Keating was basically the good cop to Howland's bad cop to the players and most of the people who dealt with the program - Howland is, I still think, basically a good and hardworking person, but an asshole, and Keating helped keep him in check and really helped with the ego management portion of running a team. The 08 team after that carried over a ton of older players still did well (that was the Love & Westbrook Final Four team) but the ego management started to fray that year, and it really fell apart after that.

Part of the reason I take the BRO basketball stuff with a pound of salt is cause of their continued employment of Greg Hicks, who has really close ties to the Pumps, and was one of the first people to push the idea that guys like Kendall Williams "weren't Pac-10 players" and I believe at the time said that it wasn't a big loss. Nevermind that his program was basically built on guys like that to begin with (underrated bruisers like Luc, Mata, Aboya, even Afflalo sorta falls into that even if he was a McD's AA guy). Howland really fucked him his AAU relationships which is why he had to really try and make it up with some of his assistant coach hires.

Throw in his on court inflexibility and it was all down hill the last few years.