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Thursday, March 14, 2002

By Chuck Finder, Post-Gazette Sports Writer

Go back three years. Climb into a rental car with Ben Howland and tool around Ogden, Utah, looking for the first beer in four months. Ask him to describe his college-basketball coaching style, and he promptly confides that he's a man-to-man man.

	Illustration by Daniel marsula, Post-Gazette

Hates the zone defense. Swears it off as much as beer during the season. Vows that you might hardly ever see him use it again.

Fast forward to today.

Zone isn't such a dirty four-letter word anymore to the coach who changed himself and University of Pittsburgh basketball.

"That's probably one of the things I got better at," Howland said the other day, preparing his record-smashing Panthers for a postseason that commences shortly after noon tomorrow inside Mellon Arena, with an NCAA tournament date against Central Connecticut State. Zone is how Pitt beat Georgetown twice this season. Zone is how Pitt closed out that confidence-instilling victory at Ohio State in December.

Shucks, trailing Syracuse in January, Brandin Knight -- the junior point guard whom Howland suspended once and disciplined a couple of other times the previous two seasons -- came to the bench with some advice for the coach: We should switch to zone. The coach concurred. Chalk up another victory to the continuing education of Ben Howland.

"I hope I've improved. I think I've improved," he said. "Just like a player, you always try to get better. Experience has a lot to do with that. When you're coaching at the highest level, it raises your level, or you're not going to be successful."

He is the son of a minister and a minister's daughter, who also was a teacher. He has two brothers, one a high school teacher, the other a college instructor. His sister works in college education. In many ways, Howland does, too.

Yet Howland, 44, figures it's never too late to learn. To adapt.

"He's changed a little bit, give or take," Knight said. "He's learning. He kind of understands us a little bit better than he did when he came here."

With the help of predecessor Ralph Willard and his staff, with the benefit of that 1999-2000 season's rookie experience in the Big East, with the support of Howlandesque players who each bought a piece of the program he brought from Northern Arizona University, the coach altered himself and Pitt.

The personnel

"Recruit to Shoot" was his mantra amid the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, Ariz. He still believes you cannot teach shooting, so it remains a priority among the players recruited by Pitt. Yet a few of the other criteria that came secondary in the Big Sky have become primary in the Big East: defending and rebounding.

	Bob Smizik All eyes (and pressure) on Panthers The Big Picture CBS' Visser at home with sideline mike Knight's leg won't need surgery Playoffs 2002 Photo Journal Profiles of the other two South Region teams at Mellon Arena Pennsylvania California Names & Games NCAA Tournament Edition Relatively Meaningless A to Z In through the Out Door

"I think we realized early on we would have to do things slightly differently," said associate head coach Jamie Dixon, who worked alongside Howland for one year at the University of California-Santa Barbara, under him for four years in Flagstaff and as his recruiting coordinator at Pitt for the past three. "We would have to get better defensively."

That part of the evaluation process, along with seeking far better athletes than the suburban Denver or California dudes they recruited at Northern Arizona, were the only facets they changed. Because Howland's motion, screening offense -- borrowed from his good buddy Rick Majerus at Utah -- and his man-to-man defense and his selfless team attitude demanded the same personalities in players.

"You don't teach unselfishness; you get unselfish players," Dixon said. "How do they fit in with their teammates? And we want guys who play every play. If they don't, that's how the other team scores."

"We're not all that much different, we're just a lot more athletic than the teams we had at NAU," Howland added. "We still play unselfish, team-oriented, hard, aggressive basketball."

They gleaned this knowledge from a 13-15 season in 1999-2000, when the Panthers went 5-11 in the conference but finished with a defensive flourish that saw Pitt win three of its final four regular-season games.

The coaches also were schooled by Willard and the coaching staff which preceded them.

In what amounted to exit interviews, Dixon sat down inside Fitzgerald Field House or talked elsewhere with Willard and his assistants, including current Marquette coach Tom Crean. "I don't think we came here thinking we had all the answers," Dixon explained. Willard and company offered some recommendations they learned the hard way: No more 6-foot-8 skinny guys in this league, do what you do best and don't change your philosophy to try to fit the conference. Willard, remember, never installed at Pitt the deep-bench, defensive-pressure, run-run ways he used at Western Kentucky.

From his March 8, 1999, start, Howland hit the recruiting trail. He visited Maine Central Institute and convinced Jaron Brown to stick to his commitment. He visited with Knight's family in New Jersey after Dixon called from an AAU game in Providence to report that the point guard was smart and competitive. He and Dixon scouted an AAU tournament in Sharon, where they found Donatas Zavackas, a tenacious and versatile Lithuanian kid going to school in Akron, Ohio. "That one was kind of lucky," Dixon admitted.

OK, so there was Derrick Worrell. He was a junior-college guy they signed sight unseen. He was one of the many disciplinary problems Howland flicked away that first season, when the Panthers finished the season of attrition with seven scholarship players. "That first year was really just ... a tough deal -- a lot of disharmony, distraction and adversity," Howland said. That also was a familiar story line from their Flagstaff days, when 11 players failed to return in Howland's first two seasons and a 14-38 combined record.

Their first full recruiting class came that first Pitt season as well -- Chevy Troutman, Mark McCarroll, Torree Morris (whom Dixon stumbled across, playing in a side gym, at a camp where he was scouting a different prospect). And Julius Page. "He was huge, because I knew how good he was," Howland said of Page. "He's got great attitude, and he's only going to get better."

OK, so there was a Zelimir Stevanovic, too.

For this season, they brought in Carl Krauser -- like Page a top-100 recruit, though he was deemed ineligible -- and yet another junior-college transfer. This time, it worked out. Ontario Lett's recruitment was similar to landing Zavackas. Luckily, Lett's coach approached Howland at a camp in Orlando, Fla., and they signed him on the last day of the recruiting period.

