HOWLAND KNOWS TRADITION UCLA MAKES HIRING OF NEW COACH OFFICIAL.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

Ben Howland grew up in Southern California worshiping John Wooden's teams from the upper reaches of Pauley Pavilion. He shares the same birthday as another local basketball icon, Jerry West. He spent his formative years in the coaching business up the road at UC Santa Barbara.

If anybody understands what it means to coach below the 11 championship banners that hang above UCLA's homecourt, it is Howland, whose hiring as UCLA's 12th basketball coach was announced Wednesday night.

The school will hold a press conference today to introduce the 45-year-old Howland as the eighth coach to succeed Wooden.

``Having grown up in Southern California as a Bruin fan, watching the televised replays of the games was special for me,'' Howland said. ``To now be the head coach of this program is something I dreamed about but never thought possible.

``I have an appreciation for what these four letters mean in the world of college basketball. We should be competing for the Pacific-10 title and a high seed in the NCAA Tournament year in and year out and I look forward to that challenge.''

Terms of the contract will be announced today, but sources have indicated it will be a multiyear deal worth about $850,000 per year, with incentives that could push it to more than $1 million.

The contract was finalized and an agreement in principle reached Tuesday, but Howland was not offered the job until he met Wednesday night with Chancellor Albert Carnesale. Howland flew from Pittsburgh earlier in the day in a private jet provided by a friend and met with Carnesale after he returned from a business trip in Oakland.

Howland's meeting with Carnesale, a mere formality, was the last step in the process, which began with his interview Sunday at a hotel in Santa Barbara.

Contract negotiations began Monday over the phone with Jordan Bazant, Howland's representative. Bazant, who is based in New York, then flew to Los Angeles and met face-to-face with athletic director Dan Guerrero on Tuesday, where they finalized terms of the deal.

Howland has a list of potential assistants he will consider for his staff but has not begun paring it down, according to a source close to him.

``There's not a rush,'' the source said.

Howland is waiting to see what his top assistant, Jamie Dixon, will do. Though he's considered a longshot, Pittsburgh players met Wednesday with interim athletic director Marc Boehm and urged him to promote Dixon, the former standout at Notre Dame High of Sherman Oaks.

Dixon is also a leading candidate for the head-coaching jobs at Wright State and Illinois State.

It became clear by early January, with a miserable start, flagging attendance, angry fans and player discontent, that former coach Steve Lavin was in deep trouble.

Long before Lavin was fired March 17, at the conclusion of a 10-19 season - the school's worst finish in 61 years - Guerrero's aides had been doing background work on potential candidates.

Howland, the Southern California native who transformed Pittsburgh in four short years from Big East doormat to back-to-back top-10 teams, was a serious contender from the start and turned out to be the only candidate UCLA interviewed.

``Ben Howland is an outstanding basketball coach, one of the best in the entire country, and he is the man we want to run our program,'' Guerrero said. ``He has built winning programs throughout his career and we expect that he will return UCLA basketball to the nation's elite.''

The primary issue Guerrero seemed to have with Howland was whether he could work with him - a topic on which he queried people who know Howland in recent weeks.

When Howland interviewed for the UC Irvine job in 1997 - Guerrero was then the athletic director at the school - background interviews with those at UC Santa Barbara raised questions about how Howland worked with others in the athletic department.

Guerrero eventually hired Pat Douglass as his coach, though that decision had less to do with Howland than it did with Guerrero's opinion of Douglass, who had won three Division II national championships at Cal State Bakersfield.

Those issues surfaced again the next year when Howland - coming off a second consecutive 21-win season and a near upset of No. 2-seeded Cincinnati in the opening round of the NCAA Tournament - was stunned to not be named the replacement for his former boss at UC Santa Barbara, Jerry Pimm. The job instead went to Bob Williams, another successful Division II coach.

Northern Arizona athletic director Steve Holton, who arrived at the school four weeks after Howland was hired in 1994, acknowledged that Howland isn't always Mr. Congeniality but didn't see it as a problem.

``Sometimes, Ben focuses in so much on basketball that he can be hard with the people around him,'' Holton said. ``Ben's a good person, but sometimes, because of the pressures of a season, he focuses in on that and loses the day-to-day aspect of what other people are doing.

``That's the nature of the business, though. Good coaches are hard on people at times. When it's crunch time and it's their livelihood, they hunker down. Was it hard working with him? No. You want a person who's directed and driven. I never thought I couldn't walk in and say, `Ben, this is what we've got to do.' He might (sigh), but he'd do it.''

Holton and former Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson, who hired Howland before recently taking the same post at Nebraska, both raved about Howland's coaching ability.

``I'm a great believer that great coaches are great coaches,'' Pederson said. ``I could have taken Ben Howland and made him my baseball coach and he'd have taken them to the College World Series.''

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Photo:

(color) Ben Howland, who will be introduced today as new UCLA men's basketball coach, turned around the program at Pittsburgh. He led the Panthers to back-to-back top-10 seasons and a Sweet 16 appearance this season.

Gary Tramontina/Associated Press

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WINNING TRADITION