The Press Enterprise has an article about Street & Smith's ranking of all-time college basketball programs. For a number of reasons, this is a very intriguing article. First, the rankings: in order, the top teams are Kentucky, UCLA, North Carolina, Kansas, Duke, Indiana and Louisville. Ben Howland doesn't agree because like many UCLA fans, he believes we should be first. To me, this isn't a big deal. But this is where the article gets interesting. In its discussion of why UCLA is not at the top, it gives us this fact:

"UCLA alone, of the top programs, has been unable to get to a Final Four or win a conference championship in nearly a decade."

So what happened during that decade? Of course we all know the answer: Steve Lavin. Now let me preface the tirade that is about to follow with the following disclaimer: I believe Steve Lavin is an affable, friendly guy who (now) probably isn't so bad of a coach. I've never heard anything negative about his personality. But his reign over the UCLA program was the darkest chapter in the post-Wooden era. So that's why I almost lost it when I read the following assessment from Lavin regarding his tenure as head coach:

"We were able to compete in the NCAA Tournament at the end of the season and win some games there," Lavin said. "But the one season we didn't make it, I was gone."

Now I made a commitment to myself that I would not use any profanity in this blog, so please allow me to take a deep breath before we continue (breathing in...counting to ten, almost done...alright, moving forward). This clearly demonstrates that ol' Lav believes (or would like us to believe) that he was fired for having one bad season. I will break down Lavin's career "accomplishments" in another post, but let me quickly just mention that his performance was terrible for several years before he was fired, as his teams constantly lacked intensity, cohesiveness, and basic fundamentals. He took charge of a team that had just won back-to-back Pac-10 titles and was one season removed from a national championship. But with Lav in command, the conference finishes gradually became lower and lower until he guided the Bruins to their worst conference finish in history (6th) in 2002, and then "surpassing" that by finishing eighth the following year, his last.

In the other part of his quote, he refers to "winning some games" in the tourney, which of course brings up the mantra we always heard when he was still coach: "five Sweet 16 appearances in 6 years, and the only other coach to do that was Krzyzewski." Wow, he did something only Krzyzewski could do, he must be a great coach! Of course, Duke managed to actually GET PAST the Sweet 16 on a few occasions - they currently have 7 straight Sweet 16s, losing only 3 times, with 3 final fours and one NCAA title. After Lav's first year, his squads lost in the Sweet 16 by margins of 26, 24, 13, and 9 points (and remember this last loss was to a LOWER seeded Missouri team). Anyway, when did appearances in the Sweet 16 define success for a basketball team? What about the rest of the year? Lavin's run of six years without a conference championship was the longest for UCLA post-Wooden. And forget about just wins and losses; what about competing every game? How about playing one's best, perhaps reaching one's potential? Lavin's teams always fell short of that mark. This brings to mind the broadcast of a "classic" UCLA-USC basketball game from a few weeks ago. It was January 12, 2000, and our team featured a starting lineup of Earl Watson, Jason Kapono, Dan Gadzuric, Jerome Moiso, and Ray Young. Matt Barnes was coming off the bench. How many other teams feature 5 future NBA players in their rotation? By the way, we weren't even ranked and we lost to an also unranked USC team by 12 points.

Lavin's comments wouldn't be so frustrating to read if it wasn't for the fact that some people evaluating the program from afar seem to buy into his line of thinking. There are folks around the country that have an image of UCLA fans as being out of touch with reality and blinded by our own tradition, expecting the Bruins to somehow win 7 straight titles again. They think we ran Lavin out of town for having one bad year, and that we believe that "only" making it to the Sweet 16 is unacceptable. In actuality, I simply hope that we can be as competitive as the other six programs listed at the beginning of this post, and, as stated by Ben Howland in this article, "We have to get to where we challenge for the Pac-10 every year." Not win it every year, but simply to CHALLENGE for it. Is that really asking too much?