UCLA, Still at Home, Plays Washington St.

If the Pacific 10 Conference basketball race turns out the way UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard predicts, the Bruins can still afford a couple of more slip-ups, so long as they’re not at home and so long as they don’t start happening today.

The Bruins, who are 6-3 in the Pac-10, close out their most favorable home stretch of the season when they play the Washington State Cougars at 3 p.m. in Pauley Pavilion.

Hazzard considers the matchup to be the most vital game of the season. He also expects it to remain the most vital game until UCLA plays again. That would be Thursday night at Stanford and next Saturday afternoon at Cal, at which point the Bruins will have ended a 14-game span in which 10 of the games were played at home. On the road, UCLA is 2-4.

Neither Stanford nor Cal would appear to be any easier to beat than the 6-12 Cougars, who are 2-7 in the Pac-10 and haven’t won a conference game since Dec. 20, when they defeated USC in Pullman. The night before, Washington State beat the Bruins, 81-73.

Both the Cougars and the Bruins are coming off defeats. Washington State lost, 66-37, at USC Thursday night, the same night UCLA had its nine-game winning streak snapped by Washington, 95-87, in a game that equalled the second-highest number of points ever scored against a Bruin team at Pauley Pavilion. DePaul had 99 points in a five-point victory during the 1979-80 season, and Cal had 95 points in a 14-point loss in the 1969-70 season.

Hazzard pointed out that the Huskies benefited from the number of times they went to the free-throw line, where they outscored UCLA, 35-16, and by the fact that they attempted 48 free throws to UCLA’s 16. The Bruins were whistled for 33 personal fouls.

“There were a lot of free throws shot against us,” Hazzard said. “There were a lot of fouls called, but that’s just the way it goes sometimes.”

Equally damaging to the Bruins was the fact that they were outrebounded, 53-37. Reggie Miller led the Bruins with eight rebounds, and once again 6-foot 1-inch point guard Pooh Richardson was right behind the leader with seven. Richardson shot only 4 for 13 but had 10 assists and 5 steals. He and Miller were the only factors for UCLA in the game.

Hazzard said the Bruins must defeat Washington State to keep some kind of momentum going.

“We need to win this game because it’s a home game,” he said. “We have to try to find some way to split on the road and win all the home games. It looks like the (Pac-10) champion is going to have five or six losses.”

Bruin Notes

The game will be telecast on Channel 2. . . . UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard, who said he will keep the same starting lineup, said the Bruins haven’t seen Washington State play since the Cougars beat UCLA in the Pacific-10 opener for both teams. . . . Reggie Miller keeps moving up the UCLA career scoring list. His 32 points against Washington moved him past David Greenwood and put him only 18 points behind Bill Walton, whose 1,767 points are second only to the 2,325 scored by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he played as Lew Alcindor. Miller’s scoring average is 21.5, which is a decrease of more than four points a game from last season, but Miller isn’t worried. “By the end of the season, it’s going to be up to 25 or 26,” he said. “That’s just me.” Miller, shooting only 36% from the three-point line, isn’t concerned about that, either. “It’s going to go up,” he said. “There are still a lot of games to be played.”