NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME / UCLA 89, ARKANSAS 78 : SPOTLIGHT : Bailey Ball Is Beautiful : UCLA’s Freshman Guard Puts Exclamation Point on Outstanding Season With 26 Points, 9 Rebounds

It’s not as if no freshman had ever happened in the NCAA finals before. Michael Jordan did it with North Carolina and Pervis Ellison with Louisville.

The latter went on to make millions of dollars in the NBA and the former is now bigger than Godzilla, so what awaits UCLA’s Toby Bailey?

“I was thinking of Michael the other day,” Bailey, no shrinking violet, said after scoring 26 points with nine rebounds in UCLA’s 89-78 victory over Arkansas.

“I was thinking, this is where stars are made, in the finals.”

History will decide, but let’s just say Toby Bailey got America’s attention Monday night. If the truth be known, Bailey doesn’t think of himself as a freshman but a star in training, and Arkansas just opened up the wrong court on the wrong night.

“Exactly,” Bailey said. “Exactly.

“That’s why it’s been so hard this season. This team, we have great players. Ed (O’Bannon) is the best player in the nation, Tyus (Edney) is up there . . .

“The coaches have had to talk to me. They’d say, ‘This is Ed’s team. Go through Ed.’ ”

Monday night, Edney was out of there and O’Bannon needed help. The Bruin rotation was down to six players. Nolan Richardson’s Razorbacks were in the process, they thought, of overpowering the Bruin guards. Arkansas zone-pressed all game and opened the court up, like an oyster with a pearl in it for a slasher such as Bailey.

“He’s a young guy,” Coach Jim Harrick said. “He needs to improve in some areas. But when you open up the court for him and make it an athletic game, he’s real, real good.”

Bailey arrived in Westwood last fall with the usual high school star’s perspective--look out, here I come--but started learning the hard way about the pecking order.

In the second game, the Bruins’ one-point victory over Kentucky on two free throws by fellow freshman J.R. Henderson, Bailey played 10 minutes, scored one point and skulked around so much afterward that O’Bannon jumped him and told him such behavior wasn’t acceptable.

“I’ve grown up with different players who are freshmen around the nation, like Ricky Price (Duke) and Jelani Gardner (Cal),” Bailey said.

“That day before the game, I was watching Ricky, and I think he got player of the game against Illinois. He’s like one of my best friends. I was just happy for him. That’s great for him.

“And I went out there and I wasn’t starting and I didn’t get that much playing time and I wasn’t really performing. I was just a little disappointed and a little angry. I think that just showed I wasn’t really that mature at the beginning of the season.

“But Ed had a little talk with me afterward. He was saying something like you have to be happy for your team, even if you didn’t do anything to help this victory. You’re going to help us later on in the season and you’re just going to have to be happy for your team. It’s like a family affair.”

Ed turned out to be right again.

Bailey didn’t just help the team later on in the season. He cracked the starting lineup at midseason, kicking the Bruins up to another level in the process.

There were plenty of moments to suggest this might be the start of someone special. There was his game against UConn in the West Regional final, when the Huskies pressed and opened the court up and Bailey went for . . . yes, 26 points and nine rebounds.

By now, people should be getting the picture: Press UCLA and Bailey goes 26-9, but the Hogs took too long.

“I mean I’m sure they’ve watched tapes,” Bailey said, “so I don’t know if they were that surprised.

“After the first couple points, they started talking to me, saying different things like I was just a freshman and it was luck, this and that. I think they could have underestimated me, the way I played in the game against Oklahoma State (two points, no rebounds).

“After playing against Oklahoma State, I was coming out here to prove a point. I had heard all the critics saying the freshmen didn’t show up and they’re gonna have to show up for this game. And that’s what I tried to do.”

People kept asking Bailey if he had been nervous. He kept saying he wasn’t.

Nearby stood his father, John, looking calm, himself. He was asked if he suffers through Toby’s games.

“Not when he plays like tonight,” said John Bailey, laughing.