1967-68 UCLA BRUINS

Was there a precise point in time when UCLA set the gold standard for college basketball excellence? Was it John Wooden’s first NCAA championship season, when his 1963-64 Bruins went 30-0 despite having no starter taller than 6 feet 5 inches?

Was it 1966-67, when a sophomore named Lew Alcindor made his college basketball debut and by the time introductions were done, Wooden had his second 30-0 season?

Or either of UCLA’s perfect seasons in the early 1970s, when the Bill Walton-led Bruins went 30-0 in 1971-72 and repeated the feat in 1972-73, on their way to a record winning streak that would reach 88 before Notre Dame finally ended it in January 1974?

It is tough to improve on perfection, yet perfection might not have been able to improve on UCLA’s 29-1 season of 1967-68.

“It would be hard to pick a team over the 1968 team,” Wooden is quoted as saying in the Total Basketball encyclopedia. “I will say it would be the most difficult team to prepare for and play against offensively and defensively. It created so many problems. It had such great balance.

“We had the big center [Alcindor] who is the most valuable player of all time. Mike Warren was a three-year starter who may have been the most intelligent floor leader ever. Lucius Allen was a very physical, talented individual who was extremely quick. Lynn Shackleford was a great shooter out of the corner who didn’t allow defenses to sag on Jabbar. Mike Lynn didn’t have power, but he had as fine a pair of hands around the boards as I have ever seen.”

The caliber of that team was defined by its two games against the University of Houston and eventual Hall of Famer Elvin Hayes.

UCLA had won 47 consecutive games when the No. 1 Bruins played the No. 2 Cougars in a regular-season game on Jan. 20, 1968. Advertised as “the Game of the Century,” the matchup attracted a record 52,693 to the Astrodome and was the first college basketball game to be nationally televised.

Alcindor played despite an eye injury and managed only 15 points. Hayes scored 29 points in the first half, finished with 39, and Houston prevailed, 71-69, to replace UCLA atop the rankings.

UCLA avenged the defeat in an NCAA tournament semifinal. Wooden devised a diamond-and-one defense, with Shackleford assigned to cover Hayes, and the strategy resulted in a rout. Hayes scored only 10 points and the Bruins won, 101-69.

The championship was the second in a streak of seven for UCLA. That is a standard that appears impossible to beat, a gold standard that never glowed brighter than the achievement of a once-beaten team that made its mark 40 years ago.

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christine.daniels@latimes.com