Ben Howland can win the NCAA title this Monday in Atlanta. He is well aware of that, as is all of college basketball.
What he isn't aware of is that he has already won a basketball coaches' lottery, something priceless. It comes in the form of a quote, uttered Sunday night by college basketball's greatest coach ever.
"I don't think my teams played as good a defense as Ben's teams," John Wooden said.
Wooden is 96 and exaggerates now as much as he ever did. Which is never. He has no hidden agendas. He loves his Bruins but can still look at them objectively, as he looks at all of life. He still watches games, either in person or on TV, like a biology teacher with a frog. Others see, Wooden dissects.
Wooden coached UCLA to 10 NCAA titles, and he says Howland's teams play better defense. Read it again. Let it sink in. You hear something like that from Dick Vitale, you turn the volume down. From Wooden, spoken softly and presented matter-of-factly, it is a wow.
Wooden won't be in Atlanta this weekend for the Bruins' run at the title. He will be in Kentucky early in the week for a high school event that he committed to, and that's enough travel for him for one week. He'll be back Thursday, ready to watch a team and a coach he's grown quite fond of.
"I don't get all ruffled up, at least not on the outside," Wooden said. "But when things aren't going well for them, I'm hurting inside."
In a lengthy interview, Wooden says he has been impressed with how Howland builds programs, noting that, in each of his head-coaching jobs -- at Northern Arizona, Pittsburgh and now UCLA -- he struggled in the first season and then brought rapid improvement.
"I think here, in his first season, he couldn't get the players to buy into what he wanted," Wooden said. "Now, they have.
"I've always said, in any sport, defense most often will be the deciding factor. I still love to watch a 1-0 or 2-1 baseball game.
"Players always want to play offense more than defense, but Ben's got them understanding the job. We never doubled on the ball as much as Ben does. He just took the big kids from Pitt out of the game the other night doing that. When I watch his team, I see good fundamentals, and you know how much I like to see that. I like the way they keep the floor balanced."
Wooden said his teams, for the most part, played a version of a triangle-and-two defense.
