UCLA Will Make It Without Tom Lewis

Last season, a blue-chip basketball prospect went to Arizona because UCLA didn’t enter the NIT. Now Tom Lewis, through his alter ego, says he’s not going to play at UCLA because the school didn’t send someone to watch him play (an all-star game) in Pittsburgh last week. That, and the fact that they’re not going to make his high school coach a college coach as a payoff.

Tom Lewis ought to be forced to spend a couple of years at 5-7 just so he’d get a true picture of his worth as a human being. He might even find that other people like him, regardless of his scoring ability. As it stands, his ego seems to have expanded beyond that of normal men. Strange, isn’t it, when overgrown 18-year-olds can get grown men to grovel.

I hope that Walt Hazzard reminds people next year that, although he would have loved to have Tom Lewis, the terms were just too high. We’ve got a grownup coaching at UCLA, and I trust he’ll do just fine with Craig Jackson, Reggie Miller, Montel Hatcher, etc., next year.

STAN TAYLOR

Sacramento