UCLA GOES ON THE DEFENSIVE : Grizzled Veterans of a Championship Run, Can the Key Bruins Be Only Sophomores?

By the time they are all old enough to drink or play in the NBA, whichever comes first, the foursome that makes up UCLA’s Class of ’99 will have won so many games, made so many comebacks, gone through so many slumps and played out so many little dramas, it will hardly seem necessary to locate its spot in Bruin history.

So let’s do it now, as UCLA prepares for its first-round NCAA tournament test tonight against Princeton. After a kinetic 63-game start, sophomores Toby Bailey, J.R. Henderson, Kris Johnson and omm’A Givens are the most fascinating--and important--class of players Westwood has seen in a quarter of a century.

“I think we’re already making history,” said Bailey, with characteristic brio. “This class has the potential to do some great things.”

After winning two conference titles in two seasons under Coach Jim Harrick (with a 32-4 record in those league games), will they win four Pacific 10 titles, a sweep not achieved since UCLA’s David Greenwood and Roy Hamilton-led Class of ‘79?

After last year’s freshman frolic to a national championship, will they get to the Final Four again, maybe win another title or two? Or, beginning with tonight’s tough tactical match against the slow-it-down Tigers, will all this talent degenerate into a series of mishaps and migraine headaches for Harrick and his staff, who have had to deal with plenty of infighting and immaturity this season?

The point is, the Class of ’99 has come to define the expanding parameters of UCLA basketball: its recent glory, current youthful impatience and inconsistency and near-future expectations.

And it has given Harrick a chance to be a picky recruiter--the Bruins probably will sign no more than two recruits this year and don’t need a major influx of talent until the current crop of high school juniors, one of the deepest ever in Southern California, is available.

Last year, seniors Ed O’Bannon, Tyus Edney and George Zidek were the heart of the operation--making a last-chance march toward UCLA’s first title in 20 years--and the then-freshmen played vital, but supplementary, roles.

This season, alongside juniors Charles O’Bannon and Cameron Dollar, Bailey, Henderson and a newly trim and productive Johnson have became the team’s centerpiece players. Givens, the only member of the class to earn a berth on the prestigious McDonald’s prep All-American team, has been the slowest to make an impact in college.

“As Coach Harrick has said many times, when you look back to [Don] MacLean and Tracy Murray, as freshmen and sophomores [in Harrick’s first few years at UCLA], they didn’t do very much,” assistant coach Lorenzo Romar said. “Ed and Tyus as sophomores, they didn’t accomplish very much.

“These guys are sophomores and key players, and we won the league title.”

The Bruins have just completed a seven-loss regular-season that was a bumpy transition from Ed O’Bannon and Edney’s experience and poise to Bailey and Johnson’s recklessness and verve. But, even though the Bruins are tacitly pointing to next season as their next true title shot, if Bailey, Henderson and Johnson play efficiently, UCLA has the talent and big-game savvy to make a serious run this time. With more runs to come.

“I think we’ll go down in UCLA history, just for the ups and downs as much as anything,” Henderson said. “With Kris and his weight thing, omm’A and the McDonald’s All-American thing and his knee injury. . . .

“And I’m sure there will be some more problems as we go along. I think by the end of it, we’ll definitely be remembered. I don’t know whether that’s bad or good.”

Harrick concedes that this has not been an easy team to coach. There have been locker-room pouts, on-court disagreements and occasional selfishness. But that was all expected and has been dealt with, he says. The sophomores had to grow up.

“I’ve had about three or four real young teams in my career, and I knew there were going to be some more vocal kinds of things, me getting on them and them not knowing how to take it,” Harrick said. “That’s the kind of thing we’ve had some backlash on.

“But now that the safe is on their backs, I’m going to get on them.”

Said Givens: “I feel for a lot of the guys, this year is like the year where everybody can see who we really are.”

For Givens, it has been another season of frustration as he adapts to big-time college post play from his prep dominance in Aberdeen, Wash. For Bailey, it has been about high expectations and finding a role for his skills. For Johnson, it has been a revelation. And for Henderson, the sophomore slump describes only his usual sideline pose.

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“I feel like J.R.’s probably our team leader right now,” Givens said. “He’s the guy who’s really steady and consistent.”

Henderson, a soft-spoken 6-foot-9 versatile player from Bakersfield, is the team’s leading scorer and rebounder and most consistent presence, from ballhandling to front-line defense to offensive rebounding.

“I try to be the steady, calm one,” Henderson said, “just to have balance on the team.”

If any of the sophomores has the opportunity to strike NBA gold by leaving early--and breaking up the class--it would be Henderson. But, for now, he has no inclination to jump.

“We joke, we always say, ‘J.R.’s a pro guy,’ because he’s like pretty much the one,” Johnson said. “He could be in the lottery now. But he’s all, ‘I ain’t going nowhere, man. I love college too much.’ He’s crazy the way he talks. He doesn’t even think about the money. ‘Too much traveling, I’m not ready for that.’ ”

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Bailey traveled from little-known freshman to cover-boy superstardom in a flash of a thousand cameras.

