This Year, November Gave No Hint of Fall

You lose in the NCAA tournament?

It happens.

You lose to Indiana?

It happens.

But you lose by 27 points in the last game of the season to a basketball team that you defeated by 15 points in the first game of the season?

What happened?

UCLA hasn’t a clue. You could ask every man on the team, every coach on the bench, every fan in the stands and every sad face in Westwood today and never get a satisfactory explanation for Saturday’s 106-79 flop.

How could a team this good play a game this bad?

UCLA’s first shot was an airball and its last shot was an airball. In between, the entire team spent the entire game gasping for air.

Jim Harrick, the losing coach, shook his head and said he couldn’t remember ever seeing a UCLA team so lacking in energy and pep. “No energy, no zip, no zap, no legs, no jumping, no anything,” was the way Harrick described it.

Bob Knight, the winning coach, noticed at halftime that while his own kids were running the uphill ramp to the locker room, UCLA’s players were walking. “Trudging,” was the word Knight used. “My guys were already inside the locker room and UCLA’s guys were trudging along with me.”

Why? What made the Bruins go slow-motion?

Albuquerque’s altitude?

“Hey, they play at the same altitude we do,” Harrick said.

Then what was it?

“I wish I knew,” Harrick said. “We had a hard game two nights ago with an incredibly emotional crowd. Maybe that took something out of us.

“You get into a Super Bowl game and one team blows out the other. Why does that happen? There’s no logical explanation. Nobody’s got the answer to that or they wouldn’t even bother coming to the game.”

Corner to corner in the UCLA dressing room, all the players could do was scratch their heads.

Don MacLean closed his career with an deliberate foul and wasn’t ashamed to acknowledge that all he wanted to do was get out of here and on with the rest of his life.

“When you’re involved in something like that and it seems like the whole world’s against you, you just want to get off the court and go home,” MacLean said.

Tracy Murray called it a nightmare and said: “I never thought anything like this could happen.”

But there was something more Murray wanted to say:

“I’m not embarrassed. We’re not embarrassed. There were a lot of people out there whose uniforms were already packed and hanging in their closets. Everybody counted us out a long time ago. First round, second round. They didn’t even like us to win our league. Well, this is a great bunch of guys. We gave our blood, sweat and tears. We were 28-5. You know how difficult that was, 28-5? I love these guys and I’m not embarrassed by a single thing.”

Mitchell Butler understood exactly how Murray felt.

“We’re going to have to live with this. There’s going to be a knock on us over the whole summer,” Butler said. “People are going to knock UCLA no matter what. Well, we had a great season. We’ve just got this little devil that’s living on our shoulders.”

It wasn’t losing that hurt most of the guys so much.

It was that awful, awful final score.

“I couldn’t picture that in my wildest dreams in a million years,” Shon Tarver said.

You beat a team in the season opener, 87-72, then lose to that same team in the season closer, 106-79.

That’s a 42-point swing.

And that defies explanation.

Was Indiana that improved?

“That didn’t even resemble the team we met before,” Ed O’Bannon said.

Was UCLA that flat?

“We weren’t sharp and we didn’t have any zip,” MacLean said. “I don’t know why. But once they got ahead of us, it was like their lead was almost insurmountable.”

Was UCLA outcoached?

Knight, unable to resist a dig, recalled a remark attributed to Harrick earlier in the season. “Harrick said he wants to be paid as much as I am,” Knight said. “Gee, going against a high-priced coach, that’s tough.”

Everything about this game for UCLA was tough.

There were the brutal picks, often five or more on each possession, set by Hoosier players that sent the Bruins bouncing around like pinballs. Virtually every man in the UCLA locker room mentioned that.

There was the intimidation and muscle demonstrated beneath the basket, particularly by Alan Henderson and Eric Anderson, that reminded everyone of why this Indiana team had been able to manhandle a Louisiana State lineup with Shaquille O’Neal.

There was the defensive tail-gating that refused to allow UCLA an open shot. There was one point during the game when UCLA had 15 points. Nine came on three-point baskets and two on a one-handed shot by MacLean from the baseline, behind the basket.

UCLA played poorly and weakly, occasionally offering no resistance. Murray in particular seemed to be sapped of his strength. “He airballed a three-pointer and almost airballed a free throw,” Harrick noted.

What happened?

Why was UCLA the pits in the Pit?

Why was a good team so bad?

Nobody knows. Nobody ever will.

But it was a good team. And that’s what everyone on this team hopes that everyone else will be able to remember whenever they talk about this game--as they will.