It Was Well Worth the Wait

There were days and nights in the not-so-distant past when the “opposition” was provided by, oh, Prairie View A&M;, or Central Connecticut State, or Augusta College, when the cheap seats wouldn’t sell at any price, when George Raveling must have slid behind the wheel of his spotless Lexus afterward and wondered all the way to his driveway what it would take to get the USC joint jumping.

A basketball coach never even knows if he will stick around long enough to see his hard work rewarded, although there was a moment as recently as last season when Raveling stood his ground and declared: “I’ll quit this job before it quits me.”

How gratifying it must have been to see Trojan basketball come full circle, to see 15,517 customers Thursday night crammed into an authentic NBA arena, to have the moment arrive when even a UCLA team of national prominence was made to realize that it had gone from being No. 2 in the nation to No. 2 in the neighborhood.

Yamen Sanders, the USC center, said after his side won, 83-79:

“We’re real. We’re not going away.”

Nothing was clinched, nothing conceded, but there was much to determine in this game. As with the teams themselves, arguments could be made over whether Harold Miner of USC or Don MacLean of UCLA was the best all-around collegian in America or the best in town, with a possible third-party independent campaign for picking the Bruins’ Tracy Murray over either of them.

They are three exceptional individuals with precious little in common, including some of the most distinctly different haircuts found on three superstars since Larry, Moe and Curly.

Statistics aside, Miner went away the winner this time, scoring 29 points, pulling down a personal-best 13 rebounds and taking the biscuit to the basket one time in particular with a dunk that rocked the rim, the backboard and the house. His forward momentum took him somewhere past Martin Luther King Drive headed for the Harbor 110 freeway ramp.

It was quite a sight, watching Miner doing a shake-’n’-bake on one end and Murray doing a stop-’n’-pop on the other. Of the 28 points he scored, Murray made enough of them from distances that might have intimidated Reggie Miller, though probably not.

As Murray said later, however: “It isn’t one guy who beats you, or two, or three. It’s all of them. If USC’s the best team in the conference or even the country, more power to them. I don’t have to say anything about how good they are. Their record speaks for itself.”

This was something of a rebuttal in the candidates’ debate to previous statements made by MacLean, who is about as popular on the USC campus as Knute Rockne. That pile of soiled T-shirts at the center of the Trojan locker room was made from garments bearing a quote attributed to MacLean that these guys “on their best day shouldn’t be able to beat us.”

Thursday was hardly MacLean’s best day. He missed 11 shots, explaining: “I was getting clobbered.”

Happens to the best of them.

The big winner, though, in this California primary was the Sports Arena, which, at long last, has two interesting tenants. For the first time, this building’s home teams are every bit as entertaining as the invited guests, and no triumph over either UCLA or the Lakers can be construed as an upset. The Clippers are doing fine. The Trojans are doing finer.

Ohio State can testify to that and UCLA can be called back to testify twice and certain other teams around the nation should be looking over their shoulder, because, as UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said: “How USC is ranked below some of these teams is hard to believe.”

His own players have some thinking to do because the season won’t be getting any easier, top-ranked Duke hitting town come Sunday. The Bruins haven’t exactly been losing to chumps, but some of their magic is definitely wearing off and Harrick’s job now is to get them to do a quick gut-check.

The decision in USC’s favor was not so much devastating to UCLA as it was another reminder that talent isn’t everything. Either of these teams in the upcoming national tournament could come alive or come unglued.

But one thing has become abundantly clear:

Come the tournament, USC won’t be trying to upset anybody. Teams will be trying to upset USC.