Hazzard Shows His Own Type of Whiz at UCLA : Coach, Riding Crest of a Bruin Surge, Has a Style That Seems to Be Working

What do you suppose is the punch line to this? One of Walt Hazzard’s best friends is a comedian.

Take my point guard. Please. Bill Cosby, a man in direct contact with the funny bone, judging by the Nielsen ratings, is a Philadelphia guy like Hazzard, the UCLA coach not especially noted for his humor. They get together whenever their schedules permit.

Do they share a laugh about those silly zone defenses? Does Hazzard tell the joke about the traveling Reebok salesman? Or do they swap one-liners?

My center is on a seafood diet. When he sees food, he eats it. So it came as no surprise to Hazzard when he received a Christmas gift from Cosby. Hazzard, whose Bruins had lost four straight games, got three boxes of cigars from Cosby, along with the message: “You need these.”

Apparently, he did because UCLA has not lost a game since. The Bruins (9-4), who will risk their 4-2 Pacific 10 record tonight at Pauley Pavilion against Oregon, have won six straight.

Which brings up an intriguing question: Are the Bruins really back?

A lot of people figured the Bruins were back when they dropped top-ranked North Carolina Dec. 1. As it turned out, that conclusion was a mite premature. In the next 26 days, the Bruins won only once more, and Hazzard had problems busting loose all over.

He suspended four players for a Pac-10 game at Washington after they had broken a training rule, and the next day, another player bolted the team for six days. Then Hazzard made changes in his starting lineup that were not well received by the two players moved out of it.

Through it all, though, the Bruins have somehow resumed winning and Hazzard has prospered on the hot seat that has been part of the UCLA coaching tradition since John Wooden left 12 years ago.

“I’ve tried to mature. I’ve tried to grow,” Hazzard said. “I’m trying to learn. I’m trying to improve. There’s a lot of responsibility here.”

This is Hazzard’s third season on the job, and next season is scheduled to be the last under his contract, which pays him a base salary of $50,000, the same as UCLA women’s coach Billie Moore.

“I’ll never be wealthy here,” Hazzard said.

He does, however, have a chance at a record for UCLA coaches of the post-Wooden era. None of the four other coaches who followed Wooden lasted as long as four years. Not Gene Bartow, not Gary Cunningham, not Larry Brown and not Larry Farmer. Bartow, Cunningham and Brown each stayed for two years, and Farmer coached for three.

There were, and may still be, those who did not think Hazzard would last for the length of his contract. Others among his critics believed him to be a poor choice in the first place.

But right now, Hazzard is riding a crest of success with a UCLA team that, for the first time, has in key roles players whom Hazzard recruited and did not inherit.

Although the core of the Bruins is still Reggie Miller, who was recruited by Farmer, and although Montel Hatcher, also a Farmer recruit, still plays a key role, Hazzard brought Pooh Richardson in to play point guard. And it is Hazzard who is mixing in freshmen Trevor Wilson, Greg Foster and Kevin Walker.

The ledger on Hazzard shows that his teams are in good condition and that he has a knack for making the proper substitutions in critical times, as he showed when he used Craig Jackson down the stretch at Arizona in the game that Jackson won with a last-second jump shot.

At the same time, Hazzard’s teams are often confused when playing zone defense or when they face changing defenses, which is what happened at Temple when Hazzard admitted afterward that he had been out-coached by John Chaney.

Hazzard has his detractors among his peers in the Pac-10, principally Lute Olson at Arizona, but he also has made up with Cal Coach Lou Campanelli after a disagreement and enjoys a good relationship with Oregon State’s Ralph Miller, one of college basketball’s most respected coaches.

“I really don’t care about being liked,” Hazzard said. “All I want is to be respected as a man.”

So Walt Hazzard continues to work beneath those 10 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship banners that were hung from the rafters of Pauley Pavilion during 12 years of the Wooden era. The Hazzard era, which produced an NIT banner in its first year, has a style of its own.

