Bruins Reclaim Familiar Throne

“U ... C ... L ... A ... UCLA fight, fight, fight.”

UCLA basketball players haven’t heard that on the road much over the last nine years. But when you’re the champions, your fans can stand up at Maples Pavilion, wear the colors, talk the talk, clap the clap.

For the first time in nine years the Bruins are the best in the Pacific 10 Conference. “Outright,” said Coach Ben Howland. “Outright.”

Outright because the Bruins finished off a 14-4 conference season with a resounding 75-54 win over Stanford on Saturday afternoon. What started as a boisterous Cardinal celebration of accomplished seniors Matt Haryasz, Chris Hernandez, Dan Grunfeld and Jason Haas ended with a noisy bunch of Bruin fans stomping their feet in honor of the champions.

“Feels good,” said Damon Farmar, father of sophomore point guard Jordan Farmar. “Feels good.”

Since the 1944-45 season UCLA had never gone more than six years between conference titles until now. Until this nine-year period from Steve Lavin’s first year as coach in 1996-97 to now, Howland’s third year as coach.

It once was routine, hoisting those conference championship banners. It was expected, it was a birthright, it was just what happened every year, a pit stop to something more spectacular.

“This,” Cedric Bozeman said, “this is special. When I came here I didn’t think it would be. I thought I’d win more. So, yeah, this is special.”

Bozeman is UCLA’s fifth-year senior. He has six surgeries on his UCLA resume but until Saturday had no conference championship.

One knee surgery cost him his first senior season. One shoulder injury almost cost him his second. But Bozeman came back this year when it looked like he couldn’t. “Kid is playing with a torn labrum,” Howland said. “What a tough, tough kid. What adversity he’s gone through. What perseverance.”

Funny, those are also the qualities Howland listed as critical to any team that wins a conference championship.

Here are other qualities Howland listed as crucial to winning titles: consistency, stick-to-itiveness, resiliency, “and most of all,” Howland said, “good players.”

In this season the Bruins have showed Howland all those things. Through the making of four freshmen into steady contributors, through the flurry of serious injuries to key players, through the missed-chance losses to California at Pauley Pavilion and to USC when Gabe Pruitt was injured, UCLA always came back.

“I’ve been on highs and lows all my career,” Bozeman said, “and I’ve been on highs and lows this year and finally it’s all coming together and it feels so good.”

Lavin recruited Bozeman to UCLA and called the Mater Dei star “another Magic Johnson,” and that was never fair. Howland calls Bozeman “a kid who has become a quiet leader and who deserves this as much as anyone.” Bozeman proved to be less flashy than Lavin had predicted and more hard-working and fundamentally sound than Howland could have hoped.

That’s also what the Bruins are now: hard-working, fundamentally sound, not flashy.

It used to be thought that Los Angeles’ foremost college team needed to be about bright lights and big dunking. There’s something to appreciate, though, about a team that will make five, six, seven shots a game right as the shot clock expires because there is no panic and there is always time for one more pass. There’s something to admire about a team that understands about pushing for inside rebounding position and never letting up on defense.

Howland will never coach the “Showtime” Bruins. He will, instead, coach the championship Bruins.

“I know this isn’t enough for UCLA fans,” Bozeman said. “They expect a lot more. I expected a lot more, and I still expect a lot more even for this season.”

Champions can do that, expect more.

Howland threw caution to the wind and said the Bruins should get a No. 2 seeding in the NCAA tournament if they add to the regular-season title a conference tournament championship next Saturday at Staples Center. Sophomore Arron Afflalo was more circumspect, suggesting a “2 or 3 seed if we win out.”

But in November, December and January, when Farmar kept spraining his ankles and Josh Shipp was tearfully withdrawing from the season with his injured hip and Lorenzo Mata, just as he was finding his stride, broke his leg, no one was calculating what NCAA seeding UCLA might get.

Sometimes, even in this last regular-season game, Howland can drive his fans crazy by calling a timeout for no apparent reason after the Bruins just made a three-pointer. Fans want to howl when senior center Ryan Hollins carefully puts the ball on the floor when he could have had a dunk.

But then the Bruins score on just about every out-of-bounds play -- an open three-pointer from Arron Afflalo, a layup for Luc Richard Mbah a Moute -- or hold Stanford’s two leading scorers (Haryasz and Hernandez) to a combined one point in the first half by playing hands-up, feet-moving, chest-to-chest, man-to-man defense.

“I like the way we play now,” Bozeman said. “It feels good.”

Spoken like a champion.