Officiating Was a Little Hit and Miss

Legendary coach John Wooden took UCLA teams through Albuquerque on the road to NCAA championships.

“Something happened that I’ll never forget,” he told Times staff writer Jerry Crowe, referring to the 1968 West Regional semifinal, also against New Mexico State.

“Somebody took a shot from the side and it went completely over the (rim). It didn’t touch metal or anything. They blew the whistle and called a foul. And (Sam) Lacey (the Aggies’ 6-foot-9 center) picked up the ball and sort of flipped it toward the basket, and it went in.

“Someone on the New Mexico State team ran over and said, ‘Is it good? Is the basket good?’ The officials looked at each other and said, ‘Yes.’ They counted the basket.”

It didn’t matter. UCLA won, 57-48.

Home cooking: After winning her third consecutive world cross-country championship last weekend, this time at Harvard’s Franklin Park, Lynn Jennings of Newmarket, N.H., said: “It was like putting on my own cross-country meet in my own back yard.”

Jennings used to run races in Franklin when she was a student at Bromfield School in Harvard, Mass.

Add home: In an exciting finish over snow, slush, ice, mud, grass, blacktop and plywood, Jennings edged Ireland’s Catherina McKiernan.

“It was like I was on extra-premium gas,” she said.

Trivia time: What NBA player once portrayed a prehistoric monster in the original Saturday morning children’s television show, “Land of the Lost”?

Add ‘Lost’: Bobby Porter, an ultramarathon runner from Westminster, plays a prehistoric monkey boy, Stink, on the show that returned to the airwaves after a 14-year hiatus.

Facts and go figure: During their junior seasons in high school, New Mexico State guard William Benjamin met UCLA forward Don MacLean in the CIF Southern Section 4-A quarterfinals. Benjamin’s Santa Monica High team (14-9) shocked MacLean’s Simi Valley team (26-1) in overtime, 55-54. Santa Monica went on to win the championship.

Add facts: New Mexico State’s Chris Hickman, on his hometown of Clearwater, Kan. (Pop. 3,000): “It’s not a metropolis. There’s one stoplight and it’s a crosswalk in front of a grade school. You have to push a button to make the light change.”

Last add facts: Aggie forward Eric Traylor paints his toenails red. Nobody is sure why.

Wrestlemania: Hawaiian Salevaa Atisanoe, who won his third championship this week, is close to becoming a grand champion in Japan’s ancient sport of sumo. Never in the sport’s history of about 2,000 years has a foreigner been so close to achieving the esteemed honor.

Atisanoe, 28, is a former football player who weighs 577 pounds. He is known in the ring as Konishiki--the Little Brocade. The rank of “yokozuna,” one of Japan’s most coveted and prestigious titles, is so revered that bestowing it involves an elaborate 3 1/2-hour belt-blessing ceremony on the grounds of a venerable Tokyo shrine.

Trivia answer: Bill Laimbeer of the Detroit Pistons. The 6-11 Laimbeer played a member of the evil reptilian race called the Sleestak.

Quotebook: Xavier basketball Coach Pete Gillen, on his role in society: “I’m just a caraway seed in the bakery of life.”