Ben Howland’s opening remarks:
”Obviously this is not a great day for our program, and of course for me. As I said yesterday, I knew some of the details of the Sports Illustrated story, but did not read the entire text until late last night. As you can imagine, I was surprised by some of the assertions that I had no knowledge of, were simply untrue or were taken out of context. I’m responsible for this program and everything that happens in it and if there’s any need to make changes, I’ll make them. I’m proud of our current and former players and our coaches, and I’m confident in where we’re going as we head forward.”
On personally changing since the Final Four run:
Ben Howland: “I’m pretty much the same person. You’re always trying to improve as a coach as you are as a player. Something that I preach to my players constantly is that you never stay the same. You’re always trying to improve and get better. So I hope that I would actually be a better coach than I was during that three year run of Final Fours.”
On what has changed:
Howland: I’ll tell you this, I’m very proud of our team. We’re talking about the last three years, and two of the last three years, we’re going into the last weekend of each season, one game behind the leader with a chance to win the conference, so we’ve been right there. But we didn’t go to the Final Four. And again, our expectations at UCLA are very high, the highest in the country. We want to win championships, and championships are what UCLA’s about, having won the most championships as a basketball program, or even as an entire athletic department. And, so I understand that, and that comes with the territory of being the coach here at UCLA.”
On what he’s managed poorly:
Howland: “Last year, in an article in the LA Times, I admitted that there’s no question that I’ve made mistakes on the way, and when you look at the recruiting in terms of evaluations of players for character, in an instance or two. This is not to be taken with all our players. For the most part, I’ve been very very blessed and lucky to have great kids. And that’s something that we prided ourselves on since I first got here. Number one, we wanted to recruit great kids, good people that are going to continue to improve and get better. That they’re good people on and off the floor, and I think for the most part we’ve done that. But I would say that there’s no question that we have really worked hard these last two recruiting classes to really make sure that we are recruiting great kids. And I’m really excited about the two commitments that we have for this coming campaign that are seniors in high school, Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams, and that’s something that we really really work hard to try to continue to evaluate.”
On the change in players he’s recruited:
Howland: I don’t know about the type of kid. In other words, you would never knowingly try to make a mistake. We have, in my opinion, have been very blessed. If you look at the whole body of work here, over the last nine years, I’ve been very fortunate. We’ve had a lot of great players, great kids, kids that have gone on to the NBA, kids that are playing overseas. Most kids that have just gone on and just done a good job beyond basketball with their lives and their livelihoods and their futures. And I’m proud of all those kids. And, we talked about this before, one of the things we don’t control, that’s very hard, is the turnover in guys leaving early. And there’s no question that that’s sped up the process of having to bring in more kids, and kids quicker, and the whole recruiting process when you have that kind of situation. But that’s, again, part of the culture, and that’s where we are. And that’s something that we talk about a lot now, and we really try to work hard to be able to deal with that.
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