No Edney, but Dollar Makes Sense for Bruins : College basketball: With point guard out with flu, UCLA rallies in second half against USC, 73-69.

In a moment of Bruin crisis, Cameron Dollar got the point.

At 4 p.m. Thursday, with UCLA already in an uncertain mood after last week’s loss to California, point guard Tyus Edney was officially ruled out of Thursday night’s game against USC because of a bad case of flu.

At halftime of UCLA’s scratch-and-claw 73-69 victory, the Trojans were rolling and UCLA was teetering.

USC, a winner of four of the last five games against UCLA at the Sports Arena before this game, outplayed the seventh-ranked Bruins through the first half, taking a seven-point lead in the second keyed by forward Lorenzo Orr’s dominant play inside.

But Dollar, who did not record an assist and had three fouls in the first half as USC jumped to a 35-31 lead, settled down in the second.

The 6-foot-2 sophomore had five assists and no turnovers and keyed a long stretch of tight Bruin defense in the second half, as the Bruins inched ahead with just under six minutes left and hung on before 7,273, sending USC to its fifth consecutive defeat.

“I was never nervous at all,” Dollar said. “They brought me in here to run the point, and this was my opportunity. I just had to step up for the challenge.”

Edney, the Bruins’ second-leading scorer and leader in assists and steals, was in bed most of Thursday after visiting the hospital Wednesday.

“He looked like he’d been hit by a bat or something,” senior forward Ed O’Bannon said of Edney’s brief appearance before practice Wednesday.

Though Edney was feeling better by Thursday afternoon, Coach Jim Harrick decided not to bring him to the Sports Arena because he wasn’t sure if Edney was still contagious, he didn’t know if Edney would be effective in his weakened state and he didn’t want to aggravate the illness.

Harrick said he thought Edney would be ready to play Sunday at Pauley Pavilion against Notre Dame.

“Tyus is the backbone of this team, it’s no secret,” said O’Bannon, who kept the Bruins in the game with eight first-half points and, for the first time in his career, played all 40 minutes. “We knew we had to suck it up and pick up the slack.”

In the first half, there was a lot of slack to be found. With Orr slicing through, over and around the UCLA interior defense for 13 first-half points and guard Stais Boseman drawing three fouls apiece on Dollar and J.R. Henderson, UCLA’s only other regular ballhandler, the Bruins were down to freshman off-guard Toby Bailey to run the point in the final minutes of the half.

What was Harrick thinking? “Quit fouling,” Harrick said. “I told them just quit fouling, and that’s what we did in the second half. We started moving our feet instead of reaching and grabbing. You can’t reach against Stais Boseman or Lorenzo Orr.”

Orr led the Trojans with 22 points, and Boseman was the only other Trojan in double figures, with 21.

UCLA raised its record to 13-2, 7-2 after the first round of Pacific 10 Conference play, and USC fell to 7-12, 2-7.

UCLA began the second half quickly, narrowed the lead to four halfway through the half, then hit its stride when USC went to a zone defense.

In a sudden series, the Bruins set up an alley oop slam for forward Charles O’Bannon, Dollar found Ed O’Bannon for a layup, Charles grabbed an offensive rebound for an easy put-back and center George Zidek got a pass from Dollar for an open dunk.

Charles O’Bannon, who had a team-high 10 rebounds, got seven rebounds and scored 12 of his 16 points in the second half.

At the same time, USC was in a shooting slump. The Trojans did not score from the 7-minute 25-second mark until only 1:18 remained. By that time, UCLA had a seven-point lead. USC shot only 36.5% from the field in the game.

“For the most part, we played a good game,” Trojan Coach Charlie Parker said. “Defensively, we held a good offensive team to 73 points. We just didn’t come up with the key baskets.”

Harrick credited to the victory to the team’s defense, especially with the team’s best fast-break player sidelined.

“It was a gutty performance without their leader,” Harrick said. “They wanted to win it for Tyus, because he’s won so many for us.”

Said Ed O’Bannon: “A couple times I found myself getting a rebound, and I’d look to see Tyus streaking down court--and he wasn’t there.”

But Dollar, who played the whole second half without picking up another foul, was. And, for one night at least, it didn’t matter.

* COLD TEAM

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* TAR HEELS WIN

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