COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURMAMENT : The Memory Is Upsetting : West Regional: UCLA faces Robert Morris but can’t forget first-round loss against Penn State last season.

Jim Harrick saved his breath this week.

To remind his team about the danger of overconfidence in the NCAA tournament, all the UCLA coach had to do was utter the two words that Bruin fans everywhere have come to loathe:

Penn State.

“It keeps the fires burning,” Gerald Madkins said. “We’ll never forget Penn State.”

Upset losers to the Nittany Lions last March in a first-round NCAA tournament flameout that almost no one has let them forget, the Bruins were intent on not repeating the past as they prepared to play Robert Morris in an opening-round game tonight at the University Activity Center.

“If we get beat by Robert Morris, I’m not coming back,” Madkins said. “I’m going to call my girlfriend and tell her, ‘Pack up everything and meet me in Merced.’ ”

As the top-seeded team in the West Regional, UCLA starts the tournament with a 25-4 record, a poised freshman point guard in the starting lineup for the first time, a pouting senior point guard on the bench, a 24th Pacific 10 Conference championship in hand and an eye on the Final Four.

But where the Bruins saw only a clear path to the Final Four last season, given their great draw in the East Regional, this time they acknowledge the obstacles.

“We understand what has to be done this year, and I think this team is a lot better than it was last year,” senior forward Don MacLean said. “Last year, we were sliding going in. This year, we’re rising up again after hitting a plateau.

“We’re ready to play. This team is going to be successful in the tournament.”

Of the four top-seeded teams in the 64-team tournament, UCLA seems to have the best draw.

Only the Bruins could make it to the regional final without meeting a team ranked among the top 20 in the final regular-season Associated Press poll.

In the East, Duke could meet No. 16 Missouri or No. 19 Seton Hall before the regional final.

In the Midwest, Kansas could meet No. 12 Cincinnati or No. 14 Michigan State.

In the Southeast, Ohio State could meet No. 13 Alabama or No. 18 North Carolina.

The highest-ranked team in the Bruins’ path to the West final is No. 23 Oklahoma.

But after what happened last season, when Penn State limited MacLean and Tracy Murray to 32 points and overcame a four-point halftime deficit in a 74-69 victory at Syracuse, N.Y., UCLA isn’t about to look past Robert Morris, which is 19-11 and won the Northeast Conference championship for the third time in four seasons.

“Last year, we experienced a major setback and we really don’t want that to happen again,” Madkins said. “We’re going in more focused and gearing up for a concentrated effort.

“We still have a ways to go to vindicate last year and put our team up there with the elite teams of the past at UCLA.”

To do that, Madkins said, the Bruins will have to advance further in the tournament than they have since 1980, when they made the most recent of their 14 Final Four appearances, losing to Louisville in the championship game.

“We have to at least get to the (Final) Four, or get to the (round of) eight,” said Madkins, who helped the Bruins reach the round of 16 two years ago. “Go beyond where we’ve been before. That’s the major thing.

“We won a conference championship. We went beyond where we’d been before. Now, we have to take a step beyond the Sweet 16, where we’ve been before.”

UCLA won its first Pac-10 title since 1987 with Tyus Edney coming off the bench, but now the 5-foot-10 freshman from Long Beach Poly is a starter.

He will replace Shon Tarver in the lineup, with Madkins moving from the point to off-guard.

Senior Darrick Martin remains a reserve, much to his consternation. Last Saturday, at the urging of their son, Martin’s parents declined to participate in Senior Day activities before the Bruins’ home finale against Arizona State.

Martin has declined comment.

His teammates say that he won’t be a distraction. But they seem sold on Edney.

“He brings a little more stability to our team,” MacLean said. “He’s not real flashy, but he plays defense, makes some steals, gets the ball to the right guys, hits his shots when he’s open.

“He doesn’t have to make the big, fancy play. He just gets the job done. And basically that’s what we need at the point.”

And everywhere else.

Penn State taught them that.

Bruin Notes

The UCLA-Robert Morris winner will play the Louisville-Wake Forest winner in a second-round game Sunday at about 1:45 p.m. . . . MacLean needs 19 points to replace Arizona’s Sean Elliott as the Pac-10’s all-time scoring leader.