All knees are all right after bang-bang play

It was a bad collision, two centers smacking knee-to-knee.

Senior Lorenzo Mata-Real tried to strip Kevin Love of the ball as the freshman drove to the basket. Knees hit and some 500 pounds of UCLA post players collapsed on the floor at Pauley Pavilion on Tuesday afternoon.

As Coach Ben Howland broke the silence by yelling, “Let’s go to the other end,” Love was tended to by three trainers who massaged his right knee. Love eventually got up and rejoined practice for about five minutes, but soon he was on the sidelines, his right knee wrapped in an ice bag.

Love angrily tossed a roll of tape, put his head in his hands and then drained a three-pointer -- the role of tape knocked neatly into a trash can about 20 feet away.

Love, the prized freshman center whose well-praised offensive skills have made UCLA a favorite to win an NCAA title this year, has weathered a series of bumps, bruises and crater-like scratches in UCLA’s first 14 practices, but even Love felt a nervous tremor when he hit the floor Tuesday.

“It’s tough when you bang knees,” Love said. “It’s different from when I kept banging my calf. When you bang knees that really hurts. It’s tough.”

But Love also said he was fine, had no intention of having an X-ray -- “It’s funny,” he said. “Every little ding I get they want me to have an MRI. If I have a tissue fall on me I have to get an MRI” -- and he said he sat out the final 20 minutes of practice because he doesn’t want to miss UCLA’s exhibition game Friday against Azusa Pacific.

“It’s just physical college ball,” Love said. “I’m a big guy, I’m going to get beat up in there. I just have to build up that scar tissue.”

Howland not only allowed media to attend a second preseason practice Tuesday, fans were also allowed to watch and some gasped when Love and Mata-Real went down.

“Whenever one of my teammates goes down I worry,” Mata-Real said. “We need every single one to help us out, especially Kevin.”

On what happened, Mata-Real said, “I was trying to not let him score.”

Love didn’t.

Other practice snapshots:

Sophomore guard Russell Westbrook arrived at Pauley with a new haircut, a “flame-hawk,” Westbrook called it. A flame-hawk is your traditional mohawk with a flaming basketball on the right side.

Howland said he had no advance knowledge of Westbrook’s new style.

Point guard Darren Collison’s take was that on a team full of well-known players, “Russell is trying to get a little more notice.”

Not the case, said Westbrook. “I was thinking about this for two or three weeks,” he said. “I just had to wait for my barber to be around.”

In most five-on-five drills Tuesday, Collison played point guard; junior Michael Roll played shooting guard with Josh Shipp and Luc Richard Mbah a Moute at forward and Love at center.

They played against Westbrook (at the point), freshman Chace Stanback (at the second guard), Nikola Dragovic and Alfred Aboya at forward and Mata-Real at center.

“The lineup is not set,” Howland said.

Collison said the lineup was fluid, changing nearly every day in practice.

Would this be the starting five Friday? “I don’t even know,” Collison said. “Coach doesn’t give us that information.”

“We mix up teams every day in practice,” Mbah a Moute said. “That just happens to be today’s team.”

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diane.pucin@latimes.com