Bruins Will Try to Keep Cal Winless at Pauley

The last time UCLA’s basketball team played Cal, the Bruins’ 52-game winning streak over the Bears came to an abrupt halt.

Cal fans rushed onto the court to celebrate as the nets were cut down. The mob in Berkeley chanted, “Louie! Louie!” in honor of first-year coach Lou Campanelli. And there was champagne in the locker room.

No one needs to remind the UCLA team of that scene as the Bruins prepare to play Cal tonight at 7:30 at Pauley Pavilion.

Coach Walt Hazzard said: “I think we have enough incentive. But we definitely will not have champagne on ice.

“For us, this is another conference game that we need to win. We have a chance to end this season on the right note.”

UCLA has records of 11-10 overall and 6-6 in the Pacific 10, and is in a three-way tie for fourth place going into the game with Cal, which has an overall record of 15-7 and is alone in third place with a conference record of 7-5.

So UCLA will be playing tonight for a share of third place. And Cal has never won a game at Pauley Pavilion.

Hazzard said, “I don’t think this race is over, by any stretch of the imagination.”

UCLA matches up well with Cal. The Bears’ tallest starter is 6-9 center Dave Butler. But it was Butler who scored 23 points in Cal’s 75-67 victory at Berkeley Jan. 25.

Bruin Notes Tonight’s game at UCLA at 7:30 will be televised by Prime Ticket, delayed until 9 p.m. It will be broadcast live on KMPC. . . . UCLA is coming off two losses on the road, at Arizona and at Arizona State. Cal is coming off an 81-53 victory over Stanford. . . . Bruin forward Kelvin Butler, a 6-7 sophomore who has been out since Jan. 11 with a torn abdominal muscle, practiced Wednesday. . . . Reggie Miller continues to rank No. 4 in the nation in scoring with an average of 25.3 points a game. That would rank him third on UCLA’s list of single-season scorers, behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 29 in 1967 and 26.2 in 1968. . . . Freshman guard Pooh Richardson continues to lead the Pac-10 in assists with 6.8 a game. . . . Craig Jackson is playing much better now that he has been moved from center back to forward. At Arizona State, before fouling out in regulation, Jackson had 11 points and 15 rebounds. . . . Asked if he had been taking grief from many Cal alums since the loss at Berkeley, Coach Walt Hazzard said: “I don’t know many Cal alums.” . . . J.R. Reid, a 6-10 top-level recruit from Virginia Beach, Va., will attend UCLA’s game tonight as a part of his official visit to the school. . . . Last season, UCLA went into the NIT with a record of 16-12. UCLA’s chances of getting into the NCAA tournament with anything less than that are slim. As defending champion, though, UCLA might be invited back to the NIT with less than that. But Hazzard said, “I would have something to say in that decision, and if we had anything below our record last year, I’d have to think very hard about it.”