CRASH, BURN & SOAR : Bruins Lost a Coach, Lost Some Games, Then Gained Momentum and Respect Down the Stretch

At that especially innocent time in UCLA Bruin basketball history, before the fevered weeks of winter and cathartic lunge toward madness and magic, Jim Harrick headed out of Pauley Pavilion and spoke in a voice that was more weary than wary.

“I know one thing,” Harrick said slowly, “it’s going to be a looooong year.”

It was long. And loud. The most emotional, most embarrassing, most compelling, most revealing year. Harrick was blasted out early, but the magnitude of the earthquake never lowered.

This was a season that started with a shriek, continued amid panic and never paused once, symbolized by Steve Lavin’s flood of sweat and tears and ennobled by a thousand tests of the players’ collective will.

When he spoke those words, Harrick had no idea that his and the Bruin world would be torn asunder in less than three weeks, but he foretold five months of intrigue and mystery, dark corners and a revelatory ending.

So, as Charles O’Bannon, Cameron Dollar and Bob Myers move on, and J.R. Henderson, Jelani McCoy and Toby Bailey contemplate the worth of another Westwood year, let us flash from a harried Harrick in October . . .

. . . to Lavin, taking Saturday’s loss to Minnesota in the Midwest Regional final more emotionally than his players, standing in a corner of an Alamodome locker room and consecrating this season with his tears.

“These players were so special,” Lavin said. “They leave a great legacy to start a program under.”

They won’t raise a championship banner for the 1997 Bruins, but they won’t have to. This season is burned into the consciousness, from the beginning.

FULL SPEED AHEAD

The seniors wondered why it had to happen so suddenly, as if the Harrick firing was timed to screw up their final season in totality.

But, with two weeks to go before the season opener, the Bruins hit the practice floor, Lavin barked out orders, made them sprint more than they had before and nobody had time to ponder the change.

The 1-2 start, with a loss to Tulsa and a plummeting loss to Kansas at Pauley, was predictable, even with the top six players returning from the talented, Pacific 10-winning 1996 team.

Lavin was coaching for his professional life, the players for personal pride and team respect, and the administration was holding its breath, knowing that if the season went up in flames, the wrath of the Bruin nation would be directed its way.

Did Athletic Director Peter T. Dalis and his associates tear open this wound--and finalize their distant relationship with Harrick--just to prove that they could?

Then came the deflating loss at Illinois, and a postgame locker room full of players coming to grips with exactly how far they had to go. Then, grouped together instead of pulling apart, they moved forward.

They were able to rebound from the historic 48-point loss at Stanford on Jan. 9 to beat California two days later and save the season; able to hang onto O’Bannon as he carried them over Arizona in two elevating games; able to withstand Lavin’s benchings of Henderson, Kris Johnson and McCoy as he enforced rules they said had not been strictly followed under Harrick.

O’Bannon points to the tight, Jan. 25 loss at Louisville as the turning point, coming when the Bruins felt themselves ready to surge, and ending with such a clean feeling of disappointment and possibility. And purpose.

“We felt we should’ve won that game,” O’Bannon said. “We felt in control. And we knew if we kept that up, and made plays, we’d start winning games.”

UCLA lost to Oregon the next game, then to Cal at Pauley on Feb. 6, dropping its record to 12-7, with the NCAA tournament far from a guaranteed prize, no matter the improved attitude.

Then UCLA didn’t lose again in 12 tries, and six weeks.

“I can’t remember a season where a team’s been through so much,” Lavin said recently. “There’s been teams that have gone through tough times and have controversy in the program and dismissals of coaching, but usually it goes right into the tank, and then two or three years down the road they rebuild or they bounce back the following season.

“But to be able to crash and burn and crawl out of the ashes, that’s unusual all in one season.

“Our team has picked themselves off the mat and revived themselves all in one year. Two months ago, we were doomed.”

REMEMBER THE ALAMODOME

It started with Dollar. Once derided, and continuously understanding that he was considered to be the weak link of the Bruin attack, the senior point guard pushed UCLA like a sergeant at war:

If your littlest, least-likely guy is the one attacking hardest, everybody else had better follow with intensity.

If the Bruin with the least jumping ability is the one who saves two games in two weeks--including the Sweet 16 overtime victory against Iowa State--by willing himself through the defense in last-moment acrobatic layups, how can Bailey and O’Bannon and McCoy not fling themselves for 40 minutes?

And minutes after the last loss, in the Alamodome locker room, amid silence, Dollar leaped into the breach first, again demanding that his teammates absorb the full worth of what they had achieved.

And how, in the face of dramatic difficulties, for once, a UCLA team had over-achieved.

“No matter how disappointing things may be,” Dollar told them, “when you’re facing something tough sometime down the road, you can think back to that year we made the Elite Eight.

