STALL WARS

When USC beat UCLA last month in basketball, it ended a losing streak at 10 games by the Trojans to their cross-town rival.

A nice achievement, but hardly monumental.

For monumental, you have to go back about 30 years.

Back when UCLA was in the middle of the most dominating run in college basketball history--one that produced 10 NCAA championships in 12 years.

Back then, only two schools beat UCLA at Pauley Pavilion--USC and Oregon. And the Trojans did it first, and twice, beating the Bruins on their home floor in 1969, then again in 1970.

Before the first USC upset, the Bruins had won 51 consecutive games at Pauley. UCLA ran off another 17 before the Trojans won again in ’70. And after that, the Bruins went on their longest home streak--98 games, or five-plus seasons--before falling to Oregon on Feb. 21, 1976.

That’s right, 166-3 over 10 1/2 seasons.

“Everybody kept complaining in Southern California that USC couldn’t beat UCLA,” said Jim Hefner, an assistant coach at the time who now does radio analysis of USC games. “That wasn’t the key. No one in the United States of America could beat UCLA at that time.”

Bob Boyd, the coach at USC then, was the architect of the Trojan upsets, the more memorable being the so-called “stall game” in 1969.

Boyd, who won 216 games in 13 seasons at USC, always hated the term “stall.” The slow-down style was in direct response to the scoring ability and defensive intimidation of three-time All-American center Lew Alcindor, who went on to fame in the NBA as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

” I thought the ‘stalling’ tag was a poor rap,” said Boyd, whose teams lost seven of eight games against the UCLA teams that Alcindor played for. “We were competitive, but . . . some of them [games against UCLA] were lopsided.”

UCLA Coach John Wooden supposedly lambasted Boyd for the Trojans’ slow play. That’s wrong, according to Wooden.

“The writers felt I was being critical of Bob and I was not,” Wooden said. “I think what he did was in their best interests. I did say [stalling] was not good for the game. But I was not criticizing him.”

Boyd’s response?

“At the [weekly] media luncheon, the writers asked Wooden what did he think of that style of play. He said he did not approve, that it was not good for the game, but that was Boyd’s decision. He might as well have drilled a nail in my head. But my thinking was, I had to provide my team an opportunity to win. Playing them straight up was suicide.”

*

Boyd, who retired to Palm Desert after finishing his coaching career at Mississippi State and Chapman University in Orange, made his Trojan coaching debut against UCLA in December 1966. It was also Alcindor’s varsity debut. The Bruins ripped the Trojans, 105-90. Alcindor scored a school-record 56 points.

“Alcindor just killed us,” Boyd said. “Coming home from Pauley, I told my wife Betty, ‘We’ve got to play this guy seven more times.’ I thought he was the best player in the world then. I had to come up with something to give us a chance to win.”

Boyd decided to spread the court against UCLA, keeping his center at the high post, above the foul line. He counted on Wooden keeping Alcindor anchored under the basket until the Bruins ran out of patience.

Once Alcindor would come out of the low post, “We would cut and back cut to the basket,” Boyd said. “We would repeat the movement until we got a layup. You could do it in those days because there was no [shot] clock.

“We started to do it in practice, and I had to sell it to the team. I told them we would only play this way against UCLA. We had a special practice we’d call ‘UCLA time’ for 20 minutes. We did it every practice, and we’d only take layups.”

Boyd tried it the third time the teams met in 1966-67, the Bruins having polished off the Trojans in the second at Pauley, 107-83. By halftime at the Sports Arena, USC was ahead 17-14, and led most of the second half. But the Bruins managed to win in overtime, 40-35.

Boyd continued to have his teams practice the delay game, but he did not bring it back until the 1968-69 season.

Paul Westphal, an NBA guard and current coach of the Seattle SuperSonics, was a freshman at USC that season. (Freshmen were not eligible to play for the varsity at the time).

“[Boyd] practiced for that game that whole year in 1969,” Westphal said. “Everybody knew he would use it against the Bruins. It wasn’t something he thought of the night before the game.”

Dana Pagett, a former college coach and now the athletic director at Santa Ana College, was a reserve guard for Boyd.

“My sophomore year, we started planning for UCLA the first day of practice,” Pagett said. “Coach Boyd knew the delay game would be important for us.

“It takes discipline and patience to play it. And you have to handle the ball well. To work the ball against UCLA’s quickness, we were schooled to handle it. They were almost quicker in every spot against us but the guards.”

Another important player for USC was forward Don Crenshaw, who brought a swagger and toughness to the court. But neither he nor any other Trojan challenged Boyd’s game plan.

“There was no question that Boyd was in charge,” said Crenshaw, who works for Nike. “No question we would do what he asked, as well as we could execute it.”

In 1968-69, the Trojans and Bruins played consecutive games at the end of the regular season. UCLA was 24-0, the Pac-8 champion, two-time defending NCAA champion and ranked No. 1 in the nation. USC was 14-10 and would finish third in conference.

