That's UCLA posturing, Chase would've played for the Bruins as the thing he does well (offense) only came here and there for last year's Bruins. You don't think Howland would've loved bringing Chase off the bench whenever Arron Afflalo did his normal disappearing act against a good defender?
My question as to why Howland recruited him was because Chase is not a Howland player. He's doesn't play defense and is not very physical and this has been known since high school. He went to Arizona because at that point Ben Howland had never produced an impact NBA player where Lute's track record speaks for itself. No matter how vital defense is, NBA GM's still look at the ability to put the ball in the basket over everything else and at Arizona you'll learn how to get that done at the NBA level.
The posts were on a UA board and allegedly from Trent Suzuki so it wasn't UCLA posturing. Most UCLA fans laughed, of course Ben would have played him, he wouldn't have recruited him that heavily if he didn't think he could play for him?
The UCLA posturing was always that Chase chose UA because he didn't want to play defense and knew he could get away with it at UA not UCLA. My take on that was always if that was true, why even consider UCLA? I'm sure he liked the volleyball situation and I'm sure like Love, he realized defense was his weakness and Howland could help him with it. In the end I think he chose UA because he felt their style of offense suited him better, Howland was playing a lot of half court sets and he wanted to run. UCLA has opened it up this year.
I would have loved to have Chase, still wish he was a Bruin, but it is true he's a soft player. I just think the alleged Suzuki posts were comical, they were basically saying UCLA's primary target last year was a guy Howland never planned to play? We haven't reached the point yet where UCLA can recruit kids just to make sure they don't go to a competitor, Ben recruits kids he wants.