Where in the World is Ben Howland?

Well, if you do not know, Ben is in San Antonio with me both of us attending our third straight Final Four with UCLA. I think Ben has better seats and I am not sure he is having a Shiner Bock this morning but other than that, we have a lot in common.

If you are not rooting for UCLA, at least root for Ben Howland. Ben Howland is grinder like the rest of us. He does not come from some basketball pedigree nor was he assistant coach sitting side by side learning from the master like Kwai Chang Caine. He worked as an assistant coach for 12 years at the venerable basketball institution UCSB. The Gaucho’s had some nice seasons but I do not think Jerry Pimm is in the Hall of Fame but Ben hung in there.

He did try to leave every time a local job became available. University of California at freaking IRVINE, passed on Ben because he had not college head coaching experience. The AD at UCI was one Dan Guerrero, UCLA’s current AD. Dan, nice call on the guy you hired instead of Ben who was fired in his last season with a 1-25 Anteater ball club.

Ben finally got his big break to coach the Northern Arizona University Lumberjacks. No one wanted the job and Ben got a one year $60,000 contract to resurrect a program that had been alive to begin with. Ben got NAU into two NCAA tournaments in five years.

During his tenure, Jerry Pimm retired from UCSB and Ben eagerly tendered his resume to take the job he coveted in the city he grew up in. UCSB AD, former UCLA Head Basketball Coach, Gary Cunningham passed on Ben for undisclosed reasons. A year later, Ben was recruited to Pittsburgh to take over a woeful program playing in the Big East with the likes of Georgetown, UCONN and Syracuse. Pittsburgh was in the Sweet 16 in Ben’s last two years and still is a perennial power with Ben Asst. Coach Jamie Dixon. Jamie is from my high school Alma Mater, NDHS but that is another blog.

So Ben finally gets his plumb job and UCLA is in the Final Four for the third year. How can you not root for a guy who grinded away for 12 years making minimum wage chasing a dream? He gets his first shot at age 37 at an age when Billy Donovan had already won a title and now he has the UCLA storied program back among the nation’s elite at age 51.

He never gets a technical. He never bad mouths a player. He is candid with the media and never in the limelight. There has never been a shred of impropriety in any program he has coached and every program has been better because he was there.

Last night, I was on the River Walk with 40,000 other fans in our team’s tee shirts and caps drinking our sponsor’s beverages. I was wondering what Ben was doing. I know what Roy Williams was doing because I shook his hand when he passed by at 9:30 PM with his circle of friends. Ben was probably looking at tape in his room.

Go Bruins! Root for Ben.