UCLA Week: State of the Program
Posted by AMurawa on August 19th, 2012One thing we’ve been doing all summer long at the end of our week-long look at each program is to try to pinpoint exactly where a program is compared with their potential and compared with their expectations. This is not a grade on their recent past or prediction about their immediate future, but a big-picture gauge of the program. For UCLA, the state of the program is… muddied.
Expectations at UCLA for the basketball program are always sky high. This is a program that doesn’t worry about hanging up banners for conference titles or even Final Four appearances – in Westwood, it is national championship or bust. Compared to that standard, it’s also awfully hard to succeed. It has now been nearly two decades since the Bruins’ last national title and it is two decades back from there to their next most recent. Still the most fans can realistically expect from any program, from Durham to Lexington to Lawrence, is to regularly be in contention for championships. And, in the middle of the last decade, UCLA was doing a fine job there. They advanced to three straight Final Fours and were regularly sending players off as high picks in the NBA Draft, a good step on the way towards inviting more future NBA players to your campus.
Despite A Pair Of Down Years In The Past Three Seasons, UCLA Remains A Very Attractive Destination
Since then, though, there have been struggles on the court, presented in gory detail here and elsewhere. Two missed NCAA Tournaments in three years speaks for itself. But, the Bruins continue to bring in elite talent. Counting the 2012 recruiting class along with the ill-fated 2008 class, twice UCLA has scored the nation’s top batch of freshmen. And despite the down years, UCLA continues to send players to the NBA. In the four years since they last made the Final Four, they’ve had four players drafted and this past summer there were two players on the U.S. Olympic team. Throw in the fact that their basketball facilities are in the middle of an ongoing and much-needed renovation and upgrade, and there are plenty of reasons for future highly-regarded recruits to strongly consider Westwood as a possible destination for their college basketball career. You know, aside from the weather, nightlife, women, and, um, education, available in the process. In short, UCLA is and very likely will remain an attractive destination for elite basketball players in the future.
Still, the fact is, after the 2009-10 and 2011-12 seasons (those of the missed NCAA tourneys), UCLA fans are a little shellshocked and somewhat concerned about their head coach. Last year there were calls from fans and alumni for a new coach, and although the athletic director never reached that level of panic, it is clear that Ben Howland needs to pick up the pace in Westwood. Couple the recent failures with the stellar recruiting class coming in and 2012-13 is a very important season for the long-term health of this program. If it all goes to hell this year in some combination of a Shabazz Muhammad ineligibility, a Joshua Smith cheeseburger binge, and a poorly timed injury or two, there is the very real possibility that UCLA could be starting nearly from scratch come spring. However, if Howland is able to pull all these pieces together, win a Pac-12 title and make a NCAA Tourney run, 2012-13 could be the springboard for Howland’s brilliant second act in Westwood.
Andrew Murawa Likes Basketball.
