CHAMPIONSHIP WATCH : Dream Team

Oh those West Coast softies. Oh those supine sensualists in lovely but oh-so-laid-back La-La Land. Oh my, is it true Californians sweat only when they’re on the beach working ever so assiduously on their tans? How terribly inspiring.

Well, tell that to the very talented men’s basketball team from the University of Arkansas that lost the national championship Monday night by 11 points to a team from . . . laid-back La-La Land. Heck, tell it to Fan One--President Clinton, assuming the position from an overstuffed armchair in Little Rock as he observed the NCAA basketball championship on the telly, just like the rest of us who couldn’t be in Seattle’s Kingdome.

Forget about that laid-back image, America. The L.A. team you saw winning it all was not, perhaps, America’s team but it was, certainly, California’s team.

Comfy, cushy and pampered? This was a team that had to play the championship game with almost none of the services of the injured Tyus Edney, the tyro dynamo whose David-versus-Goliath exploits in the face of much larger men boosted the UCLA team into the championship final. It was, finally, a basketball team with a heart as big as the colossal state of California.

And, so, with the final score UCLA 89, Arkansas 78, let us praise now-famous young men: Ed O’Bannon, Charles O’Bannon, George Zidek, Toby Bailey, Cameron Dollar, J. R. Henderson, Tyus Edney.

Great game; hey, great team, great win, great university, great campus. OK, guys, now let’s go back to UCLA and hit the books.