UCLA’S WALKER, FOSTER AND WILSON : 3 Baby Bruins Have Helped Team Grow

It’s practice, and UCLA’s basketball team is working on a fast-break drill. Charles Rochelin takes a pass thrown half the length of the court and dribbles a couple of times to get his footwork into the proper dunking rhythm.

At the other end of the court, Greg Foster yells something at Rochelin.

“Freak it, Chuck.”

Freak it? Of course. Foster seemed surprised that his instructions needed an explanation.

“I just meant for him to get freaky, man,” Foster said. “ Freak the dunk.”

Come again?

“You know, do it like this,” Foster said, changing the ball from one hand to the other, then simulating a reverse dunk.

Oh, that “Freak it”!

Rochelin was born in Haiti and has also lived in New York, Montreal and Toronto, which means he has doubtlessly been exposed to enough languages that something like “Freak it, Chuck” doesn’t sound at all foreign to him.

But for at least one person, it was open to interpretation.

“These kids have a language I don’t understand,” Coach Walt Hazzard said, shaking his head.

Whatever language the kids at UCLA are speaking, people are hearing Foster and Trevor Wilson and Kevin Walker loud and clear right now.

“They’ve really had an impact, although it’s not a surprising one,” said Arizona Coach Lute Olson, who tried to recruit all three of UCLA’s freshman class of Foster, Wilson and Walker--three of the reasons why UCLA is 21-6.

Lump the three of them together, and add them to a Bruin team that returned virtually intact after last season’s 15-14 record, and their influence on UCLA seems dramatic. There are other quality freshmen in the Pacific 10 this season--Gary Payton at Oregon State, Bryant Walton at Cal, Mark Becker at Arizona State and Bob Erbst at USC--but they’re not together as they are at UCLA.

“Far and away, they’re the best group of freshmen in the league,” Olson said. “No one else is even close.”

Said Washington State Coach Len Stevens: “They’d be starting for most of the teams in the conference.”

So why is it that none of them can start for UCLA? Hazzard said from the beginning of fall practice that he would bring them along slowly and he has done that.

Of course, Hazzard never needed to make any lineup changes involving the freshmen, because the Bruins lost only two games after Christmas.

But if there was a freshmen starter in their future, most figured that Foster would be the first to get into the starting lineup to replace Jack Haley. Foster did, too.

“I think about that a lot, and I’m hurt I’m not starting as I had planned,” Foster said. “But Jack has done well, we’re winning and like they say: ‘If the machine’s not broken, don’t fix it.’ ”

With three new parts to the machine, the Bruins have gone from being the thinnest team in the Pacific 10 to the deepest. In fact, they’re so deep that Walker, the best shooter of the freshmen, played more than 10 minutes only once in 27 games this season.

“I always knew I fit in, I just didn’t know where . . . or when,” Walker said. “For me, for all of us, it’s been a definite growing experience.”

Walker, who is 6 feet 10 inches, has grown upwards all right, but at 218 pounds he could probably stand to grow sideways a lot more. Since he’s tall, though, Walker takes up a lot of space. The same is true for Foster, who is 6-11, and Wilson, who is 6-8, 210 and not the type of person you want to mess with on the court.

When the Bruins were in Corvallis, Ore., to play Oregon State before a sellout crowd and with the Pac-10 lead on the line, a group of Beaver fans jeered Wilson during the national anthem. Wilson responded with a hand gesture, possibly ordering a table for one. He was smiling.

“I love fans, whether they’re for me or against me,” Wilson said. “I don’t care.”

Two days later at Eugene, Ore., Wilson was in the middle of a fight that broke out near the end of a UCLA blowout when Foster charged into Duck guard Rick Osborn. Wilson said later that he hadn’t seen any punches thrown.

“But I close my eyes when I swing,” he said.

It’s Foster, however, who looks as though he needs an attitude adjustment. He has a tattoo on his left biceps and a scowl on his face. But Foster said that he isn’t being read right, that he is being misinterpreted.

“I act like that when I’m having a poor performance,” he said. “I’m a very emotional player. I know I can be playing better. It’s just really frustrating to me sometimes.”

Walker didn’t exactly act like Mr. Cool either when he got upset with himself early in the season because he had missed a shot.

“He’d turn his back on the world, kick his foot and take a bite out of the air,” Hazzard said.

Like Foster, Walker seems to have changed. Instead of slapping his hands after missing a shot, he is simply making the shot. Against Oregon, Walker had 11 points in 7 minutes and had a 3-point basket within his first 30 seconds.

