Bruins Are Definitely Up There in No. 1 Spot

The last UCLA basketball team to be ranked No. 1, that is until this one, was the one 11 years ago when the coach was . . .

“Uh, no idea,” Shon Tarver said.

And the players were . . .

“I really don’t know,” said Ed O’Bannon, who went on to explain, “I’m into now now. I’m just interested in 1994.”

For the record, the last time the Bruins were ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press poll was Jan. 18-Feb. 1, 1983, a team coached by Larry Farmer and led by Rod Foster, Darren Daye, Kenny Fields, Ralph Jackson and Stuart Gray.

More than a decade and two coaches later, UCLA is No. 1 again. The new poll lists Jim Harrick’s Bruins No. 1, 77 points ahead of No. 2 Duke. The Bruins received 59 first-place votes to six for Duke.

Kansas is No. 3 and North Carolina is No. 4.

UCLA (13-0, 6-0 in the Pacific 10 Conference) is the only undefeated team in Division I, which probably made choosing No. 1 a fairly easy job this week.

“We’re No. 1, it’s well deserved,” guard Tyus Edney said. “It’s a feeling of pride. It feels like we are definitely up there.”

Farmer remembers feeling the same way 11 years ago, but with a twist.

“Everybody got very, very excited, but I don’t know, for me, it was different,” he said. “I mean, I had three years as a player and we were 89-1. The last two years, we were ranked No. 1 start to finish.

“So it’s not that it wasn’t special, it was just something that happened to me before.”

The Farmer-coached Bruins snagged the No. 1 ranking when they took advantage of a series of upsets.

UCLA was No. 5 when No. 1 Memphis State lost to Virginia Tech, No. 2 Virginia lost to North Carolina and No. 3 St. John’s lost to Boston College.

In the next poll, UCLA was voted No. 1, eight votes ahead of previously fourth-ranked Indiana.

The Bruins beat California and Stanford on the road and retained their No. 1 ranking in the poll the week of Jan. 25. UCLA was 13-1 when it played unranked Alabama, Jan. 28 at Pauley Pavilion.

The Bruins never led in the game, but they were tied, at 67-67, with 35 seconds left. Farmer said Foster thought UCLA was behind, and intentionally fouled Mike Davis of Alabama with 10 seconds left.

Davis made both free throws, Foster’s jump shot spun out of the basket and Alabama’s Buck Johnson was fouled with two seconds left. Johnson made one free throw and the Bruins were beaten.

Farmer, now the coach of Kuwait’s national team, said he believes UCLA might have got caught looking ahead.

“I honestly think, there’s so much tradition playing Notre Dame and our next game was against them,” he said. “I can’t say we weren’t focused, but we might have been looking past Alabama.”

The Bruins dropped to No. 7 in the Feb. 1 poll and never made it back to No. 1 until Monday night. They finished the 1982-83 season 23-6, won the Pac-10 title and lost to Utah in the first round of the NCAA tournament, 67-61.

Those are the numbers, but John Wooden said he never was one to pay that much attention to them when he coached UCLA from 1948-1975.

“They never meant anything to me,” he said. “I would do everything in my power to just forget about the rankings. Our focus had to be on winning our conference championship, which you had to do to get into the tournament.

“Also, the vast majority of the voters don’t see many of the teams they vote for. It’s based, plain and simply, on record. So I don’t think you can ever say anyone is No. 1. It’s all so subjective.

“You can tell the No. 1 at the end of the season. You hear coaches say ‘Oh, we’ve made the Final Four, that’s what we’ve wanted all year.’ Well, I say hogwash.

“That isn’t what you want, you want to go all the way. That’s the only thing that matters.”

Of course, 10 of Wooden’s UCLA teams went all the way. There was never a question of who was No. 1 for a decade, because the answer was always the same.

As for the 1994 Bruins, the coach from 1983 said he is a fan.

“At this point in the season, they haven’t lost, they’ve won big, they’ve played poorly and won, they’ve won on the road and they’ve come from behind to win,” Farmer said.

“That’s what they used to say about the teams I played on. And I think this team has a chance to be very, very good.”