The Pitt coach looks down his bench and considers Page, Knight, Troutman, maybe even the burly, improving Morris, as potential NBA players. He looks across his office walls, the ones lined with framed photographs of his former UCSB and Northern Arizona players, and sees guys playing in France, Italy and Sweden, which is still rather impressive given their collegiate level.

"It all comes back to personnel," Howland said. "That's the whole key to this team. Don't give me too much credit. Good players make a coach look good."

The system

	Ben Howland meets reporters after Pitt's assignment in the tournament. (Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)

Sure, he wants Pitt to shoot 3-pointers almost as often as he wanted Northern Arizona, where suburban kids such as Ross Land and Billy Hicks would stand around the arc in many of their offensive sets. In fact, that sideline plea gives the Panthers fodder for impersonating their coach. Funny that a kid from Kintucky, on a team with fellows from Noo Yawk and Flowrada and even Lithuania, playing in a town famed for its Pittsburghese, is considered the best at imitating Howland's West Coast accent: Shoooot tha thareee.

"Out there [in Northern Arizona], it was probably more finesse and shooting," said Brown, the mimic. "But in this league, it's more physical and athletic. I think he adjusted to it, and I think we as players adjusted to it, too."

Howland always was a strident open-shot coach. Take the best one available. That explains why his Lumberjacks in his final season in Flagstaff topped NCAA Division I in overall field-goal and 3-point shooting percentage. That explains why his Panthers this season converted 47 percent, which ranked second in the brutal Big East. Maybe they would shoot more 3-pointers if they had bigger egos. "We're unselfish almost to a fault," said Pitt assistant Chris Carlson, who worked alongside Howland at UCSB and at Northern Arizona. "In practice, we're imploring guys to take the shot."

Howland always was a meticulous man-to-man coach, too. Must block out. Contest all shots. Cut off the drive. Help out. Pitt players, like the Lumberjacks before them, moan about how they could write the scouting reports verbatim.

They began to fully incorporate those ideals late last season, when coaches noticed a change in the Panthers at the Big East Tournament. The players didn't need any pointing, any guidance, during a walk-through practice. They knew what to do. Then they went out and did it, winning three games and getting Pitt to its first Big East championship game and landing Howland's program in the National Invitation Tournament even faster than did Northern Arizona. Though the coach admitted that the late-season run was because of a blunder: "Part of it was me figuring out to play Jaron more."

This season, the Panthers continued their man-to-man might, and their coach learned to embrace something new -- the zone, even when it wasn't his idea to switch, but Knight's. Do what you do best, and defense has been Pitt's hallmark in setting a bevy of school records: 27-5 overall, 13-3 and West Division champions of the Big East, an undefeated February and the finest Fitzgerald record in this, the building's final season. The Panthers allowed opponents to shoot only 39.5 percent from the field (17th in NCAA Division I), to score but 61 points per game (14th) and to collect 6.6 fewer rebounds per game than Pitt (13th).

"Two things Coach Howland stresses most -- rebounding and defense," Zavackas said. "Just look at the teams like Kansas and Duke. They play defense all year long."

"He pounds that," Lett added. "From Day One. That's all the coaches talked about. That's the first thing he said when I got here: 'You got to find a way to out-rebound people.'"

One other thing about the Howland way: Do what needs to be done in the off-season. "Player development is huge with him," Carlson said. So the Panthers put down on paper their off-season goals for weightlifting, and worked so well last summer with strength coach Tim Beltz that they surprised their coaches by becoming perhaps the strongest team in the Big East. They face expectations that they improve their conditioning, their basketball skills and their academics. Big Brother isn't watching over their shoulders, but Howland is constantly pumping them.

"Academics, lifting, personal life -- though they don't always want to give that information up," Dixon said, with a smile. "I think he's checking on them more than they want. I think more than most coaches, too. That's really his whole thing: He tries to hold each guy accountable."

The style

When he was first hired March 8, 1999, radio-talk show hosts and a few columnists and busloads of fans howled about how this West Coast guy was ill-equipped to recruit in the Big East, how he was making too much of a jump from low-major Division I to this big, bad conference, how he was just too ... Blase Ben.

Don't hear that now, do you?

He is still the same Ben Howland he was at Northern Arizona, UCSB, even Gonzaga (though he no longer has to guard future NBA point guards in practice, like John Stockton there).

The same, just more successful.

"He bends a lot in the season," Knight said. "He gives us a lot of leeway, a lot of freedom, when maybe other coaches want hands-on control. He trusts us."

"He's a real nice person to play for," Brown added of the coach who still receives calls from many of his former Northern Arizona and UCSB players. "He's understanding of the players. He doesn't really yell at guys. He stops and explains and tells you one-on-one what you did wrong, and then tells the whole team, so no one else makes the same mistake. And there's a lot of freedom he gives you, even though there's a lot of set plays."

He isn't so nice that he refrains from stomping a loafer in sideline anger or from yanking somebody who just made an ill-advised play. None of the Panthers wants to meet his glare during that long walk to the bench after a substitution, so mostly they leave the court with eyes downward. Yet this understanding, this freedom, also means that Knight can suggest not only defenses but plays off that wallet-sized card Howland carries in his left pants pocket. It means that the Panthers can wear whatever sneakers and socks they prefer for games, which sometimes makes them better resemble a summer-playground bunch from the ankles down. Black socks and black shoes?

The gregarious Lett, whom Howland rides about looking into television cameras too much during games, regards him as a player's coach. So much so, "when you get in his car, he turns to the black radio stations and plays it real loud."

No static approach for this coach.

Howland seems to know when, and how, to change.