UCLA Pulls Rank on LSU With Another Easy Victory : College basketball: Bruins lead by as many as 34 points in 100-80 victory. Brown calls them a potential Final Four team.

There are teams that don’t know what to do when they see a zone, teams that get nervous in an open court, teams that can’t spell LSU.

But UCLA is not such a basketball team.

Facing a ranked school for the first time this season, the Bruins ran off a 34-point lead in the second half against Louisiana State on Saturday night and soon made the Tigers extinct, 100-80, before 12,164 at Pauley Pavilion.

If this was supposed to be UCLA’s first test, nobody flunked. The 5-0 Bruins put all five starters in double figures and generally dominated against the smaller Tigers, who lost for the first time in five games.

It wasn’t close. A 16-point lead at halftime had inflated all the way to 77-43 on Cameron Dollar’s jumper--on a breakaway--with 9:32 to go.

From there on, the only suspense was if LSU Coach Dale Brown would remove his jacket again to show his disdain for the officiating (he didn’t), whether trigger-happy Tiger Ronnie Henderson would take more shots than minutes played (not quite) and whether Coach Jim Harrick could identify what the Bruins need to work on most (he did).

“We’re trying to get in better condition,” Harrick said.

Loosely speaking, the condition UCLA is in right now is unbeaten.

Ed O’Bannon, who with Shon Tarver led the Bruins with 18 points, said, well, the defense could use some more work, even though it looked pretty good against LSU. Otherwise, he had no complaints.

“Obviously you can’t play very good every night,” he said. “We’re pointing toward playing our best at the end of the year, the end of the season.”

By the end of the game, UCLA managed to further impress Brown. He thought the Bruins were good before, but he was really sure afterward.

“The top four teams in the country talent-wise are North Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas and UCLA,” Brown said. “(UCLA) is a potential Final Four team. They are certainly a top-10 team.”

Since the Bruins are ranked No. 9, this is not a matter in dispute. In fact, one of the few issues left unresolved in another Bruin blowout, however unexpected, was how large a margin there would be.

Foul trouble shut down LSU’s man-to-man defense and a zone worked for a while until Harrick made an adjustment and put Tarver at the point and moved Tyus Edney to the wing.

Ed O’Bannon also had four blocked shots and seven rebounds, an area in which the Bruins held nearly as large an advantage as on the scoreboard, 59-40. Charles O’Bannon and Tarver had eight rebounds.

Of course, the way LSU shooters were clanking the ball around the rim, there were a lot of rebounds to be had. And if it had not been for Henderson, a precocious freshman, LSU would have sunk even more quickly.

Henderson scored 28 points and took 21 shots in 26 minutes. Most of them came in second-half flurries, right after Harrick tried to rest his starters with a 77-48 lead and felt compelled to rush them all back in after LSU went on an 8-0 run in less than a minute and a half.

He shouldn’t have worried. Tarver’s floating three-pointer, a three-point play by Ed O’Bannon, a rebound basket by Charles O’Bannon and a driving layup by Tarver and UCLA’s lead was 27.

Tarver left again as a safeguard for his ankle, which he had sprained slightly, although it certainly didn’t appear to affect his form on the fall-away three-pointer.

“You have to go with how you feel,” Tarver said.

And so how does he feel?

“I feel like I have a sprained ankle,” he said.

George Zidek continued to take up a lot of space beneath the basket and show a nice touch with the ball. Zidek scored 17 points and had seven rebounds before fouling out.

All in all, it was a pleasant experience for the Bruins, although some degree of skepticism was in evidence on the other side of the court.

“They’re pretty good, but they’re very beatable,” LSU’s Clarence Ceasar said.

Not so far.