MARCH OF THE WOODEN SOLDIERS

Time was, this was Titletown.

It was true for college basketball perhaps more than any other sport.

And who needed an entire century, anyway?

The last of John Wooden’s 10 NCAA championships at UCLA came in 1975, ending that unrivaled era with a quarter-century to spare.

In a remarkable 32-year span from 1964 to 1995, Los Angeles area basketball teams won an astounding 15 major college national titles--11 in men’s basketball and four in the burgeoning women’s game.

What began with Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich at UCLA in 1964 reached its zenith in the dynasty days of Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton.

Later, such previously unimagined stars as UCLA’s Ann Meyers and USC’s Cheryl Miller transformed the women’s game in leading their schools to national championships. They also had brothers who played for UCLA--Dave Meyers and Reggie Miller.

In 1995, 20 years and six coaches after Wooden walked off the court as UCLA’s coach for the last time, the Bruins won another NCAA championship. Jim Harrick’s 32-1 team beat Arkansas for the championship in a game made possible only by Tyus Edney’s dizzying full-court drive to survive Missouri in the second round.

“Four-point-eight seconds is a quick time,” Charles O’Bannon said later. “But for Tyus, it’s an eternity.”

The game James Naismith invented in Springfield, Mass., in 1891 arrived at USC in 1907 with a team that averaged a football-like 18 points a game and went 6-5.

Since then, there have been so many teams, so many faces.

Some, almost forgotten, should not be.

Two USC teams reached the Final Four in the days of a much smaller tournament, in 1940 and 1954.

But the best Trojan team might have been Coach Bob Boyd’s 1970-71 team, with future NBA head coach Paul Westphal at guard. That team was probably good enough to make the Final Four, finishing the season 24-2 and ranked No. 5 in the nation.

The two losses, though, were both to UCLA--and in those days only the conference champion made the NCAA tournament. The Trojans stayed home.

There other teams and moments that seemingly can never be forgotten.

There was the awful Sunday evening in 1990 when Loyola Marymount star Hank Gathers slammed home a dunk off the fastbreak, high-fived Terrell Lowery and collapsed at midcourt in Gersten Pavilion.

One hour 40 minutes later, at 6:55 p.m. on March 4, Gathers was pronounced dead at 23.

Two weeks after Gathers’ death, as Loyola Marymount began an emotion-fueled tear to the brink of the Final Four, Bo Kimble sank a left-handed free throw in the NCAA tournament in memory of his friend.

“I never wanted a shot to go in so much in my life,” Coach Paul Westhead said.

Loyola was one of the “almost” teams: The Lions upset defending champion Michigan at Long Beach Arena, 149-115, but were stopped a step short of the Final Four when they lost to Nevada Las Vegas in the West Regional final in Oakland.

Years before he became UNLV’s coach, Jerry Tarkanian took Long Beach State that close in 1971. A 49er team led by future Olympian Ed Ratleff led UCLA by 11 points in the second half in a regional final, only to lose to the eventual NCAA champion, 57-55.

Cal State Fullerton was a game away in 1978 under Coach Bobby Dye--affectionately known as the Wizard of Nutwood--before the Titans lost to Arkansas by three.

National championships, however, are what it’s about, with apologies to USC’s Harold Miner--whose razzle-dazzle won Sports Illustrated’s player-of-the-year award but couldn’t help him or the Trojans survive a Georgia Tech buzzer-beater in the 1992 tournament.

Since UCLA is the only Los Angeles-based school to win a men’s major college championship from 1964-1995, any ranking of the.area’s greatest teams in those years can begin and end with the 11 national title winners produced in Westwood.

How do those national championship teams rank?

It might seem a foolish endeavor, but let the arguments begin.

RANKING THE MEN’S CHAMPIONS:

1. 1968 UCLA

NCAA Champions (29-1)

Starting five:

Forwards: Lynn Shackelford and Mike Lynn, Center: Lew Alcindor

Guards: Mike Warren and Lucius Allen.

Wooden has never been one to rank his teams, but maybe he slipped a little in his 1988 book “They Call Me Coach,” when he called the final version of this team “probably as strong a basketball team--a college team, that is--as the game has ever seen.”

The team that lost the Game of the Century to Houston in the Astrodome proved itself one the best teams of the century by beating Houston by 32 points in a Final Four semifinal at the Sports Arena--this time with an injury-free Alcindor, who had been ineffective against Elvin Hayes in the first game because of a scratched cornea.

