COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : Bruins Caught in a Hurricane : Midwest Regional: UCLA has no defense for hot-shooting Tulsa in record-setting 112-102 upset loss in first round.

Now they know where Tulsa is.

UCLA got a quick lesson in geography and fast-break basketball from the Tulsa Golden Hurricane, which blew the Bruins right out of the NCAA tournament, 112-102, Friday.

“It wasn’t a bad dream,” Coach Jim Harrick said. “It was a nightmare.”

It seemed a whole lot worse than that.

The Bruins were concerned about playing the game in Tulsa’s back yard, but they could have played in John Wooden’s back yard and it wouldn’t have made any difference.

UCLA set some team lows along the way. The Bruins actually trailed by 29 points in the first half, had given up 63 points at the midway point, wound up giving up their most points in seven years and yielded the most points since UCLA started going to the tournament in 1950.

Other than that, it was a rousing defensive performance by the Bruins, who ended their season by dropping three of their last five and two in a row to conclude a mostly unsatisfying season at 21-7.

From a 14-0 start, UCLA stumbled home 7-7 after Jan. 30.

“We were sitting pretty 14 games into the season,” said Charles O’Bannon. “We’re the lowliest of the low right now.”

O’Bannon explained just how low that is.

“We have to face the critics and everyone who is a basketball junkie who will tell us what we should have done,” he said. “We’ve got a long, hard road ahead.”

In this tournament, UCLA took a long road for a very short stay.

A season that included UCLA being the top-ranked team in the country ended with the No. 5-seeded team being shown the door by the Midwest Regional’s 12th-seeded team.

This was not what Ed O’Bannon had in mind before the season began, when he said he thought the Bruins would be playing in the Final Four.

“I didn’t think the Final Four was out of the question, but the last part of the season, we didn’t do anything,” he said. “And this game was more of the same.”

More of nothing? Actually, it was too much of the same thing--a docile Bruin defense overmatched against a springy Tulsa team led by Gary Collier, a 6-foot-4 shooting machine who never took a shot he didn’t like or couldn’t make. He was nine for 16 against the Bruins, including four of eight three-pointers, and sank 12 of 13 free throws.

In his last big game of the season, Ed O’Bannon came up with a mammoth performance--30 points, 18 rebounds, six assists, four blocks, but Collier was slightly better than O’Bannon and certainly had a lot more help.

He produced 34 points in 35 minutes.

The Hurricane had runs of 10-0, 13-1, 10-0 and 8-0 in the first half, which ended with Tulsa basically out of sight, 63-38.

It could have been worse. With 6:19 to go, Tulsa’s lead was 29 points, 46-17.

By then, UCLA was devastated. Ed O’Bannon said he lost track of the deficit because “the numbers got so high.”

There was a moment, though, in the second half that the numbers got so low that UCLA actually felt it had a chance to get back in it.

Tulsa’s lead was down to 12, 72-60, with 11:53 to go, and Marquis Burns was standing at the free-throw line to shoot a one-and-one with a chance to cut UCLA’s deficit to 10.

But Burns missed the first free throw, and, at the other end, plowed into J.R. Rollo, who was setting a screen for Collier behind the three-point line.

Collier made the three-pointer, Tulsa got the ball again because of Burns’ foul and Collier scored on a three-point play, fouled by Burns.

It was an eight-point turnaround. Instead of being down by 10, UCLA trailed by 18. That was it for the Bruins, who got no closer than seven points with 38 seconds left.

Tulsa Coach Tubby Smith said he wasn’t sure if his players breathed any easier at that point.

“I don’t know if it helped them,” Smith said. “But it sure helped me.”

Even though UCLA scored 64 points in the second half, the Bruins simply could not overcome 20 minutes of defensive sins.

Charles O’Bannon had three steals, 12 rebounds and 15 points, but he was the only effective starter in a white uniform besides his brother.

George Zidek had eight points in 21 foul-shortened minutes, Shon Tarver had 11 points in 33 minutes in his final game for UCLA and Tyus Edney, suffering from muscle spasms in his back, was way off form.

Edney, who thrives in an open-court transition game, made only four of 13 shots and watched Alvin Williamson, his point guard counterpart, break loose for 20 points and eight assists.

And as the crowd of 13,336 at the Myriad Convention Center cheered wildly, the underdog Hurricane of the Missouri Valley Conference scored a landmark victory.

Tulsa moved into the second round of the tournament for the first time. Tulsa’s only other victory in the tournament was in 1955 against Southern Methodist in a consolation game.

In the other dressing room under the stands at the far end of the court, UCLA faced the somber facts. It was UCLA’s second first-round tournament defeat in four years, after an opening-round knockout by Penn State in 1990.

Harrick adopted a philosophical stance afterward.

“That’s just the way it goes sometimes,” he said. “As I told our team afterward, this is a humbling game. I’ve been in it many years, and this one hurts.

“Your whole season, everything is measured by the tournament. Now, we’ve got to sit back and wait a year for it to happen again. That’s going to be very hard.”

The Lowdown

How bad was it? UCLA’s 112-102 loss to Tulsa was something of a low-water mark.

* Most points against UCLA in seven years and 204 games, since Stanford scored 116 in double overtime in 1987.

* Most points given up in a regulation game.

* Most points given up by UCLA in 29 years in the NCAA tournament.

* Only the third time in 92 NCAA tournament games UCLA gave up 100 points.

* Most points UCLA gave up in a half this season, 63.

* Most points UCLA gave up in a half in an NCAA tournament game.

MIDWEST REGIONAL

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