Hazzard is fond of Turkish coffee, English cigarettes and Cosby’s cigars.

He likes to watch basketball games on the television set in his bedroom with the sound turned down, a cigar in his mouth and a be-bop record on the turntable.

He can quote from such divergent sources as Slappy White, the 20th-Century comedian, or Nietzsche, the 19th-Century German philosopher.

“Things haven’t been easy for us this year, but you know, ‘That which does not destroy us makes us stronger,’ ” Hazzard said.

Of course, Hazzard could quote from Bugs Bunny as long as UCLA continues to win. That is the legacy left by Wooden, who doesn’t necessarily believe it’s a bad one.

Before each home game, Hazzard walks over to where Wooden is sitting and shakes his hand.

Hazzard was the point guard on Wooden’s first NCAA championship team in 1964. Now, 23 years later, the newest UCLA coach regularly asks the old UCLA coach to share his thoughts.

Wooden said he isn’t a back-seat coach. He is only a spectator and he never, ever, coaches from the stands.

“I’m on leave from that,” Wooden said. “I have no desire to second-guess. Having been through it, I know the coach who sees his team every day in practice knows more than the coach in the stands, the announcers, the fans and the writers.

“I will give opinions, but I wouldn’t give advice.”

It is Wooden’s opinion that none of the other UCLA coaches who followed him has suffered any kind of hardship because of what he accomplished.

“I don’t believe anyone who came into coaching at UCLA has been in a difficult situation,” Wooden said. “I don’t think they had a difficult time at all. If they didn’t have us to compare to, then they wouldn’t have Pauley Pavilion, they wouldn’t have the same draw, and players wouldn’t want to come.

“It was winning two national championships that attracted Alcindor to UCLA,” Wooden said, referring to center Lew Alcindor, now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

There were eight more NCAA titles that followed, but none since Wooden, known as the Wizard of Westwood, retired after the 1975 season.

“The program hasn’t been terrible, as some people would believe,” Wooden said. “You hear so much talk about the UCLA program going down, but the only thing they haven’t done is win a national championship.”

It is also Wooden’s opinion that Hazzard’s Bruins are getting better.

“I think I’ve seen improvement,” Wooden said. “They needed to win on the road. Unfortunately, people got carried away because of the win over North Carolina, but they didn’t take into consideration the fact that North Carolina was coming back from five days in Hawaii.

“Under those conditions, to say ‘We’re No. 1,’ which they did, does not make sense. But now, after having won on the road, I think they’re a much stronger team.

“Hazzard has them blending together, and they’re playing a little more together and not relying on Reggie Miller as much. That’s good for the team.

“I think they lost confidence when they lost four straight on the road, and I think Hazzard should be very, very careful. A coach should never tell a team how difficult it is to win on the road. All you tell a team is to go out and play your game.

“Yes, the calls may be different, such as in the East where three-seconds and technicalities will be called, or in the Midwest, the Big Ten, which is more physical and teams are permitted to use more blocks and that gives the advantage to the offensive man.

“I would tell them that to prepare them. I would tell them to play their basketball game. But I would never tell them how tough it is on the road.”

So how tough is it to win on the road, Walt?

“Extremely tough,” he said.

But what was it like Sunday in McKale Center at Tucson when you came from 13 points down with 6 minutes to go and beat Arizona at the buzzer?

“It was so quiet, you could hear an ant crawl,” he said.

Not a bad one-liner for a coach, especially at UCLA, where the coaches haven’t been noted for their knee-slappers in the last decade.

But right now, even though it is six games into the conference season and still awfully early, the public perception of Hazzard’s coaching appears to be helped by the success of his team. Not surprisingly, since they are so closely linked, Hazzard likes what he sees of his team.

“I still say our best days are ahead of us,” he said.

If they are, then so are Hazzard’s. At UCLA, there is always fallout from the basketball program. And that’s been the real punch line for every coach since 1976.