very top-heavy with big men and absolutely void of guard depth and, most glaringly, athleticism. No disrespect to the majority of Bruin opponents this year, but they should in no way out-athlete a UCLA Basketball team.

With the current personnel, they absolutely do not have the ability to play suffocating man-to-man defense, which is a Howland staple from his great teams.

The team has a hard time just staying in front of their man defensively. Due to Howland’s stringent style, however, he’s not always willing to adapt to his team’s deficiencies.

To make matters worse, their most talented yet troubled player Reeves Nelson was unceremoniously dismissed early in the season for an accumulation of “behavioral problems.”

Third, it seems as if Howland has changed his philosophy. What happened to the UCLA Final Four teams that absolutely played smothering defense with their scrappy play and tough mindedness?

Those types of teams got UCLA to three straight Final Fours, but they were unable to get over the hump. And by "hump" I mean the talent-laden Florida Gators with three lottery picks—Al Horford, Corey Brewer and Joakim Noah— and a Memphis team led by Derrick Rose.

Howland recognized that the overall talent level on the team needed to pick up, so he began targeting more national, highly ranked recruits as opposed to the diamonds in the rough that got him success in the first place—Mbah a Moute, Darren Collison, Alfred Aboya.

Well, he struck it out with the majority of those guys and, as a result, he passed up solid players on the west coast that have came back to bite him.

A few of those West Coast natives that would have been Bruins with any effort includes former Arizona State standout James Harden, former North Carolina big man Deon Thompson and current Cal star Allen Crabbe.

By turning his back on the majority of West Coast prospects, it has left Howland struggling for personnel. That’s a key reason as to why he’s accepted three transfers and two more junior college transfers in the last two seasons.

In addition to poor recruiting, he’s been absolutely slammed by transfers.

Currently, both Chace Stanback and Mike Moser start for nationally ranked UNLV. Stanback has been a double-digit scorer for two years, and Moser is averaging a double-double this season.

The talented—but much maligned—Drew Gordon transferred to New Mexico and has become their most talented player, good for a double-double every night. The athletic big man is considered a future NBA player, as well.

With all of the turmoil and personnel issues, Howland should get back to hitting the West Coast hard and stay local. The talent in California and the Pacific Northwest is definitely good enough to be competitive nationally.

However, the 2012 recruiting class for the Bruins does bring much needed help to Howland’s squad for next season.

He’ll be welcoming sharpshooter Jordan Adams from Georgia and the much heralded “Point Forward” Kyle Anderson from New Jersey. Anderson is considered a top-five player nationally.

For UCLA to get back to where they need to be, Howland has to channel what got him success in the first place—which is to play great defense and scrappy basketball.

Unfortunately for Bruin fans, this current squad neither has the toughness nor athleticism to do so.

In future years, Howland will have to get those long, athletic defensive-minded post players to play lock-down defense. He'll also have to get guards who can consistently hit outside shots and penetrate the lane with regularity.

 If that doesn’t happen, UCLA will continue to resemble (gulp!), the Steve Lavin days.