UCLA can still be one of college basketball’s best jobs. It just needs a home run hire

Bruin AD Dan Guerrero is about to make a hire that will go a long way towards determining UCLA’s new place in the college basketball hierarchy.

The UCLA basketball program was in a bad place six years ago.

After a roller-coaster 10-year run with the Bruins, Ben Howland was fired by UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero on March 24, 2013. The Howland era produced the types of highs — three consecutive Final Fours from 2006-08 and five seasons of 25 wins or more — that most programs in college basketball can only dream of. It also produced the types of lows — four seasons with fewer than 20 wins and a lengthy feature in Sports Illustrated that painted the entire program in a villainous light — that keep the ADs of college basketball’s bluest bloods up at night.

Howland was fired the day after a 20-point loss to 11th-seeded Minnesota in the NCAA tournament, but the embarrassment for UCLA hoops was just beginning.

In the succeeding weeks, Guerrero was told turned down by top targets Brad Stevens and Shaka Smart in full view of the public. The notion that the coaches of Butler and VCU, respectively, could both say “thanks, but no thanks” to the gig that has produced more national titles than any other in the history in the sport served as a brutal wake-up call to many in Westwood.

Ultimately, Guerrero settled on New Mexico coach Steve Alford. Outside of looking like he could have played Kirsten Cohen’s flirty work husband on “The O.C.,” Alford always felt like an odd choice for UCLA. He had a 5-7 record in the NCAA tournament, his lone trip to the Sweet 16 had come via a Cinderella run with Southwest Missouri State (now Missouri State) in 1999, and his handling of the Pierre Pierce situation at Iowa had been, to put it mildly, troubling.

The surprising hire was almost universally panned — both by UCLA fans and the nation at large. It also set the stage for yet another tumultuous tenure, one loaded with entertaining talent, three trips to the Sweet 16, but also a disastrous 2015-16 campaign, too much off the court drama, and a calamitous beginning to 2018-19 that resulted in Alford’s firing in the wee hours of New Year’s Eve.

The move to axe Alford smack in the middle of a season has been viewed by most as understandable, but it places UCLA basketball in a precarious spot three months ahead of schedule.

Photo by Tim Bradbury/Getty Images

There’s so much debate in college basketball circles about what does and doesn’t define a “blue-blood.” There’s little debate over the fact that UCLA is one. The Bruins have more national titles than any other name in the sport, and a run of dominance under John Wooden that will never be matched. They’re tied with Kentucky for the second most number of Final Four appearances, and they rank in the top seven all-time when it comes to both wins and winning percentage.

All that being true, there’s no arguing that the program’s status has slipped significantly in recent decades.

Not counting the period of time between the advent of the NCAA tournament (1939) and UCLA’s first national title (1964), the Bruins — who last cut down the nets in 1995 — are in the midst of the longest championship drought in program history. They haven’t played a game in the Final Four or the Elite Eight since 2008. They’ve missed the Big Dance entirely on three occasions over the last decade, a total which appears destined to increase by one this March.

UCLA’s slide is symptomatic of and goes hand-in-hand with an even greater issue: The West Coast simply isn’t the same type of player in college basketball that it was in the 20th century.

Whatever your definition of “West Coast” is, no team that could be attached to that label has won a national title since Arizona cut down the nets in 1997. The Pac-12 has consistently been the weakest or the second weakest of the so-called “Power 6” conferences, and much of the blame for that can be traced directly to UCLA’s relative fall from grace.

While historic rivals like Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina and Kansas have continued to not just maintain but improve their brands, UCLA has been scrambling for an identity for the last 20 years.

Howland tried to make it about toughness and possession basketball, a style that produced both wins and resistance from fans and top recruits alike. He then attempted to emulate Kentucky by landing a No. 1 recruiting class headlined by obvious one-and-done talent Shabazz Muhammad, but the experiment failed miserably and ultimately led to his termination. Alford brought a more modern style and an uptick in success on the recruiting trail, but he also brought the drama of the Ball family and a propensity for underachieving relative to preseason expectations. Despite fielding an up-tempo team that was good enough to make the 2018 NCAA tournament, UCLA averaged just 8,619 fans per home game last season. That’s just 59 percent of the capacity of Pauley Pavilion, and not enough for the Bruins to crack the nation’s top 50 in attendance.

This persistent swinging and missing (or at least swinging and tipping) has left UCLA in a state of necessity: Nail this next coaching hire, or risk losing your status as one of the preeminent names associated with college basketball. The good news for Bruin fans is that there is reason to believe Guerrero is in a better position to make that happen than he was six years ago.

For too long, the UCLA job has had a bit of a reputation for having all of the negative elements of a high-profile coaching gig, and not enough of the positive ones.

The fans expect to be in the national title mix just about every season, but they don’t show up and support the way they do at Kansas or Kentucky. The school is located in one of the most recruiting-rich areas of the country, but also inside a city where the Bruins typically won’t be the No. 1 (or 2 or 3 or 4) topic on local sports radio. Perhaps most importantly, the athletic department wants the program to be the elite of the elite, but they haven’t been willing to spend money like the elite of the elite, or even charter flights like the modestly elite.

That last point seems to be in the process of changing.

In recent years, UCLA has made some pretty clear attempts to illustrate that its penny-pinching days are a thing of the past. A record $280 million apparel deal with Under Armour that the school signed in 2016 has helped on that front. The extra money, coupled with a surge in donor funds, allowed Guerrero to ink a high-profile coach like Chip Kelly last year. It also helped the school handle the check for the $136 million renovation of Pauley Pavilion that was completed in 2012, and fund the new $35 million Mo Ostin Basketball Center where the Bruins basketball team now practices.

If there’s an upside to UCLA’s prolonged period of modest success, it’s that the expectations of all but the program’s most rabid fans have dipped to a level that could accurately be described as appropriate. Sweet 16 appearances weren’t celebrated under Alford — in large part because two of them were flukey. That won’t be the case, at least not right out of the gate, for whoever the new hire is. Tempered expectations and an accurately sized leash should be solid selling points for Guerrero this go-round.

Given the Pac-12’s current state (bad), there’s really zero excuse for UCLA to be anything other than one of the top two or three teams in the conference on an annual basis. If the school is finally willing to give the program the financial backing that’s required in this day and age, there’s also zero excuse for the Bruins not to be right there fighting with Gonzaga and Arizona for the title of the West Coast’s king.

Both of those things should happen. Whether or not they will depends on the massively important four months ahead.