For Crum, a Get-Well Win, 91-72 : Louisville Coach Out With Flu but Calls In a Victory Over UCLA

Louisville Coach Denny Crum directed quite an impressive 91-72 victory over UCLA Saturday afternoon. Too bad he couldn’t have been here.

Crum, who had been suffering from the flu all week, was not well enough to join the 19,384 fans at Freedom Hall. He joined the national television audience instead and sent in his plays and opinions over a telephone hookup.

Trainer Jerry May sat in Crum’s spot on the bench, wearing a headset and passing on what Crum had to say to his aides.

Assistant coach Jerry Jones did most of the pacing and yelling on the sideline. Assistant coaches Wade Houston and Bobby Dotson met with the press after the game.

So who gets credit for the victory that improved Louisville’s record to 13-6?

“The team gets the credit,” Dotson said. “It’s like any other time. The coaches only get credit for a loss.”

Dotson said that Crum did call some plays and did suggest some substitutions. But most of the time, the assistants had already made the same calls. “We’ve all been together long enough by now that we think a lot alike,” Dotson said.

Houston added: “Of course, if we didn’t like a play he was calling in, we pretended we didn’t hear him.”

UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard conceded that the Bruins, who dropped to 9-8, simply were beaten by a better team.

Louisville is more experienced, bigger, taller, deeper--and was playing at home.

Still, Hazzard said: “I don’t like being beaten by a coach who’s not even here.”

It wasn’t really a coach’s game, anyway. There were no last-minute strategies or tricky matchups. It was, as Hazzard pointed out, a question of a depleted Bruin team being overmatched in a game against a very good Louisville team.

Said Hazzard: “I would compare the talent they had on the floor today to the talent we faced at North Carolina.”

Or as Bruin forward Reggie Miller put it: “They had a lot of horses. They have a good bench. They outsized us and just physically beat us up on the boards. . . .

“It’s in their favor. They could take out their top players and still have good players coming in. We have only like six guys, really. At the end, when we’ve played 40 minutes and they’ve played something like 30, that takes its toll.”

UCLA was in the game at halftime. Louisville had led by seven points with just more than a minute to play in the half when Miller (who led the Bruins with 25 points) made a jump shot from the right of the key. And when Louisville’s Herbert Crook traveled with a rebound at his end of the court with five seconds to play in the half, UCLA’s Pooh Richardson raced to the other end to put up a 22-footer that beat the buzzer and had the Bruins within three at 41-38.

UCLA came within a point early in the second half when Jerald Jones scored on a follow-up shot, but Louisville started taking advantage of its inside game to break the game open.

Louisville senior forward Billy Thompson scored three of the Cardinals’ first four baskets in the second half, all from in close. The other was by 6-11 freshman center Pervis Ellison, who made a nifty hesitation move and ducked under the defense of Craig Jackson to reach up and put in the bank shot.

Hazzard said: “They got a little taller at halftime. They went inside almost at will.”

UCLA was within four points after Miller’s 12-footer with 15:59 left on the game clock, but Louisville ran off nine straight points to lead, 60-47, and the rout was on.

UCLA called a timeout and put in a 2-3 zone at that point, only to have Louisville guard Milt Wagner make his first shot from the top of the key and Louisville guard Jeff Hall make his from the corner.

Louisville was in control and on its way to a 20-point lead.

Besides finding all the right shots (all five starters scored in double figures), Louisville was doing a good job in the second half of taking away UCLA’s strengths.

Richardson, who scored six points in the first half and passed out eight assists--handing Jackson several sure field goals--was double-teamed and trapped throughout the second half. Richardson had three more points and one more assist in the second half, and Jackson had just one more field goal to finish with 13 points.

Miller continued to find a way to get his points. But Bruin guard Montel Hatcher’s four-game shooting slump continued. Hatcher made just 2 of 9 from the field, missing even his layups, and finished with six points.

The longer Hatcher’s slump continues, the more the Bruins miss guard Corey Gaines, who missed his fourth straight game with a hip pointer.

The Bruins also are missing the strong inside play of forward Kelvin Butler, who is out with a torn abdominal muscle.

Given the kind of shape the Bruins are in, they’d have had to play almost a flawless game to win. But they were far from flawless, and Richardson even lost his temper a couple of times when his teammates tipped away one of his hot passes or lined up for the wrong play.

In complimenting Louisville, Hazzard said: “They have great players who play together. I was really impressed by their team effort. I hope that one day on down the road you’ll be saying the same things about us.”

Bruin Notes

Louisville Coach Denny Crum, who missed two practices last week with the flu, called his coaches at 9:30 Saturday morning to say that he couldn’t make it to the game. . . . Kevin Walls, a redshirt freshman for Louisville, returned to practice Friday for the first time in a week and was on the bench for the game against UCLA. He had even skipped Louisville’s game Tuesday night as he considered quitting the team. He has been unhappy about a lack of playing time. Even Walls’ high school coach, Clarence Turner, got in on the uproar by criticizing Crum and saying that he would sever the “Camden (N.J.) Connection” that has sent Louisville Walls, Billy Thompson and Milt Wagner, all from the same high school. . . . UCLA center Jack Haley had another solid game, coming off the bench to score 10 points and grab five rebounds. . . . The Bruins are now 1-6 on the road and 0-3 on national network TV. . . . Bruin forward Reggie Miller, who is averaging 24.8 points a game, ranked No. 4 in the country in scoring last week. . . . Guard Montel Hatcher has made just 8 of 39 field goals in the last four games.