Cal Gets Historical When UCLA Loses at Harmon Gym

Beating UCLA in basketball rates high on California’s wish list. When a committee from the athletic department in Berkeley was asked to select the two biggest games in Harmon Gym history, both involved victories over the Bruins.

1. Cal 75, UCLA 67, Jan. 25, 1986: Lou Campanelli, in his first season as Cal coach, keeps his promise to beat UCLA. The victory ends Cal’s 52-game losing streak to UCLA.

2. Cal 73, UCLA 68, March 2, 1957: Pete Newell achieves his first coaching victory over UCLA. Newell still regards the win as pivotal in Cal’s emergence over the next two years as a national power, including the 1959 championship season.

Trivia time: How many teams were in the NCAA tournament field when USC made its first appearance in 1940?

Short streaks: How tough is it to win on the PGA Tour? No one has won three tournaments in a row since Gary Player in 1978, when he won the Masters, Tournament of Champions and Houston Open. And it has been 45 years since anyone won four in a row. Jack Burke Jr. won the Texas, Houston, Baton Rouge and St. Petersburg opens in 1952.

Good planning: When the Baltimore Orioles’ Brady Anderson was ejected from a recent spring training game in West Palm Beach, Fla., for arguing a called third strike, it didn’t bother him.

“Just your garden-variety ejection,” Anderson said, then acknowledged it was beneficial.

By being bounced, Anderson was able to leave early enough to beat the rush-hour traffic on Interstate 95 back to Fort Lauderdale, where the Orioles are based.

Vanilla guy: Chipper Jones, the popular Atlanta Brave third baseman, has a chocolate “Chipper Bar” named for him, although he says he doesn’t even like chocolate.

“I don’t think these things up, I just sign the papers,” Jones said.

Coach’s boy: Could this be something for Troy Aikman to be concerned about? Doug Switzer, son of Cowboy Coach Barry Switzer and a former Arkansas Pine Bluff quarterback, is in training camp with the Rhein Fire of the World League.

Timely help: Toronto enforcer Tie Domi is $50,000 richer after scoring his 25th point of the season in the Maple Leafs’ 3-3 tie with Dallas on Monday night. A performance bonus kicked in when Domi picked up an assist. He has nine goals, 16 assists and 210 penalty minutes.

Trivia answer: Eight. USC beat Colorado, 38-32, in the Western Regional semifinals and then lost to Kansas, 43-42, in the championship semifinals. Indiana beat Kansas, 60-42, for the title.

And finally: Blackie Sherrod of the Dallas Morning News wonders if Rosey Grier, the former football great who is now a minister, isn’t a bit mixed up.

“First, he accuses the media of gross racial prejudice against his pal O.J. Simpson,” Sherrod writes. “In the next breath, he quotes Scripture: ‘Judge not, lest ye shall be judged.’ ”