Is Ben Howland the right fit for UCLA?

West Coast basketball has not been famous or successful for its slow down BigEast/Big10-style grinded out slugfests. The two most successful coaches (John Wooden and Lute Olsen) have been teaching and winning with a faster paced game.

While Ben Howland is having a great year at UCLA when you look at the scoreboard, the questions of whether his style is suited for long-term success on the west coast and UCLA remain. It won't be easy to consistently recruit west coast players to play this ugly style of basketball. And this is not speculation: He lost all the recruiting battles for big men in the 2005 class, but he found a gem in Luc Richard MbahaMoute. The rich 2006 class has also been a struggle for UCLA and they had to bring in a european center because they couldn't get any of the other highly touted domestic players - other than James Keefe. In the 2007 class, Taylor King changed his mind, and preferred Gonzaga and Villanova over UCLA, and ended up at Duke. I can understand Duke but why the Zags and Nova over UCLA? Both Nova and Zags style of play on offense is fun and exciting. Ben Howland is a control freak, he likes to slow the game down and call every single play. Not as much fun, is it?

Everytime a recruit is interested in UCLA guess what the other competing coaches will do? They will send them a copy of the UCLA - Washington State game or just mention the final score (50-30).