UCLA’s Hope: Avoid Encore : West Regional: Bruins aim for better result in Tucson against Iowa State.

UCLA is here today, but will the Bruins be gone tomorrow?

Anything resembling last Saturday’s performance at the McKale Center will do the trick. The Bruins (21-10) were routed by Arizona in their regular-season closer, 99-80. It was so bad that the Wildcats were ahead by 32 points with about 10 minutes to play.

“We’re a better team than we showed last Saturday,” UCLA forward Ed O’Bannon said.

The Bruins had better be when they face Iowa State in the first round of the West Regional tonight at about 7:40 PST. The game will be shown on Channel 2.

The Cyclones (20-10) have all their starters from last season’s team that advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament. Iowa State, which tied for second with Oklahoma State in the Big Eight Conference, was expected to be among the country’s 10 best teams this season.

In Ames, Iowa, it was. The Cyclones were 16-0 at home but struggled everywhere else.

“We’ve played well on the road,” said Johnny Orr, Iowa State’s coach. “We just haven’t been able to win.”

What UCLA will see is a reflection of itself. The Cyclones use similar tactics as the Bruins, and have been as inconsistent. They did sprint out of the regular season, though, winning six of their last eight games, one of them a 75-71 victory over Kansas on Feb. 22.

Said Orr: “We’re both about the same. Sometimes we’re real good. Sometimes, we’re not.”

When it comes to outside scoring, eighth-seeded Iowa State is simply fine. Four Cyclone starters score in double figures, led by guards Justus Thigpen at 17.5 points per game and Ron Bayless at 13.1. Julius Michalik, a 6-foot-11 forward from Slovakia, also is a long-range scoring threat, and averages 12.3 points.

“Their big guys will put it on the floor and penetrate,” said UCLA’s Mitchell Butler, a senior forward making his fourth consecutive NCAA appearance. “They can do a lot of things smaller guys can do.”

Butler, a 6-5 swingman from Inglewood, is as excited about tonight’s game as any postseason match he has played because his collegiate career is ending.

“I’m going to leave everything on the court,” he said. “Everybody works harder if they see me out there scrapping.”

Both teams play fast and loose. But the ninth-seeded Bruins, who tied with Arizona State for third place in the Pacific 10 Conference, seem to play better when pressed.

“This team thrives on being the underdog,” Coach Jim Harrick said.

Harrick is hoping the Bruins can disrupt Iowa State’s rhythm by benefiting from familiar surroundings. Although Arizona fans are not particularly fond of UCLA, the Wildcats’ coach, Lute Olson, has asked them to support a fellow Pac-10 team, drumming up support for the Bruins on Tucson radio this week.

Orr, who has led Iowa State to the NCAA tournament in six of the last nine seasons, is mostly concerned with how the Cyclones will react after advancing to the Big Eight tournament semifinals last weekend, where they lost to eventual champion Missouri. He said that when his team is playing fast-paced basketball, it is difficult to stop.

Still, Iowa State’s inside game is suspect, with 6-11 sophomore Loren Meyer the team’s best front-line player.

“Sometimes they’ll play as many as four guards,” Harrick said.

If the Cyclones are misfiring, they might have problems with the Bruins’ bulk--primarily 6-10 center Richard Petruska and 6-9 reserve Rodney Zimmerman.

“If the big guy (Petruska) gets going, he’s dynamite,” Orr said. “We’ve got that down.”