Each of the freshmen had his moment for Hazzard during the regular season, even though none of them have had much time to find it. Wilson played more than the others, an average of 19 minutes a game. He has averaged 6.0 points and 4.8 rebounds but committed 56 turnovers, second high on the team. Foster averaged 12 minutes, 3.1 points, 2.7 rebounds and shot 47.4% (only 34% in Pac-10 games). Walker averaged only 5 minutes, 2.5 points and 1 rebound.

Wilson finished the regular season with 129 rebounds, only five behind team leader Pooh Richardson and three behind Reggie Miller.

Said Stevens: “How many of us in the conference have a freshman like Trevor Wilson coming off the bench?”

Hazzard is the only one, which is why that he doesn’t get upset when Wilson turns the ball over as he is sometimes prone to do.

“He gets called for traveling because no one expects a guy that big (to be) moving so quick,” Hazzard said. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a guy that with size and that kind of speed.”

But Wilson said if he were grading himself, he’d get a C plus or a B.

“I thought I’d score a lot more,” Wilson said. “But we have all the scorers in the world with Reggie and Montel (Hatcher) and (Dave) Immel. I’m also playing power forward, but that’s not really my position. A power forward is a 6-9 monster with super long arms. I’m not capable of guarding those guys.

“But I’m into defense and rebounding, mainly because that’s the best way of getting a lot of playing time around here,” he said.

Wilson had six or more rebounds in 11 games and four times reached double figures, including an overtime victory over Oregon State in which he had 11.

Olson sees Wilson as a small forward who can handle the ball but who can also guard bigger players if needed.

“He rebounds and takes the ball to the basket and probably runs the floor as well as any kid that size,” Olson said. “He’s got unlimited potential. He can’t shoot it like Kevin Walker can, but beyond that skill, he’s the most advanced of the three.”

Walker spent the season looking for a position. Despite his height, he’s basically a perimeter player who scores facing the basket, although Hazzard insists that Walker has post-up moves. Finally, Hazzard began using Walker in relief of Haley at the pivot when Foster was struggling.

Against Oregon State, it was Walker’s three-point play when he was fouled by Jose Ortiz after an offensive rebound that helped UCLA win, 69-67, at Pauley.

“He’s really got sound instincts,” Hazzard said. “I really trust him in close ballgames.”

Because he plays well away from the basket, Walker gets high ratings for his passing ability at the high-post position. He dropped a no-look, behind-his-back bounce pass to Miller in last Saturday’s victory over Louisville.

“He reminds me of Danny Ferry (of Duke) with his inside and outside game and his passing,” Stevens said. “When he gains more strength, he’s going to be something.”

Foster, of the three freshman, has probably had the most difficult time adjusting. Although he played more minutes than Walker, Foster started a slump right after he starred in UCLA’s victory over North Carolina and has been inconsistent since, although his defensive rebounding has its bright spots.

Foster also has a chance to be a dominant inside force once he becomes more of a physical player than he had to be in high school when he was just bigger than everybody else.

“He got off to a really good start,” Stevens said. “But he really needed more time to adjust to what’s going on underneath the basket. All you have to do, though, is watch him to know what kind of player he can be. He already runs the floor better than most centers in this conference.”

Foster has caused Hazzard to pace the floor this season more than any other Bruin. After the fifth game of the season, Foster said he wasn’t getting the ball enough. Hazzard got upset with him. After the sixth game, Foster and three other Bruins broke curfew on the road. Hazzard suspended all four for the next game.

Olson said Foster’s absence from that game in Seattle against Washington actually proved his value to UCLA.

“Haley was in foul trouble, and Chris Welp went for 40 points on them with Greg out of the game,” Olson said. “Now, they’ve got Haley and Greg and Kevin. One year ago, they didn’t have any players to put in. Now, they’re deep.”

Foster said he wanted it all at the beginning, but he has learned to adapt to his role. “I’m an extra body, an extra big body,” he said.

“All I’ve got to do are the little things like being aggressive and getting rebounds,” Foster said. “Me and Trevor and Kevin, we get the scraps. Even though we three freshmen haven’t played a lot, it’s been fun winning the Pac-10 and winning 20 games in our first year.”

Hazzard said Foster needed a year of experience playing center in college, which is a lot more difficult than playing center in high school.

“He’s had to learn to adjust to the banging, the contact and not to react to it,” Hazzard said. “There aren’t many Ortizes or Welps in high school.”

Class is still in session, though. As the Bruins get ready for tournament play, Wilson, Walker and Foster have just about completed their freshmen orientation.

Maybe they will have some kind of an impact in the Pac-10 tournament games and beyond, maybe similar to what they had during the regular season. Then again, maybe they will have to wait for next year.

“Our time will come,” Foster said. “Next year, we won’t have Montel Hatcher and Reggie, so things will change for us. We can all see a bright future already. What we’re doing now isn’t too bad either.”