It’s UCLA Against ‘Thunder, Lightning’

Central Michigan, the basketball team UCLA plays tonight in the first round of the NCAA tournament, is not well known outside the Mid-American Conference, so let’s cover just the basics.

The top two Chippewas are known as Thunder and Lightning; the coach had triple bypass surgery the morning of his first game on the job last season; the team went from 11-17 to 22-7 in one year, and its chances of going all the way to the Final Four are rated 50,000 to 1.

“That’s about right,” Coach Charlie Coles said. “Teams like us, we’re not on an ego trip. I’m sure some people will think that it’s a mismatch, playing UCLA.

“I mean, you say, ‘UCLA’ and then you say, ‘Central Who? Oh yeah, must be one of those directional schools.’ ”

Central Michigan is a directional school. It’s in Mount Pleasant, which is just about dead center in the Lower Peninsula.

Right now, though, Central Michigan is here, and UCLA is a heavy favorite to let the Chippewas fall where they may in the West Regional, where 33-1 Nevada Las Vegas, the nation’s top-ranked team and the top-seeded team in the West, plays an even heavier underdog, Idaho State (15-15) at 1:37 p.m. PST.

In today’s other games, Georgia (18-11) plays Kansas State (19-10), and Wyoming (22-9) plays Virginia (21-9). UCLA will play the winner of that game Saturday afternoon if it defeats Central Michigan in their televised game (Channel 2) at 6:07 p.m. PST.

UNLV seems to be back at full strength to make its run toward what could be a semifinal match with UCLA in the West Regional at Seattle. For that to happen, both the Rebels and the Bruins will have to win two games here. Rebel point guard Mark Wade practiced at full speed Wednesday after injuring his knee in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. tournament.

“People might say we’re the team to beat, but we can get beat if we don’t come out and play hard,” Rebel guard Freddie Banks said.

UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard has been telling his team the same thing. The Bruins (24-6) are trying to win their first NCAA tournament game in seven years while making their first NCAA appearance since losing a first-round game to Utah four years ago.

“The first game of the tournament is always something to worry about,” Hazzard said. “Any team that’s in the field of 64 must be considered a good team.”

So far, Central Michigan is most famous for producing NBA players Dan Roundfield and Ben Poquette, but the Chippewas have been in the NCAA tournament twice before. In 1975, they beat Georgetown and lost to Kentucky. Two years later, Central Michigan defeated Oregon State but lost to North Carolina Charlotte, which made it to the Final Four.

The Bruins, who are are making their 24th NCAA appearance, won 10 titles under Coach John Wooden, the last one in 1975.

Coles promises only that the Chippewas will show up and play hard against UCLA. He said he won’t do anything unusual to coax an upset, that he will wear no lucky shirt or coat or anything like that.

“All my coats are funky,” he said.

Coles has all five starters back from last season’s team, which finished a decidedly funky 10th in the MAC. His most notable players are 6-6 junior forward Dan Majerle--pronounced Marley--and 6-3 senior guard Ervin Leavy. Majerle is Thunder and Leavy is Lightning, but Coles would just as soon they went by their real names.

“I hate nicknames,” he said. “Ain’t but one guy in the whole world who deserves his nickname and that’s Earvin Johnson.”

The Chippewas aren’t very big, with center Daryl Miller, a 6-8 leaper, their tallest player. But the Chippewas are quick and play a style similar to UCLA’s.

Central Michigan likes to run, plays man-to-man defense, pressures the ball the full length of the court, and can go nine players deep.

“Maybe we’re a miniature UCLA,” Coles said. “My question is whether they can do what we can do a lot better than we do.”

Got that?

“I just hope we don’t get blown out too badly,” Coles said.

But the Chippewas have proven themselves a pretty resilent bunch. Coles, 45, a high school coach in Saginaw for 10 years and an assistant coach at the University of Detroit for three years, finally got a head coaching job at Central only to find he had heart trouble.

He went in for bypass surgery but missed only 11 games last season. Majerle, who averages 21.3 points and 8.3 rebounds, sat out seven games this season with a stress fracture in his foot. He also had to come back from a broken ankle and a bad back.

“I think we’re all pretty scrappy,” Coles said.

Central Michigan is catching UCLA, though, when the Bruins are playing at their best. UCLA has lost only twice since Dec. 21 and has won 21 of its last 23 games, including seven straight on the road, which is their best streak since 1972-73.

Reggie Miller, the second-leading scorer in UCLA history, shot 55.1% when the Bruins won the Pacific 10 tournament and averaged 27.1 points.

Point guard Pooh Richardson finished the season with only one fewer rebound than Miller, who led the team, and also averaged 6.5 assists. Freshman Trevor Wilson, selected to the Pac-10 freshman team, had 145 rebounds, six fewer than Miller, even though he played more than 500 fewer minutes.

Hazzard said that against Central Michigan, UCLA will be playing an extremely loose team. “They’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose against us,” he said.

Coles said the Chippewas are going to try to make their most out of what he called an unlucky draw.

“That’s not to complain, though,” he said. “We’re a long way from home, playing a UCLA team which is very hot. I can think of about 54 other teams I would rather play.

“But I’ll tell you, we’ll cry if we lose. The people in our town, Mount Pleasant, are going to be awfully disappointed if we don’t win. Playing UCLA, it’s something people don’t forget. If anything, it puts us in the spotlight.

“It’s beautiful . . . the Bruins. Man, I just hope we can hang in there,” he said. “I hope I don’t have the second heart attack of my life just watching them warm up.”

West Regional Notes Central Michigan led the Mid-American Conference in defense, allowing only 64.8 points a game. The Chippewas also shot better, 51.8%, and made opponents shoot worse, 43.6%, than any other team in their conference. UCLA’s opponents shot only 43.0%. . . . When Fred Stabley Jr., the Chippewas’ sports information director, was a sportswriter at the Lansing, Mich., State Journal, he nicknamed a certain high school player named Earvin Johnson Magic. . . . Nevada Las Vegas Coach Jerry Tarkanian on the possibility of playing UCLA in the tournament: “That doesn’t excite me at all. It’s not like a dream coming true to play them. I mean, I’d love to be able to play Virginia, too.” . . . UNLV player Gary Graham on the same subject: “It’s not something we exactly worry about. I think they ought to worry about us.” . . . Tarkanian also said the Rebels don’t have to apologize to anyone for playing in the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. “We’re 33-1, which isn’t too bad,” he said. “Everybody talks about the PCAA being weak, but it’s sure as hell as strong as the Pac-10. It’s stronger than the Pac-10.” Tarkanian also took exception to Arizona playing its first-round games on its home court in Tucson. “Totally unfair,” he said. “But it wouldn’t shock me at all if Arizona doesn’t come out of Tucson. Then you’ve got (Syracuse, Alabama Birmingham) and DePaul playing at their places. It seems to me, if you’re going to have a national championship, finances shouldn’t be part of it. Teams should get equal chances. There isn’t anybody in the world who can tell me that a team playing on its own court is equal.”