Madness of March Always Kind to Lavin

Tourney time. Can’t help it. I phone March’s Mad Hatter.

“Things are going great,” says Steve Lavin, chuckling. “It’s been a truly unique experience, living through an entire winter without a death threat or extortion attempt.”

Sorry, UCLA fans. I know most of you are trying to forget. But the gelatinous memory surfaces this week with all the subtlety of an Earl Watson-to-Jason Kapono alley-oop.

“I’ve had a great year, I haven’t lost a game,” says Lavin, still laughing. “With Stanford getting knocked off last week, that leaves Saint Joseph’s and Lavin as the last two unbeatens.”

This was Lav’s time, remember? After months of turmoil, this was the payoff.

This was Cincinnati in two overtimes. This was Maryland by 35 points. This was Sweet and Elite and disbelief.

During his seven seasons here, Lavin was customarily fried in January, fired in February, but 25-15 in March.

This spring, he’s 24-7, part of the same ESPN broadcast crew that once made him a slick-and-sweaty college cult figure.

“After being the subject of a 24-hour sports-news cycle, it’s been valuable experience to be covering one,” Lavin says.

He’s moved to the other side of the microphone, but he’s still close to the court, still following a UCLA team consisting entirely of players he recruited.

Players who have gone 2-13 since the middle of January.

Players who are on pace to score the fewest points by a UCLA team in 45 years.

Players who have been ripped for it as have few players in recent UCLA history:

They’re not tough guys. They’re not skilled guys. They’re not Ben Howland’s guys.

Usually, it’s the coach who takes the heat around here, but this season it’s been all about the players, and now Lavin is no longer laughing.

“To characterize the current UCLA roster as a group of ragamuffins is inaccurate and unfair,” Lavin says. “They have the potential to have three NBA first-round draft picks on this team, and five players who could eventually play at the next level.”

This evaluation is completely contrary to the spin coming from Westwood, where expectations have been so lowered that many fans have accepted defeats while quietly waiting for Howland to perform his trademark turnaround with new recruits.

Where losing was never an option, limbo has become perfectly acceptable, the players and coaches having seemingly reached an agreement that it will be a lost season.

Lavin seems surprised at that approach, saying he feels so strongly that the Bruins are talented, he understands why he was fired when he couldn’t tap into that talent.

“Even when we were struggling, I never wavered in the belief that these guys could play, that they were the top recruiting class in the country,” he says. “And this is why I never complained when they made the coaching change.”

To those who maintain that Lavin failed miserably in his evaluation of those players -- even though six of his recruits have played in the NBA -- he said it’s not about evaluation but execution.

“This current group has been through a difficult two-year stretch, and clearly they’ve lost their confidence,” he says. “Over the past two seasons, it’s been less a question of talent and more an issue of chemistry and cohesiveness. As a teacher and a coach last year, I’m as much responsible for that as anybody.”

Since his departure, the attitude in Westwood has gone from screams to shrugs, from madhouse to mundane, from demanding to eerily detached.

Can you imagine USC football fans ever showing this sort of patience with their local treasure? Ask Pete Carroll about the heat he felt after his first Notre Dame game. Over there, the coach is expected to adjust to the tradition, not vice versa.

“Ben is a good coach,” Lavin says. “And if you can go to a Final Four two out of every six years at UCLA, I believe you can implement any style of play you like.”

But, as Lavin knows, there are challenges faced by a UCLA coach who is implementing a style that, in its first incarnation, will set a school record -- post-shot clock -- for fewest points.

Here’s hoping Howland’s hot new recruits can make that style more winning and entertaining before other NBA-hopeful high schoolers lose interest.

“Can Ben get the players he wants and mold them into a national championship team on an annual basis?” Lavin asks. “And can he do it soon enough to satisfy the fans and administration?”

Lavin warns about the traditional brevity of a Bruin honeymoon.

“During my tenure, I fully understood that 20-win seasons, Pac-10 titles, Sweet 16s and final eights are not acceptable in Westwood,” he says. “This is still all about national championships. This is why I had no complaints when it came to an end.”

However, he says, Howland possesses an advantage he never had.

“The good news for Ben Howland is, the current administration and infrastructure is more united behind him,” Lavin says. “The support for the men’s coach is stronger than it has been in many years, and that’s important. If you hire a coach, you have to back him up.”

It’s funny, but the longer Lavin stays away, the more valuable his five Sweet 16 appearances in seven seasons become.

He was mentioned as a candidate for the vacancy at Nevada Las Vegas.

He will be mentioned as one of the favorites for the job that just opened at the University of San Francisco.

But he says he enjoys working for ESPN and is not going to do anything without the sort of support that Howland enjoys.

“I have to know about the infrastructure, about the chain of command, about who I must answer to,” he says. “I will only go where there is a perfect fit.”

He could never find that fit at UCLA, but it was a blast watching him try.

“Yeah, I guess it was pretty interesting,” says March’s Mad Hatter, and although you don’t miss the foolishness, you indeed miss the fun.

*

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.