College Basketball : NCAA Men’s Tournament: A Look Back : Wooden’s Wonders : Short UCLA Team Defied Logic by Going Unbeaten in 1963-64

The blue and gold banner from UCLA’s first NCAA basketball championship hangs in the northwest corner of Pauley Pavilion.

It’s in good company. Nine others, each representing a championship, surround it. But they are all different from the 1963-64 banner, mainly because you can only be first once.

So on the 30th anniversary of the first of UCLA’s 10 national basketball championships, here are the reasons it happened:

--It was the full-court press.

Two-hundred-fifty-pound Fred Slaughter, who was 6 feet 5 standing up or lying down, said he was particularly effective against the player throwing the ball inbounds.

“Who could see past me?” he said.

--It was a defense so smothering it could suck the air right out of a gym.

Jack Hirsch was the designated hit man on defense and he possessed an uncanny ability to knock away passes.

Said Keith Erickson: “After all, his arms hung down to his ankles.”

--It was Coach John Wooden.

Said Walt Hazzard: “Everybody talks about that rolled-up program, that smile, what a nice man. Yeah, right. On the practice court, he was a tyrant.”

--It was Erickson, the last man in the press, who stole so often he could have transferred from UCLA to Folsom.

Wooden said that without Erickson, the Bruins never would have won.

Said Erickson: “I’m glad he never told me that or I probably would have fainted.”

--It was the backcourt combination of Hazzard and Gail Goodrich, one of the best in history.

Said Wooden: “Possibly the best passing guard and the best scoring guard we’ve ever had.”

--It was because nobody expected them to.

No starter was taller than 6-5 and there was no way a team that needed booster seats in restaurants could win it all.

Said Slaughter: “We were the unknown midgets from Westwood. People said all we thought about were surfboards, beaches and Playboy bunnies.”

Actually, all UCLA thought about was winning games. It has been three decades since the first UCLA basketball championship, when the Bruins surprised everyone but themselves with a 30-0 season and a 98-83 romp over Duke in the championship game.

“I’ll never forget a couple of their players saying, ‘Hey, can you guys slow down?’ ” Slaughter said.

The Bruins couldn’t. They ran a fast break straight into UCLA history as the team that put the Bruins on the map, changed college basketball forever and started a run of 10 NCAA titles in 12 years. It is a streak of success that the sport never has seen the like of, before or since.

Wooden had coached at UCLA for 15 years and would coach for 11 more, but said he never will forget the time he spent on the bench during the 1963-64 season.

“It may be the most gratifying of my championships for more than one reason,” he said. “It was my first, it was undefeated and it was my shortest team to ever win the championship.”

It was also one of his loneliest. This was before Pauley Pavilion was completed, in June of 1965, so UCLA had no real home court. The Bruins played 13 games at the Sports Arena, two at the Long Beach Arena and two at Santa Monica City College.

UCLA practiced at the old men’s gym, sharing the floor with the wrestling team and gymnasts’ trampolines. There were no private locker room, private coaches’ room or private showers.

To reach the court, the players had to climb three flights of stairs, which, although annoying, was aerobic.

“You ended up in pretty good shape,” Hazzard said.

“To win a championship under these conditions, well, before we did it, I thought our chances were impossible,” Wooden said. “So I consider that first championship more improbable than any of these others.”

The players, though, thought that a championship wasn’t all that improbable.

THIS ISN’T KANSAS

Because he was from Topeka, Fred Slaughter might well have gone to the Kansas or even Kansas State. But he didn’t. He wanted to go to UCLA.

“I needed some heat on my buns,” Slaughter said.

The top basketball player in the state, Slaughter, despite his weight, was also a star sprinter. He wrote a letter to Wooden, because Wooden didn’t recruit out of state, and asked about joining the Bruins.

Slaughter always battled a weight problem, but he was strong and quick, a one-man front line in UCLA’s full-court press.

“Our secret was our quickness and speed and we understood our roles,” said Slaughter, a player agent and the attorney representing the NBA officials. “Our full-court press killed teams. It was one of the greatest things that John Wooden did. We would run people to death.”

The press was actually assistant coach Jerry Norman’s idea and Wooden implemented it as a full-time weapon for the 1963-64 season.

“I’ve been kicking myself ever since that I didn’t use it earlier,” Wooden said.

Slaughter was a busy player that season. In Game 6, he went up against All-American center Paul Silas of Creighton. Silas had 20 points and 33 rebounds, but UCLA won by 16.

“Of all the people I played against, the two guys I had the most trouble with were Paul Silas and Bill Buntin of Michigan,” Slaughter said. “Mel Counts was no problem. He was taller, but not stronger. I had problems with the guys who were taller than me, and thick.”

