UCLA, St. Louis Show New Looks in Opener : College basketball: For Bruins, it’s replacements for Murray, MacLean. For Billikens, there’s a coaching change.

UCLA will open its basketball season tonight, playing St. Louis at Pauley Pavilion in the first round of the preseason National Invitation Tournament.

The winner will advance to the second round Friday night against the winner of tonight’s George Mason-Texas El Paso game at El Paso, at a site to be determined after tonight’s games.

Second-round winners will move on to New York for the semifinals Nov. 25 at Madison Square Garden.

Several key UCLA players are gone from last season, when the Bruins were 28-5, won the Pacific 10 Conference championship and advanced to the round of eight in the NCAA tournament.

Foremost among them are forward Don MacLean, who graduated last spring as the Pac-10’s all-time scoring leader; and forward Tracy Murray, who gave up his senior year of eligibility for the NBA after leading the Bruins in scoring last season.

Expected to start for Coach Jim Harrick, who is 94-35 after four seasons in Westwood, are senior center Richard Petruska, senior swingman Mitchell Butler, junior guard Shon Tarver, sophomore forward Ed O’Bannon and sophomore guard Tyus Edney.

Tarver, who averaged 10.6 points, is UCLA’s leading returning scorer. Petruska, a 6-foot-10, 260-pound transfer, averaged 16.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and two blocked shots at Loyola Marymount two seasons ago.

The top reserves are junior center Rodney Zimmerman, sophomore center George Zidek and freshman forward Kevin Dempsey.

“It will be very difficult to be the kind of team we were a year ago,” said Harrick, who still is confident that the Bruins will make a fifth consecutive appearance in the NCAA tournament next March.

St. Louis was 5-23 last season, 0-10 in the inaugural season of the Great Midwest Conference, and lost its last eight games.

The Billikens, losers of 16 consecutive road games since March 3, 1991, were 0-12 on the road last season, including a 76-60 loss to USC at the Sports Arena.

Their new coach is Charlie Spoonhour, whose teams won 70.9% of their games and made five NCAA tournament appearances during his nine seasons at Southwest Missouri State.

Three starters return, including Scott Highmark, a 6-4 forward who averaged 13.2 points and made 52 of 141 three-point shots last season; and Erwin Claggett, a 6-1 guard who averaged 10.3 points.