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
Five should be average; four is a disappointment.
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.
The last time I checked, we were one of two schools ... that had played against five top 50 teams in the country. The RPI that they're using for the NCAA tournament is largely based on strength of schedule and we were fourth out of 330 teams, so we've absolutely been tested.
We feel very, very fortunate to move on to the next round.
We hit some tough shots. It was a night of tough shots.
It was another outstanding job defensively. In the second half, we did a much better job of getting to the line and getting fouled.
The very best players are my kind of players.
Florida was terrific. Credit Billy Donovan. They were really well coached. They did an excellent job handling our pressure.
Florida has a great offensive team. It really is going to be a big challenge for us to be able to try to defend such skilled players and good passers. Everybody can shoot it.
There's so much parity. And the margin of difference is so slight.
Our defense kept us in the game when we really had an inability to score. When you go on the road you've got to be able to rely on your defense.
Our defense is what kept us in the game. I thought Oregon played very good defense as well. Somehow we hung around because we were playing good defense, playing every possession really tough.
Our defense was outstanding in the first half. It forced turnovers, they sped up and it keyed the game for us.