COLLEGE BASKETBALL : NCAA MEN’S FINAL FOUR : Dollar Goes a Lot Further : Instead of Merely Learning From Edney, Sophomore Showing Teammates the Way

The game changes when Cameron Dollar gets in and nobody is immune. Not the opposing team, not the best scorer, not even a player-of-the-year candidate.

Not even if he’s Ed O’Bannon.

Late in UCLA’s West Regional victory over Connecticut last Saturday, with UConn making a last run, Husky center Travis Knight muscled inside for a tip-in when O’Bannon had wandered outside, leaving the 6-foot-2 Dollar alone underneath.

“C’mon! What are you doing, Ed? Where were you?” shouted Dollar as he ran back downcourt, gesturing angrily at O’Bannon.

Wasn’t O’Bannon, a fifth-year senior having the season of his life, bothered to hear it from a sophomore reserve guard averaging 3.1 points a game?

“Heck no, man,” O’Bannon said with a smile Tuesday. “He’s a leader, and I respect him because, to me, he’s like (former Bruin guard) Gerald Madkins. I looked at Gerald Madkins as a leader. He was my favorite UCLA player, and I see Cameron as the same player.

“When he barks at me, I listen, because I know he wants to win. He’s doing whatever it takes to win.”

Said Dollar: “We had been controlling the boards, and we kind of got away from what we were doing. Ed has been pushing me and pushing me all season. So I know he can take me (yelling at him). I can just jump anybody. We cannot let them get those boards.

“And he responded with a crazy hard rebound.”

In UCLA’s four NCAA tournament victories leading to the Final Four, Dollar has scored 10 points--but he has averaged 23 minutes a game and, Bruin coaches say, seems to change the course of the game whenever it is subjected to his fast hands and ferocious energy.

When Missouri’s Paul O’Liney got hot against UCLA in the second round, Dollar was sent in to deny him the ball. When Mississippi State’s Darryl Wilson was the top worry, Dollar found him.

Dollar was even assigned to hold down UConn’s 6-5 Ray Allen, as much as possible.

And if Oklahoma State shooter Randy Rutherford makes a few early shots Saturday in the national semifinal game, Dollar knows he’s coming off the bench for the clamp-down.

“It’s fun,” Dollar said of his stopper role. “I’ve never been a guy to back down from a guy being hot. He’ll just have to light me up.

“It’s all about just who wants it most. And it’s just hard for me to fathom that somebody would want it more than I do.”

O’Bannon is the superstar, Tyus Edney the pace-setter, and others fill the lanes and finish the plays. But Dollar, the Bruins say, is the epitome of this Final Four team’s desire to win.

“Cameron gets on everybody,” Coach Jim Harrick said. “Cameron gets on the coach. Cameron refuses to let you lose. That’s why it’s hard for me to take him out of the game. That’s an intangible, the fierce competitive spirit of Ed O’Bannon and Tyus and Cameron.

“Cameron Dollar, he’d chew your head off.”

When Dollar is playing, one of the Bruins’ high-fliers is sitting. For instance, down the stretch against UConn, Charles O’Bannon, one of the best fast-break finishers in the country. was on the bench and Dollar was on the floor.

The coaches point to his six steals in the tournament, a multitude of deflections and body-on-body defensive stands, to explain his presence, alongside Edney, at crucial moments in games.

“What Cameron Dollar has done is, he has forced Coach Harrick to play him,” assistant coach Lorenzo Romar said. “Cameron was brought in to be Tyus’ backup and to learn and be his understudy, and then when Tyus left, to have the opportunity to take over.

“But Cameron has not settled for that. He has worked so hard and made such big contributions, sometimes without scoring a basket, the coach says, ‘I can’t take him out.’ ”

Dollar has been a different kind of Bruin since his recruiting visit from his hometown of Atlanta two years ago, when he came off the plane wearing a suit and asking for a meeting with Athletic Director Peter T. Dalis.

Dalis has not had another prospective player ask for a meeting, before or since, and says he left his talk with Dollar knowing that he was a future leader.

“Cameron is a guy who’s going to carry himself in a way that demands respect,” Romar said. “Cameron can go out in the ‘hood with the fellas and jive around and shoot the breeze with the best of them, but he can walk into a room with a bunch of business guys and conduct himself extremely well.

“He’s very professional. He wants to be a head coach one day, and he’ll make a great head coach. You see him on the television, analyzing our game, and his comments are right on. I mean, sometimes his comments, I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I didn’t even know that, Cameron. That’s pretty good.’

“He makes observations in practice and in the game that there’s some thought put into it. Sometimes, we’re doing the other team’s offense and Cameron will tell the scout team players, who’ve already practiced it, ‘You’re in the wrong position. You’re supposed to be over here.’

“He’s been known to tell players on the other team, because we knew what they were going to run, ‘You’re not running the play right.’ ”