Alcindor, of course, was the centerpiece, but the ’68 Bruins had excellent shooters in Shackelford and Lynn and a terrific guard tandem in Allen, known for his athleticism, and Warren, the versatile coach-on-the-floor at point guard.

Offense, defense, rebounding, balance--the ’68 team had it all.

The title game against North Carolina almost seems like an afterthought now, but it made an impression on Dean Smith, who after his team’s 78-55 loss called UCLA “the best basketball team ever assembled.”

2. 1973 UCLA NCAA champions (30-0).

Starting five:

Forwards: Larry Farmer and Keith Wilkes

Center: Bill Walton

Center: Larry Hollyfield and Greg Lee

Walton’s 44 points against Memphis State in the title game in St. Louis remain the most ever scored by any player in an NCAA championship game.

Making 21 of 22 shots, he also set a record for field-goal percentage that still stands: 95.5%

The ’73 Bruins were one of four undefeated UCLA national champions--along with ‘64, ’67 and ‘72-- and they represent the best of the Walton Gang years.

The ’74 team didn’t win the title in Walton’s senior year, losing to David Thompson and North Carolina State in double overtime in the NCAA semifinals in unfriendly confines of Greensboro, N.C.

There’s one nagging question about ‘73: How would the Bruins have fared if they had met Thompson and N.C. State--undefeated and ranked No. 2 behind UCLA at the end of the season--in the ’73 Final Four as well? N.C. State was ineligible for the NCAA tournament in 1973 because of probation.

3. 1972 UCLA NCAA champions (30-0).

Starting five:

Forwards: Larry Farmer and Keith Wilkes,

Center: Bill Walton,

Guards: Henry Bibby and Greg Lee.

Everyone talks about ‘73, but USC Coach Henry Bibby makes an argument for this team as the best of the Bruins.

Granted, Bibby was a senior UCLA guard in ‘72, but he makes a good point: “Nobody came close to us until Florida State,” Bibby said.

The Bruins set an NCAA record by outscoring their opponents by 30.3 points a game.

With Walton, Wilkes and Lee making their debuts as sophomores, the Bruins started the season by scoring more than 100 points each of the first seven games.

No team was closer than six points of the Bruins until the title game, an 81-76 victory over Florida State.

4. 1967 UCLA NCAA champions (30-0)

Starting five:

Forwards: Lynn Shackelford and Kenny Heitz

Center: Lew Alcindor

Guards: Mike Warren and Lucius Allen

Alcindor’s sophomore year, and he let the basketball world know what was coming with a 56-point debut against USC in his first varsity game.

Just another undefeated team?

Actually, this one draws Wooden’s praise as the most inexperienced team to win a title. Warren was the only starter with varsity experience, and he was a junior. There wasn’t a senior on the roster.

Alcindor’s scoring average was higher his sophomore year--29 points a game--than his other two seasons, but consider that an indication of an improving team around him.

Also, after 1967, the dunk was disallowed for the rest of Alcindor’s career, not to be reinstated until the 1976-77 season.

5. 1969 UCLA NCAA champions (29-1).

Starting five:

Forwards: Lynn Shackelford and Curtis Rowe

Center: Lew Alcindor

Guards: Kenny Heitz and John Vallely

The spot on the record came when USC ended UCLA’s 41-game winning streak, 46-44, on the second night of monumental back-to-back games between the Bruins and Trojans. UCLA won in double-overtime at the Sports Arena on Friday night, but the next night at Pauley, USC’s Ernie Powell made the winning shot and Sidney Wicks’ 20-footer bounded off the rim in the final second.

It was one of only two losses during Alcindor’s three-year varsity career.

Both were by two points.

Drake gave UCLA a scare in the NCAA semifinals, but UCLA won, 85-82, with Vallely the hero with 29 points.

With a 92-72 victory over Purdue in the championship game, UCLA became the first team to win three titles in a row, and Alcindor remains the only player to be selected the Final Four most outstanding player three times.

6. 1964 UCLA NCAA champions (30-0)

Starting five:

Forwards: Keith Erickson and Jack Hirsch

Center: Fred Slaughter

Guards: Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich

The team that started it all.

With a new zone press and a quick, veteran team, Wooden won the first of his 10 national championships.

It’s easy to forget that Wooden already had been the coach in Westwood 15 seasons before the first title, but it’s true.

Hazzard was the national player of the year in ’64 even though Goodrich was the team’s leading scorer.

