UCLA Jolted Back to Reality, 104-78, by North Carolina

Jim Harrick’s honeymoon ended Saturday amid the woods of North Carolina, where he and his bewildered UCLA basketball team got lost and couldn’t find their way out until the Bruins had absorbed a tarring that equaled the third-worst loss in their history.

Anxious and tentative in the face of North Carolina’s relentless, trapping, man-to-man defense, the Bruins withered as the eighth-ranked Tar Heels won, 104-78, before a crowd of 20,712 at the Smith Center.

And in front of a national network television audience and about 30 relatives down from his native West Virginia, Harrick made it worse, saddling the Bruins and embarrassing himself with a pair of technical fouls.

“I was just talking--no more than usual,” Harrick said.

And cursing?

“No,” he said, grinning. “I don’t do that.”

Did he deserve them?

“No,” he said softly. “Let’s talk about the game.”

Well, he insisted. . . .

Only twice previously had the Bruins suffered a more ignominious defeat, including the worst loss in their history, a 107-70 pounding administered by the Tar Heels only 3 years ago at the Tar Heels’ former home, the even more intimidating Carmichael Auditorium.

In the far more spacious Dean Dome, as the Smith Center has come to be known, the Bruins shot only 41%, and had 8 turnovers in the first 8 1/2 minutes, falling into a hole from which they could never climb out.

“I don’t think you ever think as a basketball coach that you’re going to get hammered like that,” Harrick said.

Especially not in a game that the first-year coach had designated as a measuring stick to gauge his team’s national standing.

After victories over Texas Tech, Miami, Brigham Young and Boston University, UCLA vaulted into the top 20 last week.

But of course, those teams are not in a class with North Carolina, which was 8-1 even before All-American J.R. Reid, who had been out with a stress fracture in his left foot, made his season debut against the Bruins, collecting 6 points and 4 rebounds in 10 minutes off the bench.

So, where do the Bruins stand after such a waxing?

“Right now, we don’t belong (in the top 20),” Kevin Walker said of the Bruins, who were ranked 20th last week.

Said Harrick: “I don’t think we’re a team that I would take lightly, but I’m not sure we belong in the top 15. It’s hard to go through a year and not sometimes have games in which you don’t play as well as you’d like.

“I didn’t think we were going to win every game.”

But neither did the Bruins, who were brimming with confidence after their success in the first 3 weeks of the season, believe that they would be blown out.

“I pictured the worst scenario, and (nothing like) this ever came up,” said UCLA’s Trevor Wilson, who scored 17 points. “I thought we could play with them, and I thought we could beat them if we executed and if we played with a lot of intensity, but we didn’t do either of those things.”

It started to go bad for the Bruins in their first time down the court, when guard Kevin Williams threw a pass out of bounds.

North Carolina opened a 9-4 lead on 3-point shots by Kevin Madden and Jeff Lebo (who led the Tar Heels with 18 points) and a 3-point play by center Scott Williams, a junior from Hacienda Heights who had 15 points and 7 rebounds.

A rash of 4 turnovers in 5 1/2 minutes by the Bruins’ usually reliable point guard, Pooh Richardson, helped the Tar Heels build their lead to 23-10, by which time Reid had made his much-anticipated entrance.

Reid, a 6-foot 9-inch forward from Virginia Beach, Va., traveled the first time he touched the ball, but the second time he got it, he pivoted around Walker and dunked to give North Carolina a 19-10 lead. He then scored on a layup and a follow shot to make it 23-10 before leaving--he made 2 short appearances in each half--to a standing ovation.

“I think I played pretty well,” Reid said. “You could see that I’m out of shape a little bit.”

The Tar Heels increased their lead to 18 points, but behind Richardson, who led the Bruins with a season-high 21 points, UCLA twice cut the deficit to 10, the first time at 38-28 with 4 minutes 56 seconds left in the half.

Less than a minute later, though, Harrick was slapped with the first of his technical fouls. Apparently, he was upset about Reid’s rough play under the basket, which he believed went unchecked by the officials.

North Carolina’s lead grew to 16 points, but it was only 46-36 before a jump shot by Madden with 1:29 left in the half started a 9-0 run that gave the Tar Heels a 55-36 halftime lead.

UCLA never got closer than 14 in the second half, and not long after a dunk by Wilson made it 71-57, Harrick was called for another technical.

Both times, Harrick’s technical took the ball away from the Bruins. After the second one, they trailed, 73-57, with 10:50 left. Lebo made both free throws, then scored again on a layup on the Tar Heels’ accompanying possession.

“I’ve always had a saying, ‘Good officials call the game and bad officials call technicals,’ ” Harrick said.

Whatever. North Carolina’s lead was 77-57 and about to get bigger.

“I didn’t think anybody could do that to us,” Harrick said, “but obviously I was wrong.”

Tar Heel Coach Dean Smith was surprised, too.

“I didn’t expect a win of this magnitude,” he said, “but we did play well early. Certainly, you have to be excited.”

Not if you’re a Bruin.

Bruin Notes

Other losses that rank among UCLA’s all-time worst: 110-83 to Illinois in the opening game of the 1964-65 season, after which the Bruins won 28 of 29 games and their second National Collegiate Athletic Assn. championship, and 56-30 to Oregon in the 1936-37 season. . . . UCLA’s shooting percentage (.410), 3-point shooting percentage (.300) and free-throw percentage (.579) were its worst of the season, and North Carolina’s .542 shooting percentage was the best this season by a Bruin opponent.

Said UCLA’s Trevor Wilson: “I think we got caught up in the aura of playing on national television and playing in the Dean Dome, and I think we fell apart and didn’t execute.” . . . Kevin Walker had 13 rebounds, a career high. . . . The game ended a 4-game series between the schools and marked the first time that both teams came into the game ranked in the top 20.