Everybody else had trouble with UCLA’s press. The Bruins were 11-0 after beating Washington State, 121-77, setting a school scoring record, breaking the previous mark of 113 set in Game 1.

Just before the half against Washington State, UCLA got five consecutive steals before the Cougars could cross midcourt and scored on them all.

After the next voting, UCLA was No. 1 in both national polls.

Slaughter explained the Bruin press: “There I was, waving, and Keith was back there picking off passes and Gail was sneaking around and stealing it and we killed them.”

THE NATURAL

Keith Erickson of El Segundo High spent one year at El Camino College, then went to UCLA on a half-basketball, half-baseball scholarship.

But Erickson could play just about any game--basketball, baseball, tennis, volleyball.

“He was the finest all-around athlete I’ve ever been associated with,” Hazzard said.

Erickson, who does television commentary on Phoenix Suns’ home games, said he was just happy to be at UCLA.

“I had no great dreams of going to UCLA,” he said. “It was the only school that offered me a scholarship. I never even had seen a UCLA basketball game until I played in one, so I guess I was part of history without ever thinking about it.”

But if you thought about the UCLA press, you thought about Erickson. His job was to stop a layup if anyone got past midcourt. He usually was outnumbered. He usually won anyway.

When UCLA defeated Stanford, 100-88, to go 22-0, Erickson came up with three steals in an 18-3 stretch that put UCLA, which had trailed at the half, comfortably ahead, 77-65.

In the next game, Erickson scored 21 points, 12 more than his average, in a 78-64 victory over Washington that clinched UCLA’s third consecutive Big Six title. It was Wooden’s ninth title, including old Southern Division Pacific Coast Conference titles.

But the press, not the points, is Erickson’s legacy of that team 30 years ago.

“It happened so fast, other teams couldn’t even call a timeout,” he said. “We’d just give you the rat-a-tat and you couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t believe it was 30 years ago. I still feel like in my mind that I’m 26 . . . my body feels like I’m 80.”

THE LONG ARM OF THE LAW

At Van Nuys High, Jack Hirsch was the City player of the year as a center. He was 6-3.

Wooden quickly assessed Hirsch’s value as a defensive stopper at UCLA and assigned him to the other team’s top player.

In Game 8 of the 1963-64 season, Hirsch’s task was to defend a Michigan sophomore named Cazzie Russell. It was a matchup of 7-0 teams, the third-ranked Wolverines and fourth-ranked Bruins in the L.A. Classic at the Sports Arena.

UCLA won in a breeze, 98-80, and Hirsch was the star. He had 15 rebounds, scored 16 points and held Russell to 11 points.

“I could defend,” Hirsch said simply.

Hazzard, who was Hirsch’s roommate, called him the most underrated player in the country. But Hirsch said he didn’t think too much about that kind of appraisal.

“I was just in there,” he said. “I was just playing.”

He played with those long arms, described by Erickson, as well as a sort of simmering malevolence that sometimes caused him trouble.

In Game 18 at California, for instance, Goodrich scored 26 points and UCLA rolled up the most points for an opponent in Harmon Gym in 32 years. But when Hirsch complained to referee Tom Ross about a call, he was ejected. Erickson, who had also complained but wasn’t tossed, explained:

“I had a baby face. Jack looked like a gangster.”

Hirsch played like a gangster in the full-court press. He had decided after the Bruins lost to Arizona State in the West Regional semifinals in 1963 that he didn’t like losing, so he would do something about it.

“I didn’t ever want to lose again,” said Hirsch, a marshal at PGA West in La Quinta. “We had other guys who felt the same way.”

As the years have gone by, Hirsch has become the least-known member of the starting five from 1963-64, but it’s nothing he isn’t used to.

“Once the ball went to Gail and Walt, it was all over,” he said. “But it was in pretty good hands with those two characters.”

Hirsch still wears his 1964 NCAA championship watch.

“You never forget,” he said. “You don’t understand the (scope) of it until later,” he said.

LEFTY

Gail Goodrich put a basketball into the hands of his infant son, also Gail, in the crib. The captain of USC’s Southern Division co-champions in 1939, the elder Goodrich saw Gail go cross-town to UCLA.

Gail, a slender left-hander, led Poly High to the City championship and was player of the year. It got better. Goodrich’s UCLA freshman team was unbeaten. Then, as a sophomore, Goodrich handed the Bruins’ play-making job to Hazzard, at Wooden’s request, and all UCLA’s pieces for a championship were in place.

Goodrich led the Big Six in scoring in 1963-64, averaging 21.7 points a game, but he was UCLA’s key point-producer all season.

