The Day After: That’s How Hazzard Feels : UCLA Coach Is Still Upset Over the Loss and the Technical Fouls

Friday afternoon, the day after the Trojans’ new Basketball Game of the Decade(s), two USC volleyball players strolled through Pauley Pavilion, getting ready for a tournament there. “Scene of the crime,” said one, looking around, smiling. “Scene of the crime.”

UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard had already taken the precaution of ejecting every other Trojan volleyball player he’d found in his gym, reminding them this was a closed practice.

The night before, his Bruins had lost in four overtimes to another group of Trojans, 80-78. Pauley, sold out for the first time this season, saw Trojan fans dancing in the Bruin shrine with raised brooms, saluting their first sweep in this series since 1942. Hazzard was in no mood to smile at Trojans.

Thursday’s game ended when UCLA’s Dave Immel missed two free throws with :10 left in the fourth overtime. Then USC guard Larry Friend scorched his way through a Bruin defense that back-pedalled too slowly to prevent him from finding a wide-open Charlie Simpson for the winning layup.

Hazzard then angrily followed Charlie Range’s refereeing crew off the floor. Range had called two technicals fouls, one on Hazzard, one on Nigel Miguel, worth three USC points, all in regulation. Regulation ended, of course, tied, 64-64.

“I just had a few words for the referees,” Hazzard said Friday. “I tried to be as polite as I could.”

And the technicals? UCLA lost another game in overtime, at Washington State, after a Reggie Miller technical gave the Cougars an extra three points in regulation.

“I didn’t think I deserved a T,” Hazzard said. “I dropped the ball instead of giving it to him.”

Hazzard also said late Thursday night that the Trojans had “lucked out,” and that USC had beaten UCLA for “hopefully the last time as long as I’m coaching here.”

USC Coach Stan Morrison: “Absolutely, I understand. I didn’t receive those remarks as derogatory or demeaning. He’s probably right. At that point, it takes some luck.”

It was the best of games, it was the worst of games, and in this series, it was surely the longest of games. It all but made USC’s season and all but ended UCLA’s.

Almost forgotten in the events of the final minute, were the events of the first 59.

Wayne Carlander, held to 5 for 13 by Miguel in their last meeting, went 14 for 19 this time and scored a career-high 38 points. The rest of the Trojans shot 11 for 35.

Had Carlander tired of reading about what Miguel had done to him?

“Well, perhaps,” Morrison said. “He’s an awfully proud guy. If that was the case, he never said a word to anyone, which would be very typical of him.”

The man Carlander was trying to guard, Reggie Miller, shot 9 for 15 and scored 20 points. Miller beat Carlander twice in the first half on the same back-door move for layups. With Carlander out of the game, Miller burned Ron Holmes a third time in the half on the same play.

Then Holmes burned Miller twice in a row on the same play for layups in the second half, on two lobs from Carlander.

Holmes and Miller confronted each other even more directly, after Holmes belted Miller, who was well on his way to a solo dunk. Miller got to his feet first and stepped right over Holmes, yelling down at him. Holmes tried to scramble to his feet but was dragged away by Miguel.

Holmes may have been irritated by the Bruins who twice pulled him down on breakaways. On the one by Corey Gaines, Holmes took a hard fall into the basket support.

Gaines, the Bruin reserve who hadn’t even played in the first meeting, twice tied this game. The first time, he hit a 12-foot jumper over Friend with :01 left in regulation. Then he scored on a rebound with :12 left in overtime No. 3 to produce overtime No. 4.

The Bruins had their last lead with 3:30 left in the first half. They never led again in the subsequent 43 minutes of basketball, but they managed to hang in.

Bruin center Brad Wright became dehydrated and left the game in the first overtime with cramps. He was taken to the dressing room but returned midway through the second, like Willis Reed limping to the rescue against the Lakers in the 1969-70 NBA finals.

“It was like a total body cramp,” Wright said. “First my right leg went. Then my left said, ‘that looks like fun, I’ll do it, too.’

“They took me in the dressing room and threw me totally in ice. I thought the game was over. Then I heard the crowd cheering and I thought I’d try to go back. But I couldn’t run out there.”

Morrison: “Fatigue really takes its toll late in a game like that. We had Larry (Friend) at the line in the second overtime. He’d made 9 of 10 and he shot an airball! And it was long enough. It just wasn’t straight. The guys were really kidding him about it at practice today.

“Vince Lombardi used to have a saying, ‘Fatigue makes cowards of us all.’ I don’t think there were any cowards out there, but there were some tired players.”

And Miller failed to rotate back to Simpson on the last play.

Hazzard: “He could have. We always say, you close down the basket first. Friend made a good play.”

Miller: “I started out toward Friend. It looked like he was going to take a shot.”

The Trojans must play a meaningless game Sunday at Texas. They’ll finish their Pacific 10 schedule in games Thursday and Saturday in the Sports Arena, against Oregon and Oregon State. They have a one-game lead over second-place Arizona. Their magic number is two.

Morrison: “I told the kids, if I need to play the first five 40 minutes at Texas, I’ll do it. Today’s practice was a little different. I didn’t suit out our first six guys.”

The Bruins play Arizona this morning in a game that won’t be as important as they’d hoped.

If UCLA wins, it will clinch a first-place tie for the Trojans, though. It would be a far, far better thing the Bruins would be doing for USC basketball than anything they’d ever done before.

Notes

Dave Immel, who had just finished blocking a Wayne Carlander shot from behind, stealing the ball from Glenn Smith and drawing the foul, on his missed free throws: “The first one was in and out. I think I lost a little concentration on the second, but it happens. I felt bad about it. . . . The pressure here is tremendous. I can’t say I’ve ever experienced anything like it, but I’ll have to learn to deal with it. It happens. I feel all right, to tell you the truth. I know I can’t please everybody.”