Commitment shows Ben Howland is picking up where he left off
The former UCLA coach secured a nation's top-ranked class before his final year with the Bruins. Now he's at Mississippi State and overcoming odds on the recruiting trail again.
By
Gary Parrish
•
2 min read
The gap between the perception of the end of Ben Howland's time at UCLA and the reality of the end of Ben Howland's time at UCLA has forever been wide and confusing
What folks say is he played slow, stopped winning and suffered in recruiting.
But none of that is true.
The truth is that Howland's Bruins, in his final year, competed at the fastest tempo in the Pac-12 and won the Pac-12's regular-season title, and they did both of those things thanks to a recruiting class that 247 Sports ranked No. 1 in the country. So if UCLA wanted to make a change just for the sake of change, fine; I totally get that. But the idea that UCLA needed to make a change because Howland had run UCLA into the ground, or anywhere near the ground, is something that's never actually been true.
Yes, Howland had some down years.
He missed the NCAA Tournament in 2010 and 2012.
But he ultimately recovered, secured a class with three top-25 prospects -- not to mention three future NBA Draft picks -- and returned UCLA to national relevance. That's the truth. And now here he is again, a 57-year-old Ben Howland, picking up right where he left off.
"I will be attending the University of Mississippi State," five-star recruit Malik Newman said Friday afternoon, and let's forgive the kid for mixing up the order of those words.
University of Mississippi State.
Mississippi State University.
Whatever.
The point remains the same: Ben Howland is doing it again.
It wasn't really a surprise when he lured Class of 2012 star Shabazz Muhammad to UCLA given that UCLA is a so-called Adidas school and that the summer program Muhammad's father ran was supported significantly by Adidas. And it wasn't too shocking when Howland secured commitments from Class of 2012 standouts Jordan Adams and Tony Parker given that he'd just hired an assistant (Korey McCray) with strong ties to their summer program.
But Kyle Anderson?
The fact that Howland secured a commitment from a consensus top-5 prospect in the Class of 2012 located 2,800 miles from UCLA's campus was an amazing achievement, and what he did this week with Malik Newman is equally amazing when you consider the context.
Mississippi State hired Howland on March 24th.
Today is April 24th.
That means Ben Howland has, in the span of a month, taken a job in a part of the country where he's never lived nor worked and beaten John Calipari and Bill Self for a top-five prospect they've both been recruiting for years. That means Ben Howland has gone from being a fired college coach to one who has secured a top-five recruit in his first month back in coaching, and, I'm dead serious, I don't believe that's ever happened in history.
Has a fired college coach ever secured a top-five prospect a month after being rehired?
I asked various sources in the industry that question Friday.
Nobody could think of another example.
So consider the SEC on notice.
Whether Mississippi State will ever consistently compete with Kentucky and Florida at the top of the league remains uncertain because, well, that's just a hard thing to do. But the message sent Friday should not be ignored, and that message is this: What Ben Howland got done on the recruiting trail in his final year at UCLA wasn't just a one-time thing.
He's only been back in college coaching for a month.
But he's picked up right where he left off.
