Bruin Fans Think Blue in Rout Over Stanford

UCLA so thoroughly dominated Stanford from start to finish Thursday night in a 96-70 victory at Pauley Pavilion that UCLA students, rewarded by a Westwood eatery whenever the Bruins score 100 or more points, called out for free hamburgers less than 10 minutes into the game.

Later, when it became apparent that the second-ranked Bruins wouldn’t be able to deliver, the students changed their orders.

“We want Duke,” they chanted.

They won’t get the top-ranked Blue Devils until March 1, after the Bruins make visits to South Bend, Ind., and the Sports Arena for games against Notre Dame and USC, but this one should tide them over until then.

At its worst Tuesday night in a lackluster 82-76 victory over California, UCLA was at its best against the Cardinal, opening a 22-point lead before halftime and increasing it to 31 points later, never letting up.

“We got UCLA’s best tonight and, as a consequence, we were never really in the game,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said. “In a game like this, against a team as talented as UCLA, we felt to have a chance, we had to play our best. That doesn’t guarantee anything, but it gives you a shot.

“We certainly didn’t do that. UCLA was ready to play, fired up. They were getting after loose balls and getting to the boards and pretty much got us backed off. They smelled blood and they went for it.”

Improving to 21-1 overall and 12-1 in the Pacific 10 Conference, the Bruins were led by junior forward Tracy Murray, who scored a career-high 36 points in only 29 minutes, making 10 of 14 shots.

“Anybody on our team can hit for 30 or 40 on a given night,” said Murray, who had reached 30 only once in 86 previous games at UCLA. “It was just my turn tonight. My teammates saw that I was hot and got the ball to me.”

Stanford has been a pain to UCLA for the past four seasons, beating up the Bruins even when they didn’t beat them, but this time the smaller, quicker Bruins controlled the boards, too, outrebounding the Cardinal, 47-39, as Ed O’Bannon took a season-high 11 rebounds in 21 minutes.

UCLA defeated Stanford, 83-77, last month at Palo Alto, overcoming a six-point deficit in the last 7 1/2 minutes, a 39-26 deficit in rebounds and superior shooting by the Cardinal, which outshot UCLA, 52.7% to 51%.

“They played hard up at our place,” Montgomery said before the game. “They played well. That was not a sub-par effort.”

But it didn’t prepare him for what he saw in the rematch.

Stanford missed eight of its first nine shots, allowing the Bruins to get their transition game in high gear.

UCLA jumped out to a 14-2 lead behind Murray, who scored eight of the Bruins’ first 12 points on four free throws, a running jumper and a dunk off a feed from Gerald Madkins.

A layup by Mitchell Butler, off a pretty feed from Murray, capped the game-opening run, but UCLA kept the pressure on.

After 9 1/2 minutes, Murray already had 18 points. He made his first seven shots, including a pair of three-pointers.

Things were going so well for the Bruins that at one point O’Bannon, with three Stanford players diving at him after he slipped and fell while driving up the sideline, somehow still got the ball to Madkins at the point.

Madkins quickly passed it inside to Murray for a dunk.

Meanwhile, Stanford forward Adam Keefe, who led the Cardinal with 26 points and 11 rebounds, went more than 15 minutes without a basket.

After scoring on a short hook only 62 seconds into the game, he missed his next four shots before scoring on a follow shot with 3:48 left in the half.

UCLA ended the half with a 10-3 run to open a 48-26 lead.

Bruin Notes

An NBA scout said this week that if UCLA’s Tracy Murray made himself available for the NBA draft this summer, as many as five West Coast players would probably be taken ahead of him, naming UCLA’s Don MacLean, Stanford’s Adam Keefe, UNLV’s Elmore Spencer, USC’s Harold Miner and Arizona’s Chris Mills. Miner and Mills are juniors. Murray, a junior forward, said this week that he will remain at UCLA through his senior season. “He could be the No. 1 player on the West Coast next year,” the scout said. . . . Murray scored his previous career high of 31 points on Dec. 15, 1990, during a 92-90 victory over DePaul at Rosemont, Ill.

Stanford center Paul Garrett, who established career highs of 19 points and 12 rebounds in last month’s game against UCLA, failed to score in the rematch, missing all three of his shots and taking two rebounds in 12 minutes. . . . In his last six games against UCLA, Keefe averaged 23.5 points and 8.3 rebounds, making 57.5% of his shots. Keefe’s average of 12.6 rebounds is the best by a Pac-10 player since the 1973-74 season, when UCLA’s Bill Walton averaged 14.4 rebounds. . . . Stanford is 2-25 at Pauley Pavilion.

* ARIZONA UPSET: Arizona State defeated the fifth-ranked Wildcats, 77-74. C9