But the unanticipated star of the championship game against Duke was Kenny Washington, who came off the bench to score 26 points, as UCLA used a 16-0 run in the first half to take a big halftime lead.

7. 1995 UCLA NCAA champions (32-1)

Starting five:

Forwards: Charles and Ed O’Bannon

Center: George Zidek

Guards: Tyus Edney and Toby Bailey

Such heresy, to pick Harrick’s team ahead of any Wooden team.

But consider this: Of all the UCLA champions, only this one had to survive a 64-team bracket.

The field for the last championship of the Wooden era in 1975 was 32 teams.

That’s not to say Alcindor and Walton wouldn’t have won multiple titles, it’s only meant to give the 1995 team a little credit for its six-game run through Florida International, Missouri--somebody thank Edney again--Mississippi State, Connecticut, Oklahoma State and defending NCAA champion Arkansas.

8. 1970 UCLA NCAA champions (28-2)

Starting five:

Forwards: Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe

Center: Steve Patterson

Guards: John Vallely and Henry Bibby

Like the team that sent Wooden out with a national title in 1975, the 1970 team should hold a special place for winning the year after losing Alcindor. Wooden called it “one of the really fun years.”

Louisiana State’s Pete Maravich was the national player of the year, Bob Lanier starred at St. Bonaventure and Julius Erving was at Massachusetts.

Kentucky, not UCLA, was ranked No. 1 at the end of the regular season, but the Wildcats lost to Jacksonville in a regional final--and the Bruins beat Jacksonville for another championship. Wicks, 6-8, blocked five shots by 7-2 Jacksonville All-American Artis Gilmore.

The team’s effort was a marvel of balance: Four starters--Wicks, Vallely, Bibby and Rowe--averaged more than 15 points a game.

9. 1971 UCLA NCAA champions (29-1)

Starting five:

Forwards: Sidney Wicks and Curtis Rowe

Center: Steve Patterson

Guards: Henry Bibby and Kenny Booker

The frontline of Wicks, Rowe and Patterson was back and together averaged more points and rebounds than any frontcourt of the Alcindor or Walton eras.

Unlike the more dominating teams that were to arrive with Walton, the 1971 Bruins had plenty of competition--winning seven games by five points or fewer on the way to their fifth title in a row.

The 1971 season brought the sort of matchup to Los Angeles that in recent years has been more likely to happen in North Carolina: No. 1 vs. No. 2--and it was USC that was No. 1 on Feb. 6, 1971, when the Bruins came from nine points down in the second half for a 64-60 victory.

But the only loss all season was to Notre Dame--and it would be UCLA’s last for three years--until the NCAA-record 88-game winning streak ended in a loss to Notre Dame in the 1973-74 season.

10. 1965 UCLA NCAA champions (28-2)

Starting five:

Forwards: Keith Erickson and Edgar Lacey

Center: Doug McIntosh

Guards: Freddie Goss and Goodrich.

Goodrich’s 42 points against Michigan in the NCAA title game rank second in championship game history only to Walton’s 44-point game in ’73.

Yet the Final Four most-outstanding-player award went to future presidential candidate Bill Bradley of Princeton, who scored 58 points in the consolation game against Wichita State.

The 1965 team wasn’t as good as the ’64 team--losing to Illinois, 110-83, in the first game of the season as defending NCAA champions.

But without Goodrich leading UCLA after the departure of Hazzard, the dynasty wouldn’t have started.

11. 1975 UCLA NCAA champions (28-3)

Starting five:

Forwards: Marques Johnson and David Meyers

Center: Richard Washington

Guards: Andre McCarter and Pete Trgovich.

So this was goodbye.

Wooden’s notes for the 1975 season after the loss to N.C. State in 1974 read, “Do not take anything for granted just because you have done so well in the past.”

The 1975 team, despite losing Walton and Wilkes, made it back to the championship game with an emotional overtime victory over Louisville in the Final Four semifinals.

Wooden told the team after the game that the championship game against Kentucky would be his last.

“There was no way we were going to lose Coach’s last game,” McCarter said, and they didn’t, with Washington scoring 28 points in the final and Meyers adding 24.

With that, an era ended.

THE WOMEN

First Ann Meyers, then Cheryl Miller.

These players transformed the image of the women’s game during its explosive growth over the last quarter-century.

Tennessee might have seemed the center of the women’s college basketball universe in recent years, but there was a time when it was right here.

