Leaving Its Roots

Maybe not yet fully grown but clearly out of diapers, the John R. Wooden Classic approaches its third birthday Saturday at The Pond happy and relatively healthy. Organizers boast of their event’s development, stopping just short of actually labeling it precocious.

And why not?

The family photo album is chock-full of many eye-opening early moments. Two seasons might not seem like enough time for reminiscing, but the snapshots don’t lie.

Remember UCLA forward J.R. Henderson, then a freshman, making two free throws with six-tenths of a second remaining to shoot down Kentucky, 82-81, in the second game of the inaugural event? The opener wasn’t exactly a yawner either, as Kansas knocked off top-ranked Massachusetts, 81-75.

No “terrible twos” the next season. Bruin center Jelani McCoy, also then a freshman, put his personal spin on the term “block party” as he swatted 11 shots in a 73-63 victory over Maryland.

This season’s event will likely produce more fond memories. National powers are featured again as third-ranked Utah and No. 15 Arizona start the day at 10:30 a.m. Louisiana State and Louisville follow at 1 p.m. or 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first game.

“We’ve got four great teams and some of the best coaches in the game,” said Kent Atherton, Wooden Classic chairman. “This event was launched as an ongoing tribute to Coach Wooden and the excellence he represents on and off the floor, and certainly the last two years has provided a lot of excitement.

“We’re very happy. This has been a tremendous experience for everybody involved--it’s exactly what we wanted.”

Well, pretty close anyway.

Questions usually arrive with the onset of adolescence, and the Wooden Classic is undergoing some self-examination. True, its brief history has been marked by good games and big stars, and Orange County hasn’t exactly been a beacon for any other major sports events recently.

Yet there is some uncertainty about the event’s long-term status, if not its immediate viability.

The biggest question now is, will the Bruins be part of that future?

UCLA is conspicuously absent from this season’s festivities, citing a scheduling conflict. Before the Wooden Classic existed, UCLA and Kansas agreed to play each other this season and last. UCLA traveled to Lawrence for the first meeting and now it’s Kansas’ turn to complete the big paydays with a trip to Pauley Pavilion.

Moreover, top-ranked Kansas and No. 17 UCLA will also play Saturday. Tip-off is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. and CBS is televising the game. Kansas-UCLA will probably draw many Southland viewers away from the second Wooden Classic game, LSU-Louisville, on NBC.

As for next season, the Bruins are noncommittal. Bruin Athletic Director Peter T. Dalis did not return phone calls for this story, but it appears Dalis doesn’t want the program locked into being a Wooden Classic fixture.

The Wooden Classic does raise money for charity, but it is definitely a for-profit event. So UCLA shouldn’t be chastised for wanting to keep its coins to itself on Saturday. Still, this is obviously a touchy subject for UCLA and the Wooden Classic organizers, considering the event is named for someone who had at least a little something to do with Bruin basketball.

Publicly, though, all the right things are said.

“Going into this, it was never our intention of having UCLA in the Wooden Classic every year,” Atherton said. “We’ll always be excited to have UCLA in this event, but we couldn’t work around [the scheduling conflict]. Unfortunately, they’re playing the same day up the road.”

The awkwardness doesn’t end there. Believing that Kansas-UCLA would play under the Wooden Classic banner at Pauley Pavilion, NBC allocated only four hours to televise both games, an NBC Sports spokesman said.

The NCAA mandates a 30-minute break between games at one site, making it impossible to show both games in their entirety at The Pond in a four-hour window. Because of a prior commitment to televise a golf event, NBC will join the first Wooden Classic game, Utah-Arizona, in progress.

“We’re disappointed that the Kansas-UCLA game won’t be involved because both teams are of such national prominence,” said Jon Miller, senior vice president of programming for NBC Sports.

“We had to sort of jerry-rig the schedule to make this work. But the people from the Wooden Classic have been very cooperative, so we wanted to do everything we could to work with them.”

That’s because NBC was satisfied with the previous results. In the first Wooden Classic, UMass-Kansas received a 2.2 rating and 7 share. Kentucky-UCLA received a 2.6 and 7. A rating is the percentage of all television households. Each rating point represents 970,000 homes and a share represents the percentage of households where television is being watched at the time. Last season, the Maryland-UCLA game received a 3.1 and 7.

The Wooden Classic and NBC are in the final year of a three-year agreement. Negotiations to continue the partnership will take place shortly after this season’s event, and both parties said UCLA’s involvement will not be the determining factor.

“UCLA obviously has a big national attraction, and you always like that,” Miller said. “But as long as the field continues to be strong and the games are exciting, that’s what we’ll look at. We’ve certainly seen some very competitive and exciting games with some positive results so far.

“We obviously want to wait and see how things turn out this year. Assuming that things again work out well, I definitely think the Wooden Classic will have a place in our college basketball programming for 1997 and beyond.”

Ticket sales have been affected by UCLA’s departure, Atherton acknowledged.

“UCLA typically offered tickets to their season ticket-holders as a service,” Atherton said. “UCLA typically brought several thousand people, and ticket sales are reflecting that somewhat.”

Although Atherton declined to provide specific numbers, he said that overall ticket sales to this point are also off compared to the previous events. But UCLA doesn’t deserve all the credit, or blame, he said.

“That’s just the nature of sports, and there are a lot of things going on,” Atherton said. “One thing about Southern California is that people have choices.”

The event’s success could be contributing to lukewarm sales, Atherton says. A sellout crowd of 18,307 attended the inaugural Wooden Classic and 15,330 showed up last season, of which 2,600 were presale from UCLA. The percentage of tickets allocated to participating schools varies each season, but the lion’s share are available to the public.

“We had such tremendous support from the fan base of the four participating schools that first year, I think a lot of people just now assume good seats aren’t available,” he said. “There are good seats available. Probably the biggest lesson we’ve learned so far is that we’ve got to do a really good job communicating that to the public.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Wooden Classic

Facts and Figures

When: Saturday

Where: The Pond of Anaheim

Schedule: No. 15 Arizona (2-1) vs. No. 3 Utah (4-0), 10:30 a.m.; Louisville (3-0) vs. Louisiana State (3-3), 1 p.m. or 30 minutes after the first game.

Ticket prices: $15, $24, $38, $54, $75, $150.

Past scores: 1994-95--Kansas 81, Massachusetts 75; UCLA 82, Kentucky 81. 1995-96--Villanova 67, Purdue 50; UCLA 73, Maryland 63.