Are These Bruins Harrick’s Best? : UCLA Coach Has Built a ‘Great’ Team, but It Needs Final Four to Beat ’92 Squad

Bill Frieder’s face was flushed and his white hair wild as he strode across the Pauley Pavilion floor near midnight, looking not unlike Ichabod Crane.

Or worse.

Less than an hour after UCLA had beaten Arizona State for the 13th consecutive time late last Thursday night, in overtime, the Sun Devils’ coach shook his head and laughed when asked if this was the best Bruin team Jim Harrick has had.

“Ask him ,” Frieder said. “He had another real good one a few years back, you know, but this one’s got my vote. It can beat you so many ways.

“They’ve got great depth, great size, they can go big, they can go small, they’ve got great leadership, they’ve got guys who make big plays . . . A great basketball team.”

And, after displaying the full extent of its versatility and consistency against the dangerous Arizona schools over the weekend, it is a UCLA team that, by all reckoning, probably has the best chance to be playing in April of any that Harrick has had.

In 1991-92, Harrick’s fourth UCLA season--when Ed O’Bannon, Tyus Edney and George Zidekwere freshmen--Tracy Murray and Don MacLean shot the Bruins to a 25-4 regular-season record, a Pacific 10 title, the top seeding in the West Regional and three victories in the NCAA tournament before losing by 27 to Indiana in the regional final.

But the ‘91-92 team played without a true center or power forward, was almost wholly dependent on MacLean and Murray--UCLA’s first- and fifth-ranking all-time scorers--to get points, and lacked depth.

The morning after the Bruins’ emotional 72-70 victory over Arizona, and hours before the team had to depart for tonight’s game at Stanford, Harrick relaxed at his desk and warned against thinking too far ahead--then compared Bruin vintages.

“I really felt good about our other team that won the league (title) because of our ability to score,” Harrick said. “We scored easily. We scored so beautifully--Murray and MacLean were magnificent, and we were getting three great shutdown defensive performances night in and night out from (Shon) Tarver, (Mitchell) Butler and Gerald Madkins. Our fast break was magnificent because of Darrick Martin and Gerald Madkins and Tyus.

“(But) we weren’t strong in the middle, couldn’t guard the post very well, we weren’t a great rebounding team, we weren’t balanced as a team, we were three guards and two small forwards.

“This team is more balanced. I feel good about this team. So yes, we’ve got a nice team, we’ve got nice talent, a nice group of kids, but there’s also some other teams that (have) that same kind of stuff.

“And what you do in February doesn’t mean a thing to what you do in March. We’re a long way away.”

For those who were on hand for the 1992 tournament run, what separates this season’s team from that one are the depth, speed, size and variety of talent--and the pride and unselfishness it has displayed through 20 games.

Against Arizona on Sunday, UCLA got a total of nine points from three of its most productive players--Edney, Zidek and J.R. Henderson--but won by holding the Wildcats to 40.4% shooting and getting 31 points from Ed O’Bannon and 19 from Toby Bailey.

At Washington State on Feb. 11, Harrick moved Henderson from guard to the front line, took the 7-foot Zidek out of the game, ran the offense through the 6-9 Henderson, and watched as his team sprinted away to a 15-point victory, with Henderson scoring 28 points.

“This is the team with the most character that I’ve played on,” said Zidek, who didn’t play much as a freshman. “I think it’s the best team since I’ve been here. It’d be great to play the (1991-92) squad, if we could travel in time.

“If we had two guys we solely concentrated and depended on, sometimes they don’t have a good game or the other team plays really good defense on them, you cut off the head and the body dies.

“But our team, we’ve got seven guys who can step up any game.”

Said Harrick, “That’s been a strength of the team, the fact that if one guy doesn’t play very well, somebody picks him up. Last year, we didn’t have that. When somebody didn’t play very well, we were really struggling.”

And this season, although the offense has at times sagged through bad stretches, opponents have rarely ripped through the Bruin defense.

Opponents are shooting only 40.4% from the field against UCLA, which leads the conference in defensive statistics, and the Bruins have held top scorers such as Kentucky’s Tony Delk, Arizona’s Damon Stoudamire and Arizona State’s Mario Bennett relatively in check.

“I worried all summer about a shut-down defender, a stopper,” Harrick said. “Who’s going to stop (Stanford’s) Dion Cross? Who’s going to take that forward that’s really, really tough?

“But we’ve put together a quick, quick-jumping, long-armed, cover-the-court kind of defensive team. And I just get heart palpitations when I see Charles O’Bannon block a three-point shot, which he’s done on three or four occasions.

“That’s what I mean. That kind of defense, where you can pivot and take one slide and cover maybe a quarter of the court, from the baseline to the key area. And J.R. and Charles, Toby, Ed, they’re all that kind of guy.”

The pressure that the Bruins’ defense has put on opponents’ offenses--UCLA is averaging 9.7 steals a game--also triggers the team’s transition offense and, for the most part, has kept UCLA out of the half-court game at which it does not excel.

In the two games UCLA has lost this season, at Oregon and at home to California, the Bruins struggled offensively when the fast break was denied them and their outside shooting faltered.

UCLA leads the conference in assists, averaging 19.5 a game, but has made only 72 three-pointers, last in the league and 112 fewer than Arizona.

“We’ve proved we can be beaten,” Harrick said. “But the thing you like is the consistency. It’s been a very consistent team, (it’s) not been up and down. And even when we’ve been beaten, it takes a real strong effort from another team, (they) have to play a real superior game.

“I like that part of it. Certainly, I like the balance. It’s a lot more balanced than the other team that we had that won the league. We don’t score quite as easily as they did, but we’re stronger.”

Better?

Said Ed O’Bannon, “I don’t want to put the other teams down, because I’ve played on some pretty good teams here. But at the same time, we play hard, and we play well together. That’s our main thing, to play together, make sure we’re on the same page.

“When we do that, with the talent that we have and the coaching we have, we can win.”

* NO. 1 KANSAS LOSES

Only hours after taking the top spot in the rankings, Kansas was upset by Oklahoma, 76-73. UCLA is No. 2, for now. C5