Lavin Knew Score When He Made Decision to Start Davis

Inspiration struck UCLA Coach Steve Lavin around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday as he lay awake in his hotel room watching basketball scores flicker across the television set.

Lavin decided to insert guard Baron Davis into the starting lineup only two games into Davis’ comeback from off-season knee surgery. He figured that would be better than bringing Davis in as a substitute, as planned.

“It dawned on me,” Lavin said. “Why warm him up [during the pregame] then put him back on the bench to cool down?”

Davis seemed to like the idea. He played 19 minutes, finishing with seven points, three rebounds and three assists.

*

Oklahoma State was supposed to be the veteran club, the team with calm, cool juniors and seniors in its starting lineup. But that’s not how it worked out Saturday evening at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim.

In their game against UCLA, the Cowboys came out missing shots and making careless mistakes.

“Mentally, we were somewhere else,” guard Adrian Peterson said.

His coach, Eddie Sutton, complained: “Our team acted like they were nervous out there.”

Meanwhile, Sutton was impressed with the composure of the Bruins, who started three sophomores and two freshman.

“As those youngsters grow up, they’re going to be a heck of a team,” Sutton said. “They’re going to make some mistakes but they’re going to get better and better.”

*

Kansas forward Lester Earl wasn’t supposed to play Saturday.

That’s because he is scheduled for arthroscopic knee surgery on Monday.

He ended up scoring four points and grabbing four rebounds in 14 minutes for Kansas in the Jayhawks’ victory over Pepperdine.

“I really didn’t think he’d play,” Kansas Coach Roy Williams said. “He’d been limping around on one leg.

“At halftime, he came over to me and said he’d like to play, that it felt good. I said, ‘Lester, it’s just a basketball game,’ but he said he’d really like to play.”

And so he did. Williams relented because doctors had told him Earl couldn’t do any more damage to the knee.

Soreness in the knee has limited Earl all season, but he is expected to be able to return after missing about two games following surgery to clean out damaged cartilage in the knee.

*

Kansas center Eric Chenowith is from Villa Park and is the Jayhawks’ California expert.

The rest of the team, he acknowledged, wasn’t very familiar with Pepperdine.

“All they would know is it’s a really nice area in Malibu and it’s a Christian school,” he said.

Chenowith, in his second season at Kansas, has been exposed to a different brand of basketball.

“Normally, when we play Midwestern teams, they’re fundamentally sound. The West Coast Conference, it seems like they just run up and down the court. It’s a different look for us.”

Not that Kansas wasn’t prepared for Pepperdine.

“We take every team seriously,” Chenowith said.

*

UCLA Coach Steve Lavin was criticized last season for relying too heavily on his starters. This season, he has been criticized for not having a set rotation.

“Last year I was blasted for only playing six guys. Now everybody says I play too many,” said Lavin, who toned down the shuffling substitutions against Oklahoma State.

Lavin is trying not to be hypersensitive. It never hurts to have a little piece of wisdom from John Wooden.

“It’s like Coach Wooden says, you can’t please everybody,” Lavin said. “He’s got some Abe Lincoln quote about that. I can’t remember it, but it’s good.”

Up Next for Bruins

* Saturday, Nevada Las Vegas--The Runnin’ Rebels, ranked as high as 25th in the preseason polls, have lost to USC and Kansas.