Now Is the Time to Give Walt Credit

In four years at UCLA, all Walt Hazzard did was win two Pac-10 championships, including the first Pac-10 tournament in 1986, win the NIT championship in 1985, and average 19 wins a season with significantly less talent than the current team. Walt was never reprimanded by the Pac-10 for berating officials, his players were not known as whiners and he never lost five games in a row.

You can’t blame Coach Hazzard anymore for the ills affecting the program. If he had had a team with this much talent that consistently played this poorly, the media and the boosters would have hung him in effigy. I’m not suggesting anyone do that to Coach (Jim) Harrick, but I am suggesting it’s time people recognized the positive contributions Coach Hazzard made to the UCLA program.

KERMAN MADDOX, Los Angeles