Howland familiar with surroundings

Steve Guiremand

Friday, July 25, 2003 | 10:06 a.m.

Ben Howland knew exactly what he was getting into when he left an up-and-coming Pitt program to become head basketball coach at UCLA last spring.

He knew all about the 11 national championship banners that hang from the rafters at famed Pauley Pavilion. And he knew the man responsible for 10 of those banners, John Wooden, would be sitting right behind his bench with his rolled-up program for most of the Bruins' home games.

Ben Howland knew all about the legendary Wizard of Westwood and his remarkable coaching accomplishments because he had grown up in Southern California during the glory days of the greatest dynasty in college basketball history.

"Even when I was a kid of about 10 or 11 years old I'd stay up late to watch all the 11 p.m. replays of their games," Howland said referring to the KTLA Channel 5 games that were announced by sportscasting legend Dick Enberg.

"I'd watch Coach Wooden's TV show. What he accomplished was just mind-boggling."

But not mind-boggling enough to keep Howland from trying to fulfill the pressure cooker of his dream coaching job.

Howland was busy bouncing from gym to gym Thursday scouring the adidas Big Time Tournament for potential recruits that he hopes one day will help him hoist a few banners of his own at Pauley Pavilion.

It certainly won't be easy. At his game at Durango High he sat in the company of coaching icons such as Roy Williams of North Carolina and Mike Montgomery of Stanford as well as new Kansas coach Bill Self.

The good news for Bruins fans is that the best prospect in the game, point guard Jordan Farmer of the Pump N Run All Stars, has already given a verbal commitment to Howland as has one of the West Coast's top off-guards, Arron Afflalo of Centennial High in Compton, Calif.

"The bottom line is you've got to get good players," Howland said when asked what it would take to turn UCLA into a dominant West Coast power again. "It's a players' game. And I feel good about how that is going now."

Farmer, an outstanding 6-foot-2 playmaker and floorleader who at times looked like the second coming of Jason Kidd at the recent Nike All-American Camp in Indianapolis, said he was not even considering UCLA until Howland replaced Steve Lavin. This despite the fact he attends Taft High School in Woodland Hills, just a short drive from Westwood.

"They were recruiting me but I told them I wasn't interested," Farmer said. "The program was not going in the direction that I liked. I had a lot of choices that I thought were better for me."

Choices such as Arizona, Florida and Gonzaga.

"But when Coach Howland got the job at UCLA, I felt like he would turn things around," Farmer said.

"I think we have a good future there now. I hope my commitment does carry over in recruiting because we have a lot of good players in Southern California who weren't going to go to UCLA before. I like his desire to win. In four years he turned Pittsburgh into Big East champs, so he knows how to get it done."

"I understand the pressure that's there to be successful and win," Howland said. "I'm not afraid of that. If you don't risk failure you'll never enjoy success. I've surrounded myself with a great staff and the administration and the fans have been very supportive. I feel lucky. I think every coach who grew up in Southern California like I did always looked at UCLA as the pinnacle job."

But Howland is the first to admit that it will be almost impossible to come close to matching the success that Wooden had in Westwood.

"I don't think you'll ever see that kind of dominance again anywhere in college basketball," Howland said.

"The two most dominant players (Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor, later to be known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) both stayed for four years. An Abdul-Jabbar coming out of high school now probably would head straight to the NBA. So it's a different era now."