SAN ANTONIO -- On the night of March 15, not long after his UCLA team beat Stanford to win the Pac-10 Conference tournament championship to advance to the NCAA tournament as a No. 1 seed, Ben Howland made a telephone call to an old friend in Pittsburgh.

"I just want to thank you again for giving me a chance," he told Pitt athletic director Steve Pederson.

You should have heard Pederson giggle at the suggestion he somehow invented Howland, a self-described "yokel from way out West" when Pederson hired him as Pitt's coach in 1999 and now, just maybe, the best coach in college basketball.

"I can't take any credit for Ben," Pederson said this week. "It's all Ben."

You probably know Howland has UCLA in the Final Four for the third consecutive year, a feat matched only by Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and Michigan State's Tom Izzo since the NCAA tournament went to 64 teams in 1985. You also probably know Howland has led UCLA to three consecutive 30-win seasons, joining Kentucky's Adolph Rupp and Memphis' John Calipari as the only Division I coaches to do that.

But do you remember how Pederson found Howland at Northern Arizona? It is a tale worth revisiting.

Pederson, an astute sort, first noticed Howland when his Northern Arizona team took powerful Cincinnati to the wire in the 1998 NCAA tournament. "Then, the next fall, they beat Arizona State at Arizona State," Pederson said. "I remember thinking, 'Wow! How did they do that?' "

Pederson began questioning those he trusted about Howland. One was Northwestern coach Kevin O'Neill, whom he worked with at Tennessee. Another was Utah coach Rick Majerus, a close friend of Howland.

"Kevin said, 'You would love Ben Howland. He's a team guy and he'll really get after it for you. All he needs is a great opportunity,' " Pederson remembered.

Majerus actually undersold Howland even as he sang his praises.

"Is he going to build Pittsburgh into the Duke of the conference? No, that's not going to happen," he told the Post-Gazette after Pitt hired Howland.

Pitt went to the Big East Conference tournament championship game in Howland's second season. It won league division titles in his third and fourth seasons and took the conference tournament championship in his fourth. It went to the NCAA tournament's Round of 16 in the third and fourth years.

That's Duke-like, isn't it?

Howland finished his first season at Pitt with just seven scholarship players after throwing Kellii Taylor and Derrick Worrell off the team. "We'll finish with five guys if we have to," Howland said at the time. "We're not going to sacrifice discipline to get through the season."

Said Pederson this week:, "Ben not only changed our results. He changed the culture."

Just as Howland promised Pederson he would.

"The thing I remember from interviewing him that first time was that he never once talked about how hard the job was going to be," Pederson said.

It wasn't just the losing and the discipline problems. The fabulous Petersen Events Center was still more than three years away. Pederson was so embarrassed by Fitzgerald Field House that he didn't show it to Howland during his first visit to Pittsburgh.

One other thing struck Pederson about that first interview.

"He didn't ask for this or that. He only asked for one thing. 'Help me get Jamie Dixon here. If we get him, we're rolling.'

"That told me right away that he knew what it takes to win. You've got to surround yourself with great people."

Dixon, who had been Howland's assistant at Northern Arizona, was at Hawaii. Little did he know when Howland and Pederson brought him to Pitt that he would succeed Howland when Howland left for UCLA after the 2002-03 season.

"Ben still gets as excited as we do when we win the Big East," Pederson said. "I called him Saturday night to congratulate him after he beat Xavier to get to the Final Four. Within two minutes, he was talking about the unbelievable job Jamie did this season."

Asked this week about his time at Pitt and how it prepared him for the higher-profile UCLA job, Howland said: "There's no question it was a great experience because it allowed me to coach at the highest level. No league is better than the Big East, year in, year out. I got to coach against some of the legendary coaches like coach [Jim] Boeheim and coach [Jim] Calhoun. That was good. It challenges you and makes you improve ...

"I could have easily seen myself staying in Pittsburgh for the rest of my life were it not for this opportunity."

Those who excoriated Howland for leaving Pitt never will listen to reason that goes beyond the fact that all Pitt fans should be forever grateful to him for resurrecting their program. He took less money to go to UCLA. He grew up in Southern California and coached for 12 years at Cal-Santa Barbara; the UCLA job was his dream job. He wanted to be closer to his parents, although, sadly, his father, Robert, a Presbyterian minister, died after a fall two months after his boy was hired by UCLA. And there are many more great players in California than in Pittsburgh.

For every DeJuan Blair off The Hill, there are 10 or even 20 Darren Collisons, Josh Shipps and Russell Westbrooks in the Greater Los Angeles area.

"When Ben left for UCLA, I called [athletic director] Dan Guerrero and told him, 'I don't know what your timetable is for getting to the Final Four, but Ben will get you there faster than you think possible,' " Pederson said.

It happened in Howland's third season. UCLA was beaten by Florida in the national championship game. It happened last season when Florida again beat the Bruins in the semifinals.

Now, it's happened a third time.

No one has seen any signs of Florida, have they?

Howland said this is the best of his three Final Four teams because of its experience and because of freshman star big man Kevin Love, the Pac-10 Player of the Year. Whether that's enough to get UCLA by Memphis tomorrow night and then North Carolina or Kansas Monday night remains to be seen. Only this much is certain: The pressure on UCLA is enormous to finally get that championship thing done.

"We've got to go all the way," Love said.

And if doesn't happen?

Here's hoping they don't start putting Howland's name in the same sentence with four-time Super Bowl loser Marv Levy.

"It's mind-boggling what Ben has done," said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, who knows, as well as anybody, how hard it is to just to get to a Final Four let alone win the championship. "I don't have enough adjectives, enough vocabulary, to describe it."

Let me try in closing:

Not bad for a yokel from way out West.