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
We went through a lot of adversity earlier this year with injuries and we played a lot of people. I have complete confidence in our entire team.
This year has been exceptional in that we've had so many injuries, more so than in any other year.
We had a great year. Our goal is to get back here again next year and win it.
This team never, ever gets affected ... they just battle back. We're playing our best basketball of the year by far right now.
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.
They both are premier players that have grown through a lot of adversity already. Both of them got a lot of experience last year and playing over the summer.
It's been frustrating, because we haven't been able to stay healthy. We've had one practice the entire year where we've had all 12 scholarship players healthy. But that's part of the game.
When I finished watching the tape from last year I was embarrassed with our effort. I am so much happier with where we are now than a year ago.
We're playing our best basketball of the year by far.
They're obviously a great shooting team. Any time you shoot 39 percent on the year from three as a team, that's outstanding.
I mean, come on. That is very, very unfair of him to characterize his team like that after the kind of year they've had and some of the quality wins they've had.
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.