Game 27 was the Bruins against Seattle in the first game of the West Regional at Corvallis, Ore. Bob Boyd’s Seattle team, led by John Tresvant, was 21-5.

The Bruins led, 81-80, with five minutes to play when Goodrich gave them some breathing room. He assisted Kenny Washington on a layup and a three-point play, then stole a pass and scored on a layup for a six-point lead.

UCLA pulled out a 95-90 victory with Erickson, Hirsch and Slaughter on the bench with five fouls. Said Slaughter: “We just decided we wanted to give the fans their money’s worth.”

Goodrich, a senior vice president of acquisitions for American Golf Corporation in Greenwich, Conn., said UCLA set a pattern for successful teams.

“If you looked at that team, how we played was very characteristic of how successful teams play, even today,” he said. “Team play, quickness, pressure. When I look back, I think that team played together better than any team I ever played on and I played on a Laker team that won 33 straight games. We were the underdog, basically the whole year, even when we played Duke in the championship game.”

The Blue Devils featured Jeff Mullins and Jack Marin and arrived in Kansas City for the semifinals riding a blue streak.

Mullins scored 43 points against Villanova in the fist game of the regional and 30 in a 101-54 wipeout of Connecticut in the East final at Raleigh, N.C. Although Cazzie Russell had 31 points, Duke beat Michigan by 11 in the first game of the national semifinals and Mullins had 21 points.

But the Blue Devils were no match for the Bruins. UCLA outscored Duke, 16-0, in a stretch of 2:33 in the first half, and led by 20 at the half. “That was characteristic,” Goodrich said. “It looked like we were just trading baskets, then boom-boom-boom. Knowing we were capable of that, we played with a great deal of confidence.”

With Washington playing a key role off the bench--26 points and 11 rebounds--the Bruins coasted in, 98-83, bagging both the title and an NCAA tournament single-game scoring record.

Goodrich finished with 27 points.

“I look back when I was a kid, I grew up watching the NCAA tournament,” he said. “Then to really achieve it yourself, well, it’s just indescribable.”

THE FIRST TIME FOR ‘SHOWTIME’

On the asphalt playgrounds of Philadelphia, Walt Hazzard learned the tricks of the basketball trade.

Hazzard brought to UCLA a style that was as suited to Hollywood as Westwood. The dribbles were behind the back and through the legs. The passes were bounce, one-handed, two-handed, look and no-look.

“All that stuff, Walt did,” said Erickson. “He was the first one who brought ‘Showtime’ to Los Angeles.”

The only problem was, no one knew what to name it until Magic Johnson came to the Lakers 15 years later.

Hazzard was UCLA’s leader 30 years ago and not just because of his basketball skills, which were plentiful. Hazzard was a leader through sheer willpower.

“Nobody really believed a team with our size was capable of going all the way,” he said. “I did. It’s not how big you are, it’s how big you play. We were not big in stature, but boy, we played big. The people we had on our team were not going to lose.”

Hazzard, assistant vice chancellor for student affairs at UCLA, never experienced wavering confidence.

After Game 14, an 84-71 victory over Stanford, Hazzard said: “Somewhere, sometime, we know our pressure will get ‘em.”

It was an ominous warning to opponents. After Game 26, a 91-81 victory over USC before 14,553 at the Sports Arena, Hazzard said: “We’re still hungry for the big party.”

Hazzard backed up everything he said. He scored 26 points against Seattle in the first game of the West regional and 23 in the regional final, a 76-72 victory over a San Francisco team led by Ollie Johnson and Erwin Mueller.

The Bruins had 53 rebounds and Erickson scored 28 points in UCLA’s 90-84 victory over Kansas State in the first semifinal at Kansas City, but it was Hazzard who put the punctuation mark on the victory over Duke when he was asked to comment after the game.

“They couldn’t run with us,” he said.

Hazzard counts UCLA’s first basketball championship as his No. 1 accomplishment as a player. “I still have good memories about that season,” he said. “It started the beginning of an era. It set a precedent for UCLA basketball and established a style of play. And that’s a great deal to do.”

*

On Sunday, March 21, 1964, a crowd estimated at 1,800 braved a downpour and drove to LAX to meet the UCLA players when they arrived on their flight from Kansas City just before 6 p.m.

The door to the plane opened and the players walked into the terminal with Hazzard carrying the NCAA trophy. He presented it to the UCLA chancellor, Franklin Murphy. It was Hazzard’s last assist of the season.

The final Associated Press poll showed UCLA No. 1. The only other times UCLA had finished in the top 10 were in 1950 as No. 7 and in 1956 as No. 8.

But this was different. UCLA was No. 1--in the polls and on the court. For the Bruins, it was the beginning of an era and neither UCLA nor college basketball would ever be the same.