O’Bannon, Tarver Are Boon to Ticket Sales : Basketball: The Bruins have received as many as 50 requests a day since recruits said they would enroll at UCLA.

Peter Dalis, UCLA’s athletic director, took a call recently from a man who told him that he had grown disgruntled with the direction of the Bruins’ basketball program and had canceled his season tickets three years ago.

The man wondered if he could renew his seats for next season at the location he had given up.

“They’re simply not available,” said Steve Salm, an associate athletic director in charge of business and finance at UCLA.

Nor do the Bruins expect many others to be available.

In the two weeks since Southland recruits Ed O’Bannon and Shon Tarver announced that they planned to enroll at UCLA, “we’ve had significantly increased interest in season tickets,” said Salm, estimating that the Bruins’ ticket office has taken as many as 50 calls a day. “The phones have been ringing unbelievably for this time of year.”

Renewals aren’t due until next week, but according to Salm, more than 90% of UCLA’s season-ticket holders from last season already have renewed their subscriptions for the 1990-91 season. Last season, UCLA sold about 8,500 season tickets.

“It looks like to us, based on the volume of calls we’ve had already--without doing any marketing--that we may sell out on a season basis,” Salm said. “Given the demand that we’ve seen in the last two weeks and the high rate of renewal, we think we’ll at least come close to selling out.”

Capacity in Pauley Pavilion is 12,543, or 12,784 when temporary bleachers are added for opponents that draw well, but UCLA hasn’t averaged more than 12,000 since the 1975-76 season, its first after the retirement of John Wooden.

Three seasons ago, when UCLA was 16-14 and failed to reach the NCAA tournament for the third time in four seasons, average attendance dropped to 7,855, an all-time Pauley low.

But average attendance increased by about 1,000 in each of Coach Jim Harrick’s two seasons, reaching 9,534 last season, when UCLA was 22-11 and reached the round of 16 in the NCAA tournament for the first time in 10 years.

Interest in next season wasn’t extraordinary, however, Salm said, until Aug. 6, when O’Bannon, who had previously said he would enroll at Nevada Las Vegas, announced that he would attend UCLA instead. Tarver, who also had said he would play at UNLV, made a similar announcement two days earlier.

UNLV, the defending national champion, was banned by the NCAA from postseason competition next year because of recruiting violations 13 years ago, prompting O’Bannon and Tarver to change their minds about enrolling at UNLV.

O’Bannon, a 6-foot-8 forward from Artesia High School in Lakewood, was considered among the nation’s top two or three recruits. Tarver, a 6-5 guard, was a two-time Division IV state player of the year at Santa Clara High School in Oxnard, averaging 31.6 points.

Their presence in Westwood is expected to put the Bruins in a position to challenge Arizona’s recent dominance of the Pacific 10 Conference and gives UCLA the potential, some have suggested, to reach the Final Four.

Apparently, many fans agree.