“When you think, ‘Oh, I have it bad,’ think about how much we went through this year, when we were 3-3 and didn’t look like we had a chance. And remember how much we came together, and how far we came.”

Later, Dollar explained his emotions to reporters, with the locker room a little less quiet, but still tinged with emotion.

“That’s something they can take to their next battle or their next game,” Dollar said. “I know I will.”

INTO THE FUTURE

Where the 1995 national-title season seemed to be the sweet culmination of a journey, this season was the rough start to a different, harder UCLA way: Relationships ruptured, betrayals were accused and minds were opened.

Where to next? After this upheaval, the Bruin landscape is thoroughly changed, and the future will be determined by Lavin’s ability to recruit elite players (as of yet unproven), and get them to believe in him and themselves in the same fervent way he pulled it off this season.

Harrick was at his best in the calm times, managing the long-term care of a program that never failed to win 20 games in his eight seasons. Harrick was at his worst when everyone else turned to him for stability in a time of crisis, when his face went blank and his words came out wrong.

Lavin has never known anything but crisis as UCLA coach. How will he fare when each day isn’t a new adventure, simply the continuation of the same tricky road?

And, perhaps most important, was this spirited late-season run enough to attract enough of the available top talent to reconfigure UCLA for more and later March marches?

This season’s team was thin already, having landed only McCoy as a major recruit since the national title, and suffered two major transfers, UCLA was six-plus deep in a danger zone all season and Minnesota exposed that.

And the Bruins will be shallower next season.

The multitalented Collins twins of Harvard-Westlake have committed to Stanford, leaving UCLA with a severe shortage on the front line, even if McCoy and Henderson stay.

The last great Bruin recruiting class is now three years old, and omm’A Givens transferred last summer, Henderson could go pro, Bailey could go if he senses the cupboard is bare and Johnson is the only certain holdover.

Santa Monica Crossroads point guard Baron Davis, the next Stephon Marbury or Mike Bibby, was in the Bruin fold back in October, back when Harrick was around. Davis opened his options once Harrick was fired, and now is a burning question mark for the next stage of the Lavin era.

Lavin landed heralded guard Earl Watson from Kansas City in the midst of the turmoil, before Lavin even earned the permanent job; forward Travis Reed from A.B. Miller in Fontana committed to UCLA despite leaning toward Arizona for much of the year; and Billy Knight, another recent commitment from Westchester High, is a three-point expert.

With Davis, Henderson, Bailey and McCoy, the Bruins could easily win their fourth consecutive Pac-10 title and make another rush toward the Final Four (staged next season in the Alamodome, by the way).

Without them, Lavin has a restructuring project to engineer, and a four-year contract. His staff is eyeing juniors Tayshaun Prince and Jason Thomas of Compton Dominguez--and so is every other top school.

But Lavin has already averted the greatest threat to the Bruin program in years, blessed by brilliant players, his own sincerity and a season of heart and hope.

That he has made himself a future at all, perhaps, is the essence of this everlasting season.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

UCLA Season in Review

UCLA (24-8)

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76 Tulsa, OT 77 95 CS Northridge 73 83 Kansas 96 72 Ohio U. 61 93 Jackson St. 67 63 at Illinois 79 64 at St. Louis 57 87 Morgan St. 72 84 Washington St. 56 79 Washington 70 61 at Stanford 109 64 at California 56 79 Arizon St. 62 84 Arizona, OT 78 96 at So. Cal. 87 71 at Louisville 74 85 at Oregon, OT 87 74 at Oregon St. 68 68 California 71 87 Stanford 68 66 at Arizona 64 92 at Ariz. St. 81 82 USC 60 73 Duke 69 81 Oregon St. 69 74 Oregon 67 87 at Washington 85 87 at Washington St. 86

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NCAA TOURNEY

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109 Charleston Southern 75 96 Xavier, Ohio 83 74 at Iowa St., OT 73 72 Minnesota 80

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Bruin Status Report

1996-97 UCLA basketball team scholarship players:

* CHARLES O’BANNON, Forward: Graduating, NBA-bound. Has he fought his way into the first round?

* BOB MYERS, Forward: Graduating.

* CAMERON DOLLAR, Guard: Graduating. Bruins need to find another inspiration.

* J.R. HENDERSON, Forward: Will be centerpiece senior next season, if he bypasses NBA.

* KRIS JOHNSON, Forward: Senior next season, looking to stay healthy.

* TOBY BAILEY, Guard: Could assume O’Bannon role in senior season, if doesn’t decide to bolt.

* JELANI McCOY, Center: Junior next season, but considering a quick jump to NBA (without a post game?).

* BRANDON LOYD, Guard: Junior next season, found a role in February-March.

* SEAN FARNHAM, Forward: Former walk-on will be sophomore next season.

* KEVIN DALEY, Guard/Forward: Transfer from Nevada will be eligible sophomore next season.