Bench Pumps Up Flat Bruins, 86-67 : College basketball: Henderson, Dollar spark second-half run against Oregon State.

In the beginning Thursday night, there was a gift and some grumbles from the Pauley Pavilion crowd.

At the end, there was building-shaking response as UCLA 12th man Bob Myers scored his first basket of the season to finish the Bruins’ herky-jerky, 86-67 victory over Oregon State before 12,682.

In between, there were long periods of UCLA flat play only sporadically punctuated by sudden bursts of the slashing, slamming, pressing Bruin play that has characterized this season.

Lots of highlights, lots of blah.

“I’m not big on faucet teams,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said of his top-ranked team’s on-and-off play one week before the beginning of the NCAA tournament. “I’m big on habits and doing things well over and over.”

That wasn’t the case Thursday. Harrick began the night by presenting retiring Beaver Coach Jim Anderson with a goodby piece of crystal. Then UCLA, after opening an early 14-4 lead, began letting Oregon State and its star senior, Brent Barry, creep into the danger zone.

“As we go along and play against better teams, we can’t afford to do that,” said J.R. Henderson, who finished with 16 points and nine rebounds in 27 minutes. “Good teams will take advantage of those periods and just crush us, I think.”

With just under 15 minutes left in the game, UCLA was ahead by only five, 48-43. But Harrick sent Henderson and Cameron Dollar in, and the two reserves keyed a 16-4 run that put the game away.

The victory was UCLA’s 12th in a row and third consecutive since the Bruins, 24-2 and 15-2 in the Pacific 10 Conference, were elevated to the No. 1 spot in the polls. It also ensured that the Bruins will be the undisputed Pac-10 champions--they claimed the conference’s tournament berth over a week ago, but could have finished in a tie atop the standings with Arizona if they had lost their last two.

Oregon State fell to 8-18, 5-12.

Though Harrick said he wasn’t pleased by the overall effort, he said he understood his team might not be sky-high against the Beavers.

“You’re talking about March, and you’re talking about a team in the bottom half of the league,” Harrick said. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of emotional games in the last month, and I don’t think we had as much emotion tonight as we’ve had.”

Said Ed O’Bannon, who led UCLA with 21 points: “Winning the Pac-10 is nice, we’re happy. But the way we’re thinking, we have seven more games to play (to win the NCAA title). We can’t get too happy.”

No surprise, the conference’s second- and third-leading scorers, Barry and O’Bannon, respectively, led the scoring in a turnover-plagued first half. Each scored 15 first-half points.

O’Bannon was three for four from behind the three-point line in the first half, and ended up making nine of his 13 shots. Point guard Tyus Edney scored 13 points and added a game-high eight assists.

“Ed O’Bannon and Edney are kind of like their Batman and Robin,” Anderson said. “They just kind of take over.”

Barry could manage only six points in the second half, with Dollar and Bailey covering him more tightly.

“Brent Barry is a very, very fine basketball player,” Harrick said. “He’s one of the top two players we’ve played against all year.”

Said O’Bannon of the 6-foot-6 Barry: “Playing against him is weird. He’s tall and lanky, but he’s very fast.”

The Bruins began the second half sluggishly, but then Henderson and Dollar, who had six steals, came in and the UCLA press began to turn up the heat.

Overall, Oregon State committed 24 turnovers.

“The press won’t always work,” Dollar said. “But it worked tonight. It kind of rattled them a little bit. The key is to catch them off-balance, and that’s what we did.”

* USC LOSES: The Trojans play an exciting, inspired game against No. 25 Oregon, but fall at finish, 81-77. C6