Miner Has Off Night, but Trojans Win, 70-55 : USC: After seventh consecutive victory, Raveling’s team directs attention to Wednesday’s game at UCLA.

After disposing of pesky Brooklyn College, 70-55, Saturday night at the Long Beach Arena, USC basketball Coach George Raveling uttered a four-letter word that he had banned from the hearts and minds of his players--UCLA.

The Trojans (8-1), who have won seven in a row, open their Pacific 10 Conference season against the Bruins Wednesday at Pauley Pavilion. And Raveling, who had refused to discuss the Bruins last week, finally turned his attention to 10th-ranked UCLA.

“It will certainly be the toughest game that we’ve played this year,” Raveling said. “We’re playing a team that truly deserves to be ranked in the top 10 in the country. They’re probably the most potent offensive machine in our conference.

“It’s going to be the most difficult assignment we’ve had in a long, long time.”

But if Trojan guard Harold Miner doesn’t shoot better than he did against Brooklyn, USC’s longest winning streak since 1982 is likely to end.

In the worst shooting night since he missed 15 of 20 shots in an 80-57 loss to Arizona in the final game last season, Miner missed 14 of 20 shots from the floor. After missing 13 of his first 16 shots, Miner made three of his last four and sank eight of 11 free throws. Miner, who had only four points in the first half, scored 16 in the second half.

“I’d suspect if we went back to the record books we’d find a game where Ted Williams went 0 for 4, too,” Raveling said. “The one thing that I think this game established is that he’s not God. And that was probably good because there were all these people coming up and asking me if he’s going to go hardship. I hope there were about 20 NBA scouts here tonight.”

Miner shrugged it off, saying: “You can’t be on every night. My touch was just off tonight. But I’ll get it back. I’m not worried about it at all. Everybody has shooting problems. I guess tonight was my night.”

While Miner struggled, forward Ronnie Coleman took over, scoring 21 points to lead the Trojans.

Leading only 50-46 with 5:53 left, the Trojans outscored the Kingsmen, 20-9, after Brooklyn center Rafael Solis fouled out. Brooklyn’s offense got out of sync after Solis, who had 16 points and 12 rebounds, was disqualified.

Miner had six points in the spurt, hitting two free throws after he was intentionally fouled by Solis and adding a jumper and a three-point play.

“It was a game that I’m pleased that we got out of and we won,” Raveling said. “There’s no question we didn’t play as well as we’re capable of. We didn’t shoot well and that was part of the problem. But this is our ninth game of the season and we have played good basketball and it’s unrealistic to expect that we could sustain that level game in and game out.

“In a lot of ways we probably got more from this game than if we’d beaten them by 40 or 50 points because it tested our character and tested our frustration level.”

Was USC looking ahead to UCLA?

“I told the players that the obvious temptation was to conclude that we looked ahead to UCLA,” Raveling said. “But you know and I know that that wasn’t true. We just didn’t play a good basketball game tonight.”

The Trojans played their worst first half of the season and trailed, 30-27, at intermission. It matched USC’s lowest first half output of the season, which came in a 72-59 loss at Maryland.

Miner, who scored 31 points in a 103-76 victory over Harvard Friday night, missed nine of 11 shots in the first half. His touch gone, Miner began passing up open shots and passing to Coleman, who led the Trojans with eight points.

But Miner wasn’t the only Trojan who shot poorly as USC missed 23 of 36 shots.

Cooper missed all four shots he attempted and Pack missed four of seven as USC shot only 36.1%.

Leading 23-17, the Trojans collapsed as the Kingsmen outscored them 13-4 to take a three-point lead. Guard Michael Rosen made four throws and guard Brenton Birmingham hit two shots.

But Brooklyn (4-8), which shot 50% in the first half made only eight of 24 shots (33%) in the second half.