‘You Can’t Expect More Than You Are Given’ : Basketball: Coach Jim Harrick knows it’s not easy being a walk-on for No. 1 UCLA, but Huntington Beach’s Tommy Walden thinks it’s great anyway.

Tommy Walden gathers some UCLA classmates together a few times a month at a Westwood pizza parlor, but more than just pepperoni and anchovies are on the menu.

They come not so much for the pizza but the TV. They catch nearly every telecast of the Bruin basketball team’s road games, cheering every rim-swaying dunk by Ed O’Bannon and sweet pass by Tyus Edney.

But at home games, you’ll find Walden cheering not from the Pauley Pavilion student section, but from the Bruin bench.

Walden, a freshman from Huntington Beach, has the demanding and often thankless role of a walk-on with the top-ranked Bruins.

All week, he makes sure starters such as Edney and O’Bannon don’t coast through practices.

His reward: wearing jersey No. 22 for all home games. Playing time is optional.

For road games? A seat in front of the TV.

UCLA carries only one walk-on--forward Bob Myers--on its travel roster. Myers has seniority, and the Bruins need him for depth on the front line.

“It’s kind of weird watching us on TV,” Walden said. “They’ll pan down the bench, and I’m not there. That’s strange, especially after you have practiced all week with the guys you’re watching.”

Walden has appeared in only five games this season, playing nine minutes. He played three minutes in an early-season game against Nevada Las Vegas but only two minutes since Dec. 11.

When the Bruins build a lead around 15 points, Walden’s parents, Tom Sr. and Deborah, often hear fans lobbying for their son:

Tommy! Tommy!

But they rarely see him play. Walden is the only Bruin who hasn’t scored this season. He has taken only two shots and has one rebound.

“This is quite a change from what I’m used to,” said Walden, a 6-foot-2 guard who started three seasons at Huntington Beach High.

“But I can’t be upset about playing time. It really doesn’t bother me because I’m a walk-on. That’s my role. This might sound strange, but I actually enjoy practices. They’re fun.”

UCLA Coach Jim Harrick found in Walden several things he seeks in walk-ons--good fundamental skills, quickness, shooting ability and potential.

“But most of all,” Harrick said, “you need to have the right attitude to be a walk-on. You can’t expect more than you are given.”

And that’s not much.

Walden doesn’t stay on the athletic dormitory floors but with the regular students. He eats at the cafeteria, not the training table. He and his parents pay for tuition and books.

Walden says he doesn’t worry about scholarships and benefits. He came to UCLA for an education. He’s getting it. As a kid, he dreamed of playing basketball at UCLA. And now he is.

“How can I complain?” he said, looking up at the national championship banners amid the rafters. “This is great.”

Unwanted and unrecruited by Division I programs, Walden enrolled at UCLA as a pre-med major. He wasn’t considering a second major in hoops.

As a Huntington Beach senior, he averaged 13 points and helped the Oilers to the Southern California Regional semifinals. A fine student with a 3.73 grade-point average, Walden applied to some of California’s top schools--Cal, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and UC Irvine.

But only three small schools--UC San Diego, Colorado School of Mines and Ohio Wesleyan, were interested in his basketball skills.

“That really surprised me,” Huntington Beach Coach Roy Miller said. “Here you have a 6-2 kid who can run the floor and play defense. He’s very quick, very intelligent and can handle the ball.

“He’s an outstanding student, and he can play ball, so I found it hard to believe that nobody (in Division I) actively pursued him.”

Walden came to UCLA with topics such as chemistry and calculus on his mind, not basketball. Before tryouts, he had played only a few times since the Oilers lost to Crenshaw in the regional semifinals last March.

In the spring, he started part-time at outside hitter for Huntington Beach’s volleyball team that won the Southern Section Division I championship. During the summer, he took a two-week tour of Egypt, a graduation gift from his aunt, Celonia Walden.

“That was an experience that will probably never be matched,” Walden said. “We saw everything--the pyramids, the Sphinx. There was so much history, so many things I never knew about.

“My summers had been so compacted with sports, I never had one off. But last summer, I did nothing athletically inclined.”

After a month at UCLA, Walden pondered trying out for basketball. He was out of shape, so he started shooting and playing pickup games.

He wasn’t sure if he was good enough to make such a talented team but changed his mind after talking with his parents and Cameron Dollar, the Bruins’ freshman guard from Atlanta.

“Cameron was sitting in front of the student union one day, and I just walked up to him and told him I was thinking about trying out,” Walden said. “He told me that if I didn’t give it a try, I would always have this bad feeling in my gut, wondering if I could have made it.”

The transformation from student to student-athlete hasn’t been easy. Practices limit his study time, but he’s keeping his grades up.

“I remember coaches from UC San Diego telling me that I would have to set aside 1,000 hours just for basketball,” Walden said. “With academics and basketball, that would mean my social life would be hurting.

“My parents told me they would support me playing and going to school, but they warned me that my education still had to come first, or basketball would have to go.”

That explains why Walden left practices early twice a week during first semester. History and chemistry classes he had scheduled in the fall conflicted with UCLA’s afternoon practices. Harrick cut Walden a break so he didn’t have to cut class.

Walden’s future with the Bruins remains in Harrick’s hands. Will he earn a scholarship as David Boyle, a walk-on from Mater Dei, did last season? Or will he fall by the wayside when the Bruins bring in next year’s recruiting class, which many experts are calling the best in the nation?

“I don’t know about Tommy’s future in our program,” Harrick said. “But he may have one in another program, if he chooses to do that.”

In the meantime, Walden practices, and occasionally plays, with the nation’s top-ranked team.

“You look up and see all the banners hanging from the ceiling and you realize this is the tops of the tops in the country,” he said. “But all the guys here are cool--the scholarship guys all the way down the bench.

“There are no egos. They make you feel like you’re part of the team. That’s one of the main reasons why we’re doing so well.”