Ed O’Bannon, Edney and Zidek got millions from the NBA, but after his title-game performance against Arkansas, Bailey got famous. Magazine covers, swooning teeny-boppers at road games. . . . Givens says he was in Europe over the summer, and even there, people were asking him about Bailey.

“That was a little bit weird, how quick I got the notoriety,” Bailey said.

But what was lost in his new-found fame was the fact that Bailey was an erratic, if talented, freshman who averaged only 10.5 points and scored two points against Oklahoma State in the national semifinal game two nights before his 26-point, nine-rebound, one-handed tip-slam performance in the big one.

This year, as he moved back and forth from off-guard to the point while Dollar’s hand was injured, then back to off-guard, Bailey has averaged 14.8 points, but has turned the ball over a team-high 109 times, about one-fifth of UCLA’s conference-high 539.

After going through a shooting slump in February, Bailey had a talk with Harrick and decided to revamp his game--back to his freshman-season style of athleticism and attack.

“I needed the mistakes I was making this year; I had to find my game, and find myself,” Bailey said. “And it took me until this year to find out what makes my game what it is.

“I kind of got lost. I didn’t really find an identity to my game, thinking I could just stand out there and shoot threes, when I have to be all over the court, playing hard, getting every loose ball. I found out that’s my game, and that’s going to help me next year.”

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Will next year be the one when Givens shows up? Before being sidelined for the season because of a knee injury, Givens, beaten out for the starting center job by freshman Jelani McCoy, was a minor producer.

Givens came to UCLA with the Washington state prep career scoring record, and with a lean, long-armed agility that looked as if it was built for big-time stardom.

But even before he was hurt, he saw former walk-on Bob Myers get key minutes against Oregon State on Feb. 3--and had a long talk with Harrick after that game to discuss his role.

“You look at his body and his athleticism--I used to tell people he’s not Shaquille O’Neal, don’t expect him to take the college world by storm,” Romar said. “But by later on, he’ll be a big-time player. It hasn’t happened yet, but he definitely has the tools.”

Said Givens, who assumed he would at least share time with McCoy this season: “Well, it hasn’t been easy, I’m not going to lie. I don’t think anybody thought that Jelani would have the impact that he has had. From the get-go, I didn’t feel like it was a level playing field, so to speak.”

The Bruin coaches say that Givens’ most serious weakness has been his inability to hold onto the ball--when he’s on the court, his teammates fear passing it his way.

“This injury, it’s kind of helped me sit back and take everything into perspective and think about things a little bit,” said Givens, who, at the very least, could provide front-court depth in coming years.

“I mean, I’ve never had trouble with my hands. This is a mental thing for me. Sometimes, I’ll be worrying about everything about the task at hand. And that’s what’s been messing me up.”

Said Henderson: “I kind of feel sorry for him. I just feel like he’s just lost over there. He doesn’t know what to think, and he looks confused every time I look at him, and he tries to cover it up with a smile.”

Givens, who has a gentle, thoughtful demeanor, concedes he has considered transferring. Rumors have swirled all year about an impending departure.

“I was thinking about it for a while, but when you think about the good things going for me here, going to another program, it would be worse,” Givens said. “You’d have to start over with a totally new academic thing; you would have a new coach, you have to adjust to that; you have new players, you have to adjust to that; you’d have another center to beat out there, you’d have to adjust to that.

“Too many adjustments, too little time.”

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Against the odds, this season, the star arrival was by Johnson, a 6-4 1/2 banger, who emerged from his overweight freshman season having lost 45 pounds and with a pure scorer’s touch and mentality.

And if anything was necessary to further convince the Class of ’99 that it will do legendary things before its time is done in Westwood, Johnson’s 36-point show against California in January and his 14.8 conference scoring average raised the confidence even more.

“I shouldn’t be, but I’m already looking forward to next year,” Henderson said. “I think we learned an awful lot from this season, as far as playing hard every night. Not everyone has done that this year. I think we just realized how good we are this year.

“You know, it’s a good sign. We won the Pac-10 on a year we felt we were kind of down.”

Said Bailey: “We can go to the Final Four three times, definitely. If not this year, I’m almost positive we can go the year after that, if everybody stays. We’re going to have such a strong team, with so much experience, I don’t see what’s going to stop us.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

TODAY’S GAME

UCLA vs. PRINCETON

* Site: Southeast Regional,

Indianapolis.

* Starting time: 7 p.m.*

* Records: UCLA (23-7);

Princeton (21-6)

* TV: Channel 2

* Radio: XTRA (690)

*Approximate starting time. Game officially begins 30 minutes after previous game ends.

OTHER TV GAMES

* Stanford vs. Bradley, 9 a.m.

* Eastern Michigan vs. Duke, 11:30 a.m.

* California vs. Iowa State, 4:30 p.m.

NCAA pairings, times: C4

LET GAMES BEGIN: Longshots and powerhouses from 1 to 16 mingle again in a somewhat time-honored tradition as the tournament begins. C5