USC Men Come Very Close, but UCLA Maintains Reign

The UCLA men’s track and field team extended its dual-meet winning streak to 21 against USC by the barest of margins Saturday at Cromwell Field.

The Bruins edged USC, 82-81, before a standing-room-only crowd by outscoring the Trojans, 24-8, in the final four events.

USC led, 73-58, after Trojan seniors Jerome Davis and Charles Lee placed 1-2 in the 200 meters, but Bruin sophomore Steve Michels won the pole vault with a career best of 17 feet 7 inches minutes later to give UCLA an unexpected 1-3 finish in that event.

When the Bruins followed that with a 1-2-3 finish in the discus and a 1-2-3-4 finish in the 5,000, the outcome of the meet was decided before the 1,600 relay, which USC won.

“I didn’t know what [the score] was,” Michels said of his effort that pushed favored Dennis Kholev of USC back to second. “I just knew we needed to win every event we could.”

UCLA’s victory cut USC’s lead in the series to 38-28 and was the closest since the meet began in 1934. It also overshadowed a big day by Davis, who won the 400 in 45.61 seconds, the 200 in 20.70 and ran legs on teams that won the 400-meter relay in 40.04 and the 1,600-meter relay in 3:03.68.

“This meet has got to be close,” UCLA Coach Bob Larsen said. “It should be close. That’s what everyone expects to see.”

UCLA defeated USC, 91-63, in the women’s meet for its seventh consecutive dual-meet victory against the Trojans.

Junior Seilala Sua of UCLA, the two-time defending NCAA champion in the discus, won that event with a throw of 200 feet and also took the shotput in 55-11 1/4, the hammer in 191-6 and the javelin in a career-best 153-11.