Howland’s wizardry is in the details for UCLA

THE home theater in Ben Howland’s basement can seat 10 very comfortably, in cushy recliners. But UCLA’s basketball coach prefers to sit on the floor by himself while he watches game films until all hours, feverishly taking notes on a legal pad in search of something -- an opponent’s weakness, a player’s flaw -- that will give his Bruins an edge.

The pages barely contain his ideas. Meticulous and precise in every other area of his life, Howland fills dozens of pads with his scrawls.

“I write big,” he said. “A page could go quickly on one diagram.”

If he’s not diagraming plays, he’s calling members of his inner circle, men he played for or worked with before he was hired by UCLA in 2003. He might solicit an opinion or just need the sound of a familiar voice to illuminate the dark, quiet night.

“When he was in Pittsburgh, I always knew at 11 p.m. my time when my phone rang it was Ben calling because he needed someone to talk to because he couldn’t sleep,” said Michael Adras, who succeeded Howland as coach at Northern Arizona.

“Anything he does, he does with gusto. He demands a lot from his players but also from himself.”

Howland has pushed his team to a level of consistent excellence not seen since John Wooden coached the Bruins to seven consecutive NCAA titles and 10 in 12 seasons starting in 1964. Under Howland’s guidance, UCLA has advanced to the Final Four the last two seasons, the first time that has happened since Wooden’s final year, 1975, and Gene Bartow’s first year, 1976.

UCLA will face Florida in a national semifinal Saturday at Atlanta, a rematch of the championship game the Bruins lost a year ago. Should they win, and then prevail in Monday’s final, Howland would join Wooden and Jim Harrick, coach of the 1995 championship team, as the only men who have led the Bruins to an NCAA men’s basketball title.

The prospect genuinely thrills Howland, 49, a Cerritos High graduate who watched UCLA telecasts while he grew up and still idolizes Wooden.

“It’s his program and always will be,” Howland said. “I’m the current caretaker right now. But when you think of UCLA basketball, you always think of John R. Wooden first, whether that’s now or 100 years from now.”

Their means to a successful end are dramatically different.

Wooden built his teams around superstars and molded players such as Lew Alcindor -- now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- and Bill Walton into basketball Hall of Famers. Wooden was -- and at 96 still is -- gentlemanly and professorial.

Howland has had considerable talent at his disposal, but, so far, no one likely to become an NBA star. He has made defense and grit his cornerstones, a style that’s tough to sell to players because it’s not flashy. It has worked, perhaps because it’s the natural product of his intense nature -- one that’s often misunderstood.

When Howland repeatedly interrupted a news conference last week in San Jose to streamline the proceedings -- among other things, he asked NCAA officials to reduce the noise coming from an adjacent room and to stop passersby from chatting in a hallway -- reporters unfamiliar with his manner branded him a fire-breathing, micromanaging monster.

It didn’t matter that he didn’t demean anyone or throw a tantrum, as other college coaches have done. He was insistent yet never profane -- and right each time.

Howland is not a monster.

A micro-manager? Yes.

“I should have handled that more diplomatically. I should have told the moderator, ‘You handle that,’ ” he said. “But to me, it was hard for our players because we had noise in the background. ... I wanted to make sure they were hearing everything. Everything I do is about my players.”

Obsessed with details? Yes, again.

“Ben wants everything statted in practice as though it were a game. Everything. Even the most minute stuff,” said Central Michigan Coach Ernie Zeigler, who spent five years as an assistant to Howland at Pittsburgh and UCLA. “Deflections. Who takes the most charges in practice. Who takes shots and where. That’s just how particular he was. It definitely keeps players in position to be accountable at all times.”

He also has some unusual and little-known quirks.

When he discusses opponents’ field-goal percentages or rebounding averages, he’s accurate to the decimal point. “He has a mind like a steel trap,” said Barry Rohrssen, an assistant to Howland at Pittsburgh for four years and now coach at Manhattan College. “Being on his staff was like going to a basketball academy every day. He doesn’t just teach players to play, he teaches coaches to coach.”

Howland shrugged. “I do have a good memory for phone numbers and statistics,” he said. “It’s important to know as much as you can and get as much information as you can and learn from it.”

He also likes to place a water bottle in the middle of a roll of tape at the end of the scorer’s table before each game. Last year the NCAA -- talk about obsessed -- banned his bottle because it had a logo. After much grumbling, he poured the water into an NCAA-approved cup.

Adras, the Northern Arizona coach, didn’t know about the water bottle ritual but recalled other Howland habits.

“He has to sit down when they shoot a free throw. He’ll be standing, but he’ll go to his seat when they shoot free throws,” Adras said.

“The other thing I remember is phone calls. If he’d dial someone and get a busy signal, he’d dial right back. He’s not very good at accepting that the person wasn’t there. Even if the phone rings 10 times and no one answers, he’s going to call right back.

“He’d say, ‘Get so-and-so on the line,’ and you hoped that person answered or you knew you’d have to keep calling.”

Howland is also phobic about colds. Last week, he moved a postgame interview session down a hallway after he felt a draft where he had been standing.

“One time when we were in Boston with Pitt, he thought the area where we were was cold,” said Chris Carlson, UCLA’s director of basketball operations. “We were in the FleetCenter, and there was ice underneath, and there’s not a lot we can do about that.

“He’s like, ‘It’s cold,’ but I’m thinking, ‘Hey, there’s a block of ice under that.’ ”

Former UC Santa Barbara coach Jerry Pimm, Howland’s mentor, sees the methods behind his former assistant’s madness.

“It’s exactly the same as our teams in Santa Barbara. We were very well organized, sometimes super-organized. Sometimes players thought we were over-organized,” Pimm said.

“I always liked to know what was going to happen, whether it was itineraries or meeting to go over details. I think Ben found that a good way to do things. Nowadays, he carries it over to the basketball floor.”

Pimm wasn’t surprised that Howland tried to direct that news conference.

“You don’t want to waste time, and if people are talking and you have to repeat things, that’s a waste of time,” Pimm said. “You only have 24 hours in a day, and you’ve got to sleep three or four.”

Howland said he’s getting about five hours’ sleep a night and can go for months on short rest. “Sleep’s overrated,” he said.

Attention to detail is not.

If players don’t perform a drill in practice exactly as directed, Howland orders them to repeat it from the beginning. Reserve Michael Roll said that even though that might get tedious, “I’ve come to realize that it’s very good for us. It helps us pay attention to detail, which improves our game, and it helps us focus on the other team.”

Point guard Darren Collison said Howland’s painstaking methods could mean the difference between winning and losing. “Every possession is going to count. If you miss out on one possession, that possession could come back and haunt you at the end of the game,” Collison said.

Zeigler, who plans to be in Atlanta to cheer for the Bruins, believes Howland is fanatic about his job because he wants to do it right, not because he’s an egomaniac. Zeigler described Howland as a fine family man who does, in fact, relax after the season ends.

“He doesn’t have that scowl all the time,” Zeigler said.

Howland described himself as “actually fairly loose” -- except around reporters. “It’s different between the lines. There’s a difference between being on the floor and off the floor, when we’re working and when we’re not,” he said.

For now, work is paramount for him.

“Without a doubt, what makes Ben special and why he’s been able to return UCLA to back-to-back Final Fours is his tunnel vision and attention to the task at hand,” Zeigler said.

“I feel privileged to have learned from him, especially in the fishbowl that is UCLA. He has the ability to block out everything except to make sure his team is as well prepared as it can be.”

If that makes him a control freak, he might just bring honor to the term.

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helene.elliott@latimes.com