COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA TOURNAMENTS : Bruins Were Looking Forward to This : Men’s West: UCLA had figured on meeting Mississippi State in Sweet 16, and Bulldogs are right there tonight.

Before Florida International, before the great Missouri escape, before just about anybody else in Southern California could name a single Mississippi State player, UCLA drew a circle around the Bulldogs in the West Regional bracket, then watched and waited for the showdown.

Here it is.

Two eventful NCAA tournament rounds later, these two programs with vastly divergent profiles and histories--but intriguingly comparable lineups--have found their way into tonight’s game at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, playing for a berth in Saturday’s West Regional final.

“Actually, even before the brackets came out, for some reason I just had a feeling we were going to play against them,” UCLA senior forward Ed O’Bannon said. “Watching them play all year, they’re a great team and they play hard.

“For some reason, I just said to myself, ‘We’re going to play against them, and it should be a good game.’ We both have similar styles, and it looked like it would just be fun to play against them.”

With 6-foot-11, 255-pound sophomore center Erick Dampier elevating his game and guard Darryl Wilson proving himself a tournament-time scorer, Mississippi State (22-7), which handled Santa Clara and Utah to move to the third round, has the look and feel of a March Madness veteran.

Although the Bulldogs, seeded fifth in the West, registered victories over Arkansas and at Kentucky in the regular season, by the tone of their voices and the attitude of their answers, it was obvious Wednesday that they are pleased merely to have lasted this long.

The UCLA players, top seeded and winners of 15 consecutive games to raise their record to 27-2, concede they feel and feed off the pressure of Final Four expectations. Mississippi State? All expectations were met and exceeded when it dominated Utah in Boise and 1,000 fans flooded the tiny Starkville, Miss., airport upon the team’s arrival that night.

Before its 75-67 victory over Santa Clara Friday in Boise, mostly because its competitive 1950s and ‘60s teams boycotted events that included integrated teams, Mississippi State’s only NCAA tournament victory came in a 1963 consolation game against Bowling Green.

This year, Mississippi State preceded its unprecedented NCAA run by stumbling in the Southeastern Conference tournament, losing in the first round to Florida, 80-64, and bringing its SEC tournament record to 1-9 since Coach Richard Williams’ arrival in 1986.

“This is the first time we’ve been this far in the tournament, so I think it’s an understatement to say we are looking forward to it,” Williams said of the chance to play the top-ranked Bruins. “Now, do we have to win? No, I don’t think we have to win. I think our fans would still be happy with our season if we lost tomorrow. That’s not going to change.”

At UCLA, nothing has changed since those banners started going up into the Pauley Pavilion rafters.

“I hear Mississippi State saying, well, they’re just glad to be here,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said. “That’s really different than our situation. We’re not just happy to be here. We came here with a plan and a purpose.”

The plan for tonight, Harrick says, is to make Dampier, who blocked a tournament-high eight shots against Utah’s cavalcade of big men, move around and force him to make adjustments.

Seven-foot UCLA senior George Zidek can match Dampier push for push, but Harrick is counting on Zidek, who has played an average of only about 20 minutes during UCLA’s winning streak, to make some medium-range shots.

“We’re going to move George around a little bit and see what Dampier does,” Harrick said. “Is he going to come out and play him? I think he’ll block some shots, and I think he’ll alter some shots, but I don’t know that he’ll intimidate us.”

But that strategy might be rendered moot if the Bulldogs fall back into a zone--which they played with some success to beat Kentucky and at several other times in the late season.

Still, the Bulldogs did not need to point out, Missouri played UCLA to the brink of a huge upset with a strangling man-to-man defense that collapsed for good only in the last 4.8 seconds.

The Mississippi State players argued that UCLA’s brush with defeat would only make the Bruins better. “I look at it as a wake-up call,” point guard T.J. Honore said. “They went into there thinking they were UCLA, and they were just going to walk through the West Region.

“I think they’re going to be playing a lot harder tomorrow. So we’ll have to raise our level.”

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TONIGHT’S GAME

UCLA vs. MISSISSIPPI STATE

* Records: UCLA 27-2, Mississippi State 22-7.

* Regional: West.

* Site: Oakland.

* Time: 5 p.m.

* TV: Channel 2.

* Radio: XTRA (690).

* Next: The winner of the UCLA-Mississippi State game will play the winner of tonight’s other West Regional game between Connecticut and Maryland on Saturday.