The first meeting was a Friday night game at the Sports Arena.

Boyd brought out the delay.

Once again it almost worked. The Bruins, despite leading, 24-22, at halftime were lulled into a stupor by USC’s pass-pass-pass-pass-pass-penetrate style. After regulation, the score was tied, 43-43. In the first overtime, the Trojans led, 47-45, with four seconds left, but Bruin forward Lynn Shackelford dropped in a 30-footer at the buzzer to send the game into a second overtime.

UCLA went on to win, 61-55.

“That night . . . [we] had a postgame dinner,” Hefner said. “Boyd said, ‘We play tomorrow at Pauley Pavilion and is there any doubt how we are going to play?’ They all stood up and said ‘No, we’re gonna play it just the way we played [tonight].’ ”

Said Crenshaw: “That game convinced us [the delay] would work. It was a disheartening loss. We had them at the Sports Arena; I can still see Shackelford’s shot. He was the only person on the court that could have made that shot. But I was convinced midway through the first game we could win this way.”

The Bruins, at least in the Trojans’ eyes, did not make any overnight adjustments.

“I don’t think they thought we could put back-to-back games like that together,” Hefner said. “But we did.”

Wooden also loathed doing anything besides preparing his teams to play their game.

“I wanted other teams to react to us,” Wooden said. “I felt whenever we played USC, it would be close, no matter what you did.

“Through the years we had an advantage in games won but most were fought to the end. Even though some wins were by a large margin, [the outcome] was not determined until late in the game.”

*

On Saturday, March 8, 1969, the outcome that was determined late in the game went USC’s way.

Once more, this time at Pauley, UCLA led at the half, 26-23, riding the hot hand of Bill Sweek, who had made five of six shots. But USC scored the first four points of the second half and it was no longer so much a basketball game as a chess match.

With 1:15 left, Alcindor’s free throw tied the score for the last time, 44-44. USC brought the ball up then held it until calling time out with 13 seconds left. When play resumed the ball was passed in to senior Ernie Powell. Crenshaw set a screen and Powell drove down the right side and flung a 20-footer that rolled around the basket and dropped through.

UCLA had one last chance. But this time, Sidney Wicks got the final shot, not Shackelford. His 20-footer glanced off the rim as the horn sounded.

Trojan fans stormed the court, surrounding their team. The Bruins walked in a daze to their locker room.

“[UCLA] was used to winning by such large margins, any time it was close it was a novelty,” Pagett said. “But there was very little talking during the game, and no taunting. And UCLA never felt any desperation on its part until the last play of the game, after Ernie hit the [game-winning] shot.”

USC had also ended a winning streak of 41 games the Bruins had built after their loss to Elvin Hayes and the University of Houston in the Astrodome the previous season. Also over was UCLA’s conference winning streak--which had reached 45 games. And the Trojans had ended their own losing streak to the Bruins at 17 games.

It capped the biggest weekend of Boyd’s coaching career to that point. And he no longer had to apologize for his strategy.

“We had played 85 minutes in two games and I don’t think anyone was ahead by more than a basket or two,” he said.

*

The next season was different.

Alcindor had graduated and was playing with the Milwaukee Bucks. So when USC played UCLA at Pauley in the second-last game of the regular season--again they were scheduled for consecutive games--there were no delay tactics. The Trojans ran up and down the floor with the Bruins, but were down at the half, 51-41.

USC had concentrated on containing the Bruin frontcourt of Steve Patterson, Curtis Rowe and Wicks with a 1-2-2 zone. But the Trojans were getting riddled by a sophomore Bruin point guard named Henry Bibby, who had 18 points.

Boyd switched USC to a man-to-man defense in the second half, but initially it had little effect. Bibby, now USC’s coach, was held to only four more points but with 6:49 left, UCLA was still up, 69-57, and cruising.

In a flash, however, the Bruins lost their momentum and the Trojans came on, slicing the lead to 75-71 with six minutes to play.

USC took the lead, 85-83, when Joe Mackey made an 18-footer with 2:14 to play. Wicks made a free throw 23 seconds later, but that was countered by USC.

Then came the critical play. Bruin guard John Vallely was fouled by Westphal with 1:02 remaining. Vallely missed the front end of the bonus opportunity and USC rebounded, then called time with 48 seconds left.

The Trojans held the ball until Crenshaw was fouled intentionally by Wicks with 16 seconds left. Crenshaw missed the first free throw but made the second, giving the Trojans an 87-84 lead.

That was enough. Rowe made the Bruins’ final basket as time ran out and USC had done it again, 87-86.

“I have to give history its due,” Westphal said. “That game did not mean anything to them. They were going to the [NCAA] tournament [with a 28-2 record] and we weren’t [with an 18-11 record]. It was pride for us. We did not turn the world on its head with the win. We did do something no one else was doing, winning at Pauley.”

USC at UCLA

Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.

Fox Sports Net 2