Las Vegas Provides a Winner : UCLA: Freshman Shon Tarver, who originally planned to play for UNLV, has become a solid contributor for Bruins.

Jim Harrick, purveyor of cornball homilies, used to say the best thing about freshmen was that they became sophomores, meaning freshmen are often longer on potential than reliability.

He hasn’t said it lately.

Two seasons ago, the UCLA basketball coach counted heavily on Don MacLean, who rewarded Harrick’s faith by setting a Pacific 10 Conference freshman scoring record, broken a year later by USC’s Harold Miner.

Last season, freshman Tracy Murray was a key player for the Bruins, averaging 14.9 points and 6.4 rebounds in 18 games as a starter and making the game-winning free throws with nine seconds left in a 71-70 NCAA tournament second-round victory over Kansas.

This season’s freshman find in Westwood is Shon Tarver, who really wasn’t so much a find as a gift from the NCAA.

A 6-foot-5 guard who led Santa Clara High in Oxnard to two consecutive State Division IV championships, Tarver announced last May that he would enroll at Nevada Las Vegas to play for the reigning NCAA champion.

But when UNLV was banned from this season’s NCAA tournament--a decision later overturned by the NCAA, which instead banned UNLV from postseason play in 1992--Tarver and another highly regarded prospect, Ed O’Bannon of Artesia High in Lakewood, announced that they would enroll at UCLA.

While O’Bannon, a national high school player of the year, was projected as a starter before a knee injury put him out for the season, Tarver was considered more of a mystery.

Young for his class, Tarver turned 18 last week.

“I knew he’d be a good player, but I didn’t know he’d be this good,” Harrick said. “I was worried about his age. I remember Darrick Martin coming in here when he was 17 (two years ago) and his game was . . . different.

“This kid knows how to play.”

UCLA hasn’t had a first-team All-American guard since Henry Bibby in 1972, but Harrick said Tarver possesses “All-American qualities.”

For now, though, he is UCLA’s third guard, backing up junior starters Martin and Gerald Madkins and averaging 11.5 points, 3.3 rebounds and 3.1 assists in 21 minutes a game. An explosive scorer, creative passer and penetrator and tenacious defender, Tarver has provided a spark off the bench for the 10th-ranked Bruins, igniting several game-turning rallies.

“He’s better than everybody thought,” Harrick said.

Well, almost everybody.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all,” UNLV Coach Jerry Tarkanian said of Tarver’s impact on the Bruins. “We thought he was a great player and an absolutely great kid. We loved him. We really, truly loved him.”

And Tarver loved UNLV. “I liked the player-coach relationship,” he said.

Even after the Rebels were penalized by the NCAA last August for violations of 13 years ago, Tarver gave some thought to keeping his unwritten commitment to UNLV. But with UNLV possibly facing still more sanctions in an unrelated case, “We just felt it was too big a risk, too much of a chance to take with his career,” said Tarver’s father, John, a former professional football player.

UNLV’s loss was UCLA’s gain, but only after Tarver rejected a strong pitch from Arizona State after visiting Tempe last summer.

Tarver probably would be a starter for the rebuilding Sun Devils, but he said he is content for now with his role at UCLA.

“Of course, I want to be a starter, but if I’m not, that’s fine,” he said. “I still feel like I’m contributing to the team. I’m not really worried about not being a starter.

“I’m satisfied because Coach is playing me--and Keith (Owens, a reserve forward). And I think we’re helping the team win. It’s not like I’m riding the pine. It’s hard to say you enjoy it, but it’s fine with me. I don’t feel bad.”

Nor does he wonder about how he would have fit into UNLV’s plans.

“I don’t have time,” he said. “People don’t understand--I never really went to the school. They think that I was there and transferred out. It wasn’t like that. I don’t know what it’s like in Vegas.”

But Tarver speaks fondly of Tarkanian, who suggested to Tarver and O’Bannon that they not sign binding letters of intent with UNLV, giving them an out when the NCAA came down hard on the Rebels last summer.

“A lot of coaches would have made us sign,” Tarver said.

And Tarver keeps abreast of the Rebels, his father said. “He follows them,” John Tarver said. “I follow them. They’ve got a Showtime basketball team. They’ve got a great program.”

Tarver’s main focus, though, is on helping the Bruins.

He arrived in Westwood with an all-around game honed at Santa Clara High by Lou Cvijanovich, one of the most respected high school coaches in the state.

“He gave me a lot of heart, a lot of drive and determination to work harder,” Tarver said of Cvijanovich, whose teams have won 11 Southern Section championships in his 32 seasons. “Before I went there, I knew nothing about defense. By the time I left, I was a pretty good defensive player.”

Tarver’s first basketball coach was his grandmother, Carol Walden, who organized a youth team in Portland, Ore., where Tarver was raised. “I was one of the worst guys on the team,” said Tarver, who preferred football and baseball.

In baseball, he was a star. A first baseman and ace of the pitching staff, Tarver played for a team that won the Oregon state championship and fell only two victories short of reaching the Little League World Series.

In football, he had several role models, including his father, who played three seasons as a fullback with the New England Patriots and one with the Philadelphia Eagles. An uncle, Bernard, was a reserve tailback on USC’s national championship team in 1974. Another uncle, Roger, was a reserve safety at Washington in the early 1980s.

Tarver played quarterback for the freshman team at Rim of the World High four years ago after his family moved to Lake Arrowhead, but by then his interest in basketball had increased.

“There really wasn’t a whole lot to do sometimes,” he said of his family’s two years at Lake Arrowhead, “but you could always go and shoot around by yourself.”

Often, he would go to the gym to practice before school.

By the time he transferred to Santa Clara after the first quarter of his junior year, Tarver was an All-Southern Section basketball player. He had given up both football and baseball, which he had played on the varsity level for two years at Rim, and averaged 29 points a game as a sophomore.

If Cvijanovich had never coached anyone like Tarver--last spring, the coach called him probably the best player ever to come out of Ventura County--Tarver had never played for anyone like the demanding Cvijanovich.

“I wasn’t used to such a high-tempo practice,” Tarver told Steve Henson of The Times last spring. “There were guys with blood all over their jerseys. Everybody wanted a piece of me.”

Eventually, of course, his new teammates came to accept him.

Santa Clara won 55 of 56 games in Tarver’s two seasons, ending last season with a 45-game winning streak. As a senior, Tarver averaged 31.6 points, 9.2 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 2.8 steals.

Only O’Bannon, among Southland players, was considered a better prospect.

Tarver made trips to Notre Dame, Syracuse, UNLV and UCLA. Tentatively, he picked UNLV, where Stacey Cvijanovich, son of his high school coach, was a reserve guard last season.

“One of the reasons for not selecting UCLA in the beginning was because the Bruins had so many young players,” Tarver’s father said.

Ultimately, though, Tarver decided that other factors were more important. If he was good enough, he figured, the Bruins eventually would find a place for him.

And they have found one. Already, Tarver is among the Bruins’ best defenders, perhaps the best. His offensive skills are obvious. Ten games into the season, he is among the Bruins’ most polished players.

“You have to have faith in yourself,” Tarver said. “I believe in myself and I think it shows on the court. I’m not trying to take attention from the other guys. I just go out and do what it takes to win.”