It’s Getting Harder to Understand

The Stanford team by which everyone in college basketball is measured these days showed up at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday, so pull out your UCLA calculator.

Subtract a few fans, add a little hair gel, and what do you get?

A Steve Lavin loss.

Subtract a feel-good win against Michigan State, add awful losses against UC Santa Barbara and St. John’s and what do you get?

A Steve Lavin season.

With a full house, national television audience and brimming expectations, Stanford outscored the Bruins, 25-4, at one point en route to a 73-60 victory.

What a difference a year ... nah.

If we’ve seen this once in the last eight seasons, we’ve seen it a Sweet 16 times.

Odd lineups, blank faces, rushed shots, fans who feel obligated to offer a standing ovation when the team cuts the lead to, um, 11?

The only difference between this and previous Saturdays under Lavin was that nobody booed.

You think Ben Howland can teach some of this Houdini stuff to Karl Dorrell?

“I’ve done my best, I’ve been through this before,” Howland said afterward, quietly but firmly.

“We are going to get this thing right.”

That is the biggest reason that, of UCLA’s two new coaches, Howland is trusted while Dorrell is scorned.

Howland has indeed been through this before.

His first year at Northern Arizona, his team was 7-19.

Two years later, it won 21 games.

His first year at Pittsburgh, his team was 13-15.

Two years later, it won 29 games.

“We will get stronger,” said Howland. “The kids who make it through this year, they will understand.”

But will the fans? So far, so good, but there was some muttering Saturday during a first half in which Howland’s bunch went six minutes without a basket and committed 10 turnovers to essentially end the game in an hour.

Trevor Ariza, the promising freshman who was the Bruins’ best offensive player earlier, was pulled out of the starting lineup for only the second time this season and walked around in a funk.

Jon Crispin, who has played only six games this season, started in Ariza’s place, and he played about as hard as anyone.

At one point during the Bruins’ first-half meltdown, the court held three Bruin benchwarmers -- Crispin, Ryan Walcott and Janou Rubin.

And in the end, only three Bruins made three-pointers -- Ariza, Dijon Thompson and Michael Nguyen.

Michael Nguyen?

The kid won tuition and books for a year (about $4,800) by making a flying midcourt shot at the buzzer of a halftime shooting contest.

It was the most loudly applauded play of the day.

Tell me again how much things have changed?

“It’s a lot different,” said Crispin.

“We’re a lot more businesslike now. We all recognize that we’re building something here.”

Agreed, but what has that said about this season?

Even though these Bruins clearly weren’t his sort of players, it is a shame that Howland hasn’t been able to coax more from them.

It is one thing to build in Flagstaff, Ariz., it is quite another to build with John Wooden sitting over your right shoulder.

This UCLA team isn’t just scaffolding, it’s a collection of former prep stars, and even if Howland was trying to teach them an entirely new sport, it’s too bad they couldn’t have accomplished more.

With only four guaranteed games left, the Bruins have won only one more game than last season, and the similarities grow.

They have suffered the sort of historic losses that were a Lavin trademark -- Washington State’s winning in Pauley Pavilion for the first time.

They have suffered the blowout losses that were also a Lavin specialty -- Arizona’s winning here by 25 points.

Howland has asked that fans pardon his dust while he constructs the program with future recruits that fit his style, and fans have complied.

Dorrell has asked for the same thing and fans have called for his head.

Howland, at least, has the promissory notes to back up his plan.

It was announced last week that next year’s UCLA freshman class would include a national All-American shooting guard (Arron Afflalo) and point guard (Jordan Farmar), as well as two other top local kids, center Lorenzo Mata and swingman Josh Shipp.

Given Howland’s dissatisfaction with his current group, throw in Dijon Thompson and you might have next year’s Bruin starting lineup.

“It’s been a real tough year,” Ryan Hollins said Saturday.

And this was a real tough game to watch, marked at times by what appeared to be the Bruins’ complete lack of attention toward their coach.

It was almost as if some of them were saying, “Fine, you don’t like us, we won’t listen to you.”

Across from Howland sat former California Gov. Gray Davis who, by comparison, appeared charmingly happy.

Yeah, it was that bad.

By the time the game ended, most of the fans had left, many of them departing with three minutes remaining.

Which is, coincidentally, the same amount of time left in Ben Howland’s honeymoon.

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