UCLA fires Ben Howland
per ESPN the UCLA Bruins have fired Men's Basketball head coach Ben Howland after 10 seasons with the team.
He won 4 Pac-12 championships and took UCLA to the Final Four 3 times, but those were in the 2005-2007 seasons. He had a 230-105 record at UCLA and was 118-58 in conference. In the past four seasons UCLA has missed the tournament twice, and the two times they made it, they lost their first game.
March 25th, 2013 at 10:30 AM ^
Well, his recruiting certainly didn't show this argument. He was pulling in some great players and the stands looked full for every game I watched.
WOTS, Gruden was seen in Westw....oops wrong sport.
izzo to UCLA.
March 25th, 2013 at 10:18 AM ^
I have mixed feelings about this firing. On one end, UCLA just won the Pac 12 championship, appeared to be starting to improve, were recruiting well, and had injury problems this year that probably did hurt their success this year. Also, Minnesota is probably not your typical #10 seed as they are higher than a ton of teams on KenPom.
However, for a program like UCLA, winning 1 NCAA Tournament game in 5 seasons is unacceptable. I wouldn't have been surprised if they gave in a little more time, but 3 tourney appearances in 5 years and 1 win kind of speaks for itself. For most schools, that's fine, but not for UCLA.
Overall, the biggest problem with this firing is that nobody is directly in place to replace him. They better get someone good or this will be the dumbest offseason move in the nation. The Bruins may have been underachieving, but at least they made the tourney.