Meyers was the first woman to receive an athletic scholarship at UCLA and the first women’s basketball player to be a four-time All-American. She capped her career by leading UCLA to a national championship as a senior in 1978--and was drafted by the Indiana Pacers, the first woman ever selected by an NBA team, though she never played.

Miller, who became a star even bigger than Meyers, led USC to NCAA championships in 1983 and ‘84--with a sidekick named Cynthia Cooper who went on to become a WNBA most valuable player.

Smaller colleges got into the act too: Cal Poly Pomona won three Division II women’s titles in the 1980s under Darlene May, who died of cancer in 1996.

Missing from the list of Los Angeles-area schools to win a major college women’s championship is Long Beach State, a powerhouse under Coach Joan Bonvicini with such players as LaTaunya Pollard, Penny Toler and Cindy Brown. The 49ers reached the Final Four twice, in 1987 and 1988, but could advance no farther.

It’s also notable that USC’s Lisa Leslie earned Olympic gold and WNBA fame but was never on an NCAA championship team.

But there have been four Los Angeles-based teams to win major college women’s titles. Ranking those four:

1. 1983 USC NCAA champions (31-2)

Starting five:

Forwards: Paula McGee and Cheryl Miller,

Center: Pam McGee,

Guards: Cynthia Cooper, Rhonda Windham.

The ’83 Trojans heralded not only Miller’s bold new game and personality--Sports Illustrated proclaimed, “She may well be the best ever”--but the transformation of women’s basketball.

“We’re doing everything like men except shaving,” Miller said.

If not quite true, it had a great ring.

The ’83 team easily ranks among the five best women’s college teams ever assembled.

Consider the supporting cast. The 6-foot-3 McGee twins, Paula and Pam, combined for almost 38 points and 19 rebounds a game. Rhonda Windham was a freshman from the New York playgrounds who would one day become a WNBA general manager.

And Cynthia Cooper? Only a future two-time WNBA most valuable player for the champion Houston Comets.

2. 1984 USC women’s NCAA champions (29-4)

Starting five:

Forwards: Paula McGee and Cheryl Miller

Center: Pam McGee

Guards: Juliette Robinson, Amy Alkek

Miller was the national player of the year again as USC won again, this time at Pauley, becoming the first school to win consecutive women’s national championships.

Still, the ’84 USC team wasn’t as good as the ’83 team. Windham, the point guard, missed the season because of a knee injury, and Cooper sat out eight games because of academic problems.

Without those two, USC lost three games in a row on a January trip--to Texas, Louisiana Tech and Old Dominion in a span of four nights.

The team went Hollywood, with Miller appearing live on “The Today Show” only two days before the Final Four.

But Cooper came off the bench to spark USC down the season’s stretch, and the Trojans beat Tennessee for the title.

3. 1978 UCLA AIAW champions (27-3)

Starting five:

Forwards: Denise Curry and Anita Ortega

Center: Heidi Nestor

Guards: Dianne Frierson, Ann Meyers.

Meyers led the Bruins to the title her senior season in a banner year for women’s basketball. It was the year of the first AIAW Final Four, the first women’s Associated Press poll and the first women’s Parade Magazine All-American team, and the Bruins won the title in Pauley Pavilion in front of a national television audience.

“People had read about Annie,” Coach Billie Moore said. “But for people across the country, that was really the first time they got to see her play.”

Denise Curry, now the coach at Cal State Fullerton, was a freshman.

“I think when we beat Long Beach State in the tournament, 79-78, coming from behind and beating them at the buzzer after Anita Ortega stole a pass and went in for a layup--I felt then that we were not going to get beat,” Curry

said.

They weren’t, and Meyers’ Bruins beat defending champion Maryland for the title, 90-74.

4. 1970 Cal State Fullerton national champions (17-1).

Starting five:

Forwards: Patty Meyers and Sue Sims

Center: Cec Ponce

Guards: Rosie Adams and Carol Graham

Title IX wasn’t in effect until 1972, but Fullerton took home what was recognized as the national championship in 1970 by winning the national women’s invitational tournament, beating Springfield, Western Carolina, East Stroudsburg State and West Chester to win the title in Boston.

It was the first of two national titles for Moore, who was 25 and in her first year as Fullerton’s coach in 1970, became the first women’s Olympic coach in 1976 and then guided UCLA to a title in 1978.

“The thing I remember most about 1970 was not just the games, but that the Fullerton team made such a stir because we were from California, and I think we were the only team playing in shorts,” Moore said. “Everyone else was playing in skirts or tunics.”