SPORTS
March 5, 2014 | By Chris Foster
UCLA's basketball team won the Pac-12 Conference regular-season championship last season and Coach Ben Howland was fired. With two games left in this conference regular season, the Bruins already know they will not repeat as champions, yet all is well. The change from Howland to Steve Alford has been a mostly lateral move. Entirely horizontal, in fact, according to the records. UCLA last season had a 22-7 record at this stage. As the Bruins prepare to play at Washington on Thursday and Washington State on Saturday in their final two games before this year's conference tournament, their record is … 22-7.
SPORTS
December 21, 2013 | Bill Dwyre
There is life after basketball, and Ben Howland has found it. There were the two weeks of fly-fishing in Montana and Wyoming this summer, with some spectacular success, unless you were a rainbow, cutthroat, brook or brown. "Oh, man," Howland says. "I never had time for that before. I'll send you some pictures. " And he does. There has been the kind of family time that a UCLA basketball coach just doesn't get. This year's Christmas card shows family among the swaying palm trees of Maui, with grandson Little Ben stealing the photo.
SPORTS
July 11, 2013 | Bill Dwyre
The mud and slop into which big-time college athletics keeps descending never ceases to amaze. Tuesday's story in The Times about Steve Alford's financial situation at UCLA is merely more sewage on the sludge. Let us count the ways, remembering as we go that: •This is the school that has forever promoted and flaunted the principles of John Wooden. •Times have changed. Athletic finances and athletic egos have become inflated. •(Again) This is the school that has forever promoted and flaunted the principles of John Wooden.
SPORTS
July 9, 2013 | Ken Bensinger
UCLA fans better get used to the sight of Steve Alford. Win or lose, he's going to be around for quite some time. That's because UCLA's new head basketball coach is bound to the program -- and it to him -- by a $10.4-million buyout clause worth four times his annual pay. That stricture, unusually large by college coaching standards, is one of several eye-catching terms in Alford's contract, which had not before been made public but has been...
SPORTS
July 9, 2013 | By Ken Bensinger
UCLA fans better get used to the sight of Steve Alford. Win or lose, he's going to be around for quite some time. That's because UCLA's new head basketball coach is bound to the program - and it to him - by a $10.4-million buyout clause worth four times his annual pay. That stricture, unusually large by college coaching standards, is one of several eye-catching terms in Alford's contract , which had not before been made public but has...
BUSINESS
May 4, 2013 | By Lauren Beale, Los Angeles Times
Area basketball coaches are seeing a lot of off-court action these days. Now that the Lakers are out of the playoffs, head coach Mike D'Antoni can turn his attention to moving into the house he and his wife, Laurel, just bought in Manhattan Beach for $6.9 million and working on his tan. Set on a walk street, the ocean-view home features a three-stop cherry-paneled elevator, which should come in handy for carting beverages from the...