Ben Howland

Watching a Ben Howland team take the floor after consecutive losses is like watching a punished child take the backyard after standing in the corner. The sigh of relief is palpable. The need to please is visible. The energy expended is nuts. These Bruins may not be a Final Four team, but they are still a Last Straw team, pushing back hardest when they are pushed to the edge, capable of greatness even when on the verge of collapse.

Ben Howland is trying again. The UCLA coach is recruiting another top high school basketball player from the state of Washington. The third time might be the charm. Howland's focus is on 6-foot-9, 270-pound Josh Smith from Kentwood High in Kent, Wash. He knows it's a supreme challenge persuading an elite athlete to leave his community. Howland went after Jon Brockman from Snohomish, Wash. Brockman ended up being an all-Pacific 10 Conference forward at Washington.

Halfway through practice, it looked as if the UCLA basketball team had lost another player, forward Nikola Dragovic heading for the locker room with a trainer in tow. But this wasn't another sprained ankle or sore back. Instead, Dragovic was sick to his stomach, apparently from eating pasta that had been left out too long. That's how bad it has been for injury-riddled UCLA the last few weeks -- gastric distress starts to look pretty good. "Food poisoning, he'll get over," Coach Ben Howland said.

The first time Ben Howland reminded Drew Gordon to put on a sweatshirt after practice, Gordon didn't think much of it. Only later did the UCLA center realize his coach was dead serious about bundling up. "The second through 50th time he told me," Gordon said, "I was like, oh, he obviously cares about our health."

You want Ben Howland to lighten up, want him to smile just a little and crack wise or maybe sometimes sit courtside during games like Phil Jackson -- calm as a stone, peaceful, hardly reacting to anything at all. But we have to face facts. Howland isn't built that way. Angst should be his middle name. The big worry is that if he were to lose the sideline shouts and grimaces and unrelenting nature, he'd also completely lose his edge. And where would UCLA basketball be then? Not where it is now.

Now that he has reviewed the tape -- and listened to the television commentators -- Ben Howland feels certain about what happened. Asked whether the charging call against guard Darren Collison with 39 seconds remaining in Thursday night's loss to Arizona State should have gone the other way, the UCLA coach responded: "There's no question. "They were actually showing it on 'SportsCenter,' " he said. "It was pretty clear what had happened."

If Ben Howland was upset by his team's defensive effort in Saturday's 82-81 loss to Washington State, the UCLA coach made it clear at the beginning of the second half. Guard Jrue Holiday, a starter, remained on the bench after the man he was guarding -- Washington State's Klay Thompson -- had scored 15 points in the first 20 minutes.

It isn't unusual for UCLA Coach Ben Howland to quote statistics from memory, right down to the decimal point, but this time the reference was pointed. Asked about UCLA's being eighth in the Pacific 10 Conference in defensive field-goal percentage, Howland cited chapter and verse. "It's 47.7% in league," he said. "Number 262 nationally on the year, at 45%." And then, as if even hearing the number rounded off rankled him, he made it more precise: "Point one," he said. That's 45.1%, and No.

The season opener is almost a month away, but Ben Howland has reason to be concerned. This week, the UCLA basketball coach has watched no fewer than six of his scholarship players struggle with injuries. Add center J'mison Morgan to the list of the walking wounded, the sophomore waiting for MRI exam results this morning after his left knee swelled. Even more troubling is point guard Jerime Anderson, expected to miss another week with a groin injury that has persisted off and on since high school.

UCLA basketball coaches have not yet resorted to burning incense at Pauley Pavilion, but they're close. After a rash of injuries caused six players to sit out chunks of the first dozen practices, Coach Ben Howland got another scare this week when forward Drew Gordon fell hard. Gordon was fine but even walk-ons called into service, such as Blake Arnet , have gone down with flu. As guard Michael Roll put it: "It's been a little tough just getting enough guys for a full practice."