COLLEGE BASKEBALL / NCAA MEN’S TOURNAMENT : A Happy Edneying for UCLA : West Regional: With 4.8 seconds left, guard receives inbound pass, takes ball downcourt and scores to lift Bruins to 75-74 victory.

For four seconds, he was a blur.

But for eight-tenths of a silent, interminable, nervous second Sunday, the countdown seemed to freeze, and everyone else’s balance seemed to give way.

In between the sprint and the celebration--a heartbeat--Tyus Edney hung in the air with the ball in his hands, Missouri’s Derek Grimm in his path, and some sort of destiny to be served.

“Boy, it was like an eternity watching that ball,” said Edney’s father, Hank, standing exhausted in the UCLA locker room. “I was standing, my heart was racing. . . .”

Said Bruin guard Toby Bailey, “I was right under the basket. I could see it perfectly. It was like in slow motion--it hit off the glass and headed toward the rim.”

And, with UCLA’s dream season on the line, Edney, facing the end of his Bruin career, was true. The ball settled gently into the basket as the horn sounded, giving the Bruins a 75-74 second-round tournament victory over Missouri and touching off a tumultuous meeting of overjoyed Bruins in the middle of the Boise State University Pavilion floor.

A rush. A hush. Then, a crush.

“When I released it, everything was in slow motion,” said Edney, who received the ball in his own backcourt with 4.8 seconds left and beat Missouri guard Jason Sutherland with a dazzling behind-the-back dribble on the way. “And all of a sudden, everybody was rushing the floor. And we won.

“It’s a great time of year to make it. It’s just the biggest shot of my life so far.”

It’s just the biggest shot in recent UCLA history, resuscitating the 27-2 Bruins’ dream season when everything looked dark and gloomy, lifting them to the Sweet 16 next Thursday in Oakland against Mississippi State when it seemed that eighth-seeded Missouri was ready to knock UCLA, the West’s No. 1-seeded team, into the mud before 11,886.

The victory also gave the Bruins a 15-game winning streak, the school’s longest since its record 88-game streak from 1970-74.

Afterward, UCLA Coach Jim Harrick spoke of fate and history, pointing out that many other future national championship teams have been the beneficiary of last-moment dramatics.

“I remember Christian Laettner hitting two buzzer-beaters in elite eight games to take Duke to the Final Four,” Harrick said. “I believe in my heart that sometimes along the way your team has to face some of this and overcome adversity in this manner.”

But, even as they repeated their coach’s thoughts, most everybody else in the UCLA postgame locker room seemed too dazed by the game’s drama and too happy to have survived a lackluster effort against a hard-edged, hot-shooting Tiger team to talk about the future.

“It’s a reprieve,” Dollar said. “I don’t think we played well enough to win that game.”

Others just wanted to sit and talk about Edney.

“Some people might think I’m blowing smoke,” said UCLA’s player of the year candidate Ed O’Bannon, who has consistently argued that Edney is the Bruins’ most valuable player. “But I mean, that’s the man. Without Tyus, we wouldn’t be anything, simple as that.”

The game was put in Edney’s hands after Missouri’s Kendrick Moore wound the clock down below 10 seconds, then penetrated and passed to Julian Winfield, who put the Tigers ahead, 73-72. Preceding that play, Dollar was called for a holding foul, which enraged Harrick and allowed Missouri to let the clock run in an effort to keep UCLA from getting the ball back.

Missouri (20-9) had clawed out to an eight-point halftime lead, then fended off a 12-0 second-half Bruin rally, mostly because of blistering outside shooting--the Tigers made 12 of 19 three-point attempts, including several in the last five minutes.

Paul O’Liney scored 16 points in the first half, making all four three-point attempts, but was held to only seven in the second after the Bruins switched Dollar to defend him and focused on keeping the ball away from him.

As the last few minutes ticked down, with O’Bannon coming through time and again, the Bruins edged ahead three times and tied it once, at 69-69 with 4:21 to go, only to have Missouri answer with three-point baskets each time to retake the lead. O’Bannon’s two free throws with 58.9 seconds gave UCLA the 73-72 lead before Winfield’s score.

UCLA called its final timeout, and O’Bannon and Edney both told the players in the huddle that the Bruins were going to win the game.

“We feel we’ve come a little too far to blow it this early,” said O’Bannon, who led UCLA with 24 points.

Harrick told Edney to take the ball, drive and pass if someone was open or take it all the way if he could. Harrick told O’Bannon to position himself outside if Edney needed him.

Dollar passed to Edney, who received token pressure because Missouri could not afford to foul him and put him on the line. He burst up the left side of the court, then went behind his back with the dribble.

“That was something that just happened,” Edney said. “I was going up the left side and I saw two guys coming over to cut me off. That was just a natural reaction, to go behind my back and cut their angle and open it up.”

Then the 6-foot-9 Grimm challenged him in the lane.

In 1993, in a second-round West Regional game against then-defending national champion Michigan, Edney had a chance to win the game in regulation, drove to the basket but was challenged by center Juwann Howard and tried to pass the ball to O’Bannon at the last moment. The pass was stolen by Michigan’s Jimmy King, UCLA lost in overtime, and Harrick has often said he wished Edney had shot.

Edney sat in the locker room Sunday and swore he doesn’t think about that play any more. But this time? “When I saw him go behind his back,” Hank Edney said, “I knew he was going all the way in.”

The UCLA players said they never had any doubt Edney, who scored 15 points and had seven assists, could get all the way downcourt in less than five seconds, especially because they have a drill in which each player must dribble full-court against a defender in six seconds or less.

And Edney, nursing a sore ankle that he said loosened as the game went on, is clearly UCLA’s fleetest player.

“Four-point-eight seconds is a quick time,” said Charles O’Bannon. “But for Tyus, that’s an eternity.”