COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : Hibernation Over for Bruins : West Regional: Nervous because of first-round loss last season, they awaken in time to beat Robert Morris, 73-53.

On a day when upsets of Oklahoma and DePaul opened a clearer path to the West Regional final for top-seeded UCLA, the Bruins took the first step Friday night, albeit more than a little clumsily.

Overcoming an uninspired first half--”I was embarrassed by the way we played,” UCLA forward Tracy Murray said--the Bruins shot68.2% in the second half and defeated 16th-seeded Robert Morris, 73-53, in a first-round game before 7,639 at Arizona State University.

“In the second half, they kind of wore us down,” Robert Morris Coach Jarrett Durham said of the Bruins, who will take a 26-4 record into a second-round game Sunday against Louisville (19-10). “After a while, we stopping putting a hand in their face and (when you do that) against a quality team like UCLA, you’re going to pay the price.

“We just didn’t challenge their shots as hard as we had been.”

But UCLA didn’t shake the Colonials, champions of the Northeast Conference, until the final seven minutes, using a 10-0 run to put them away.

Trailing 53-45 after Ricky Cannon scored on a driving jump shot with 6:56 to play, Robert Morris went more than 3 1/2 minutes without scoring, missing eight shots, as UCLA increased its lead to 63-47.

After Myron Walker ended the drought, making a baseline jump shot with 3:17 remaining, the Bruins put together a 6-0 run.

Murray scored 20 points for UCLA, making eight of 11 shots.

Don MacLean scored 17 and took 11 rebounds but made only one of five shots. He made 15 of 17 free throws, ending the game one point shy of Sean Elliott’s Pacific 10 Conference scoring record of 2,555 points.

Gerald Madkins scored a season-high 16 points, all in the second half, and limited Walker, the Colonials’ leading scorer, to five-for-17 shooting.

“I don’t remember him getting a good look at the basket,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said of Walker, who led Robert Morris with 15 points. “That’s because of Gerald Madkins. That was a very strong performance by Madkins.”

But not an overwhelming performance by the Bruins.

“We didn’t come out with much fire,” MacLean said. “At halftime, we realized that we’d better step it up, and we did a good job of that. But it was discouraging to be so close to a team like that for so long.”

MacLean, however, said that the Bruins weren’t overconfident, as they seemed to be last year in a first-round loss to Penn State.

UCLA was determined to ease the sting of that loss.

“You learn by every experience, good and bad, and we’re a better team, better people, for having gone through that experience,” Harrick said on the eve of the game. “But without a doubt, unequivocally, we do not want to go through it again.”

The Bruins knew that doubters remained, despite their record.

“They question our heart, they question our integrity, they question our intellect,” Madkins said before the game. “That’s very unfair to us because conference champions generally have those three essential ingredients. But we can’t control what anybody says about us. All we can control is the way we play.”

UCLA hardly distinguished itself in the first half.

Against an aggressive man-to-man defense, the Bruins failed to score in the first four minutes. In the first six minutes, they made only one of six shots--a three-pointer by Murray--and made four turnovers.

But they took the lead, 5-4, on a jump shot by MacLean with 14:14 left and held it the rest of the way, mainly because Robert Morris shot only 33.3%, 26.7% in the first half.

The Colonials missed 10 of their first 12 shots and 18 of their first 24, making only eight of 30 before halftime.

UCLA shot only 42.9% in the first half and made only six of 13 free throws, but still the Bruins led at halftime, 26-22.

That didn’t appease Harrick.

He kept the Bruins in the locker room so long at halftime that they had less than a minute to warm up before the start of the second half.

If the decreased warm-up time had an effect, it didn’t show.

Madkins made a three-point shot from beyond the top of the key and another from the left wing and UCLA had its biggest lead, 32-24.

“They kind of jumped on us at the start of the second half,” said Wade Timmerson, the Colonials’ point guard. “They turned it up. I don’t know what he said to them in the locker room--they were in there a long time--but they came out with more intensity.”

It built from there.

Bruin Notes

Don MacLean made fewer than two shots in a game only once in 123 previous games at UCLA, making one of nine against USC during his freshman year. . . . Gerald Madkins has averaged 11.2 points in five NCAA tournament games, shooting 66.7%. . . . In his first start, UCLA freshman point guard Tyus Edney failed to score but had four assists in 24 minutes. . . . Darrick Martin played in his 126th game for UCLA, tying a school record held by Trevor Wilson.

* ARIZONA LOSES

East Tennessee State, seeded No. 13, scores an upset in Southeast, 87-80. C10