Bruins Enjoy 2-0 Trip : UCLA: MacLean, Wilson and Butler rally club from 13-point deficit to beat Washington State.

In the space of 48 hours and two wildly erratic performances, UCLA transformed itself from hunter to hunted.

Only three days into December--and two games into their Pacific 10 Conference schedule--the Bruins are two games ahead of Arizona.

For a while anyway, the Wildcats will chase UCLA.

But, after Saturday’s exhausting 68-64 victory over Washington State, in which UCLA first lost an 11-point lead and then made up a 13-point deficit, Bruin Coach Jim Harrick had other things on his mind.

“I just want to get out of Dodge,” said Harrick, obviously delighted that UCLA won’t return to the Pac-10’s most remote outpost for another year.

Who could blame him?

With less than 11 1/2 minutes left, the Bruins trailed, 48-36, and had been outscored, 37-16, in the previous 17 minutes.

“We were really worried,” said forward Don MacLean. “They were playing well and their crowd was getting into it. We just weren’t playing hard. We were so scared, I think it made us play better.”

One of the best things the Bruins did was get the ball to MacLean, who made eight of 10 shots in the second half, all of them during a 24-8 run that turned a 12-point deficit into a 60-56 lead with 3:44 left.

MacLean scored 18 points in the second half and finished with 29, his most productive game since last Dec. 30, when he set a Pac-10 freshman record by scoring 41 points against North Texas.

Down the stretch, Harrick called out the plays from the bench and the message was usually the same: Get the ball to MacLean.

“He’s got a rare ability to get open,” Harrick said.

Also, a knack for making medium-range shots.

Was he calling for the ball?

“I think everybody does,” MacLean said. “I felt that the guy who was guarding me had no chance in the world of stopping me.”

Washington State’s Bennie Seltzer might have felt the same way in the first half, when he scored 15 points.

In the second half, though, Seltzer went flat, held without a point by freshman reserve guard Mitchell Butler.

“He changed the whole momentum of the game,” Harrick said of Butler, who came on midway through the half to give Darrick Martin a rest but played so well that Harrick kept Martin on the bench.

Said Butler: “Primarily, we wanted to shade him and contain him and keep the ball out of his hands--try not to let him catch the ball.”

Butler’s contributions weren’t limited to defense.

He made all three attempts, scored six points and had five assists, three rebounds and a steal in 23 minutes.

His pass to MacLean led to a short jump shot that capped the Bruins’ 24-8 surge, and his shovel pass in the lane to Trevor Wilson led to a short bank shot that gave UCLA the lead for good, 63-62, with 2:16 left.

The Bruins’ extended run might have finished the Cougars, but Harrick was assessed a technical foul with 2:55 left.

Darryl Woods made two free throws to pull the Cougars to within 61-60, then made two more after he was fouled to give them a 62-61 lead with 2:41 left.

The Cougars never caught up again after Wilson’s bank shot, which gave him 23 points to go along with a career-high 16 rebounds.

Neil Evans scored on a jump hook for Washington State with 1:08 left, but when the Cougars converged on MacLean during UCLA’s next trip down the floor, MacLean passed back out to Gerald Madkins, whose three-point shot from the top of the key made it 68-64 with 45 seconds left.

Madkins and Butler then made a defensive switch on Seltzer, surprising the freshman point guard into a double-dribble turnover.

Then, after MacLean missed a free throw with 18 seconds left, Madkins intercepted an inbounds pass by Seltzer and was fouled.

Madkins missed the free throw with seven seconds left, but chased down the rebound and dribbled out the clock.

UCLA (3-0) was 2-0 in the Pac-10 and headed home.

Arizona, ambushed along the Oregon trail by Oregon and Oregon State, was headed home, too, but with an 0-2 conference record.

Also, the Wildcats still have to make the trip to Washington.

“And we don’t,” Harrick said.

Bruin Notes

Coach Jim Harrick blamed his liberal substituting for the Bruins’ lack of consistency. “I’ve got some talented freshmen and they want to play and I want to play them,” he said. “That’s the toughest part of freshmen being eligible. There’s a lot of pressure to play them.” Harrick said that he will use the nonconference season--UCLA doesn’t play another Pac-10 game until Jan. 3, when it meets USC--to find a more workable substitution pattern.

Slumping Kevin Walker made only one of seven shots, has made four of 17 in three games and has yet to make a three-point shot, missing all 10 of his attempts. . . . Darrick Martin missed all five of his shots, scored one point and had two assists in 25 minutes. Last season at Washington State, Martin failed to score and didn’t even attempt a shot in 29 minutes.

Trevor Wilson’s previous career high was 15 rebounds. . . . Washington State’s Jason Thompson, who had 11 points and 10 rebounds, exchanged words with several Bruins. “He’s just a punk,” said UCLA’s Don MacLean. “He’d walk by and give you a little shot in the shoulder. He was just looking for trouble. I think maybe because he was playing pretty well in the first half, he thought he was all-world or something.”