Ben Howland
Ben Howland
Benjamin Clark Howlandis an American college basketball coach for the Mississippi State Bulldogs and former player. He served as the head men's basketball coach at Northern Arizona University from 1994 to 1999, the University of Pittsburgh from 1999 to 2003, and the University of California, Los Angelesfrom 2003 to 2013. Howland became the first men's coach in modern college basketball history to be fired shortly after winning an outright power-conference title. He is one of the few NCAA Division I...
ProfessionCoach
Date of Birth28 May 1957
CityLebanon, OR
If they come back, God bless them, I'll be so happy. If they elect to stay in the NBA and they go in the first round, that'll be great, too.
He's the greatest coach in the history of the game. How can you not embrace it? That's what this is all about. The love you see his former players have for him is just incredible.
Five should be average; four is a disappointment.
His father never even asks about basketball. All he asks about is his grades.
It means something. These kids are playing for themselves. But we're also playing for the program. They represent those four letters. It's a very special fraternity.
My biggest thing with him is he would never take any time off. He was sneaking in the gym. We got beat by West Virginia and all of a sudden he's back in the gym that night shooting for two hours. It's actually counter-productive when you wear your body out that much. It's like a marathon runner getting ready to run a marathon by running five marathons the day before he's going to run the marathon.
It's that magic third year. That's the plan. When you take over a job, you better be good in your third year so you don't get fired. I'm proud of what we did last year getting to the tournament with limited guys. We had four guys on the perimeter playing down the stretch. Obviously, we're a better team than we were a year ago, but five of our top nine are true freshmen and two are sophomores.
Bill is telling me I have to watch film. I'm not doing my job.
I don't think Stanford's streak means that much to most of our players. What it says is how good their program has been over the last 15 years. They execute extremely well, and they come to Pauley with a lot of confidence. We have to be ready for that, as well as the start of Pac-10.
I laugh at some of these commentators who say they are not a good defensive team. They hold opponents to 43 percent from the field.
That's a very important win we got tonight. It's a credit for these kids to handle any adversity.
The bottom line is if we make our foul shots, it doesn't come down to Steele taking a 3-point shot at the end.
He was critical. Everything starts with having a point guard.
If that's not a very good team we just played then I don't know what is. We feel very, very fortunate to move to the next round.