The NCAA Tournament has a way of shattering dreams and expectations. It’s Cinderella for some, heartache for others. And it’s often best to just let it all sink in for a while before doing anything rash.
Unless, that is, you are UCLA. In which case, you are simply delusional about your program, your conference and the state of college basketball in general. Because less than 48 hours after falling to the Minnesota Golden Gophers Friday in the NCAA Tournament, UCLA fired head coach Ben Howland.
Now, maybe there was a massive settlement and they deemed it a mutual parting in the media, but let’s be honest, the dude got canned.
And perhaps this would be understandable if you just looked at it from afar: once storied and prominent program falls in the first round of the NCAA Tournament and had failed to make it to the tourney consistently over the past three seasons.
But you have to peel back the onion. As most college basketball fans would remember, Ben Howland won the Pac-12 regular season with a relatively young team. They lost in the conference tournament championship without their best player (Jordan Adams, not Shabazz Muhammad) to an Oregon team that’s now in the Sweet 16.
Oh, and let us not forget the three straight trips to the NCAA Final Four from 2006-08.
Yes, three straight.
Had recruits not left for the pros or transferred, perhaps UCLA would have captured its first national championship since 1995. But Russell Westbrook and Kevin Love left early. His list of pros in the NBA is pretty impressive: Westbrook, Love, Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison, Ryan Hollins.
UCLA says it wants to get excitement back in the program, play a fun style, hard nose defense and pack the gym. OK, those are great goals, but it’s not 1975 anymore. Indiana had to learn this. You have to move on from the past. John Wooden isn’t walking through that door. And unless they bag Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens – and it isn’t for certain they would – who are you going to get that was better than Howland?
Former UCLA great Bill Walton kind of started this whole mess. He riled up the fan base by chastising Howland during the games he broadcast and said if he ran the program “things would be different.” He never really said how. Obviously, Walton didn’t do Howland any favors – and nor does he have to – but riling up a fan base that’s already lackluster these days doesn’t exactly produce positive results.
Westwood is filled with fans who don’t attend games but want banners on the wall. Big difference between UCLA and Indiana and Kentucky in that regard. Recruiting Los Angeles is difficult for UCLA, because they are also recruited by Arizona, USC, Cal, and really, the Pac-12 as a whole, as well as 50 others schools who swoop in and try to get L.A. players out of L.A.
This isn’t really a defense for Ben Howland, though it should be pointed out that President Barack Obama’s brother-in-law remains employed by Oregon State despite being one of the worst teams in the Pac-12, which isn’t the strongest conference these days anyway.
Seriously, Oregon State has finished higher than 9th place just once in the five seasons Robinson has coached the team and finished dead last this season. But want to make a bet he’s still employed through 2016?
Howland wasn’t perfect, but he also wasn’t abysmal. No, the point here is that too many schools with tradition think it’s a birthright to win NCAA championships these days. And it isn’t. There’s too much turmoil, too many players leaving early, too many chances for upsets. Just look at the tournament bracket after the first weekend of games. Florida Gulf Coast is in the Sweet 16 and they weren’t even eligible to compete in the tournament until last year.
But is Georgetown firing John Thompson III? No. How about New Mexico firing Alford after it got beat by Harvard? Um, no. Is Kentucky firing John Calipari after they didn’t even make the NCAA Tournament and lost in the first round of the NIT? “Well, Cal, we know you won the title last year and lost your entire starting five to the NBA, but what have you done for me lately?”
Roy Williams and North Carolina were a No. 8 seed – in large part because several key players are gone from last year’s squad. If you think Indiana will remain as dominant in a post-Oladipo, post-Zeller world, you clearly haven’t been paying attention to college basketball the past five years. It will take the Hoosiers a year or two to climb back up that mountain as well.
No one is bullet-proof from the way the college game is built now. Maybe Duke, but not many others. You just don’t know how long some players will be around, and when you put together a team, you need time to blend all of it together to make it good. Imagine the NBA if LeBron could leave after a year or two. Imagine high school teams if their best two players chose to go to college early (if that were possible).
How do you build and compete with that kind of uncertainty. Better yet, how can you be expected to?
Apparently, you are – even at the oddest places. Minnesota – the same team that as an 11-seed upset UCLA on Friday and lost to Florida yesterday, fired head coach Tubby Smith. Smith is one of only a handful of active coaches who’ve won an NCAA championship (at Kentucky in 1998). When Minnesota got Tubby, it was seen as a coup. Now, the Gophers are apparently wistful for the days of Clem Haskins and NCAA sanctions.
And again, the question becomes: who is Minnesota going to get that’s better than what they had? And now they are competing for Smart, Stevens and other young coaches, with UCLA also hiring? Good luck with all that.
Schools are playing right into this current climate’s hands. They aren’t letting things matriculate, build and grow. They all expect to win now. Except not everyone can. Teams are winning games in the NCAA Tournament and then firing coaches the next day. What’s next? Lose in the Final Four and start your job search the next week?
That’s the problem with expectations: they are rooted in dreams, a best-case scenario of everything unfolding as you picture it in your mind. They aren’t often rooted in the reality of the times. They don’t plan for the unplanned.
So I would caution UCLA and its fans, Minnesota, and many others schools as they set out with dreams of banners and trophies that it would behoove you to balance your dreams with the reality of the current climate in college basketball. Find expectations that lie somewhere in the middle. Otherwise, you’ll be far worse off in three years than you were two days ago.
Was it all so bad?
You can’t always get what you want; but you might find just what you need.
A good dose of reality.
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