Suddenly, Trojans Have the Horses

As part of the “20” USC basketball fans (as Jason Kapono had indicated) in attendance at the Sports Arena on Wednesday, I truly enjoyed watching the 9,981 UCLA fans realize they no longer own L.A. Just like football.

ALBERT PENA, Montebello

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The UCLA 10-game streak over USC in basketball still stands, because that was not a UCLA team that USC thrashed. It was a bunch of impostors from Coach Steve Lavin’s playground team.

JACK ALLEN, Pacific Palisades

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It used to be the most nauseating thing about attending a UCLA-USC game downtown was the unsightly decay of the Sports Arena. Now it’s the unsightly decay of the once most exalted and proud basketball program in college athletics.

The simple fact is, despite their blue-chip pedigrees, Steve Lavin’s players never seem to get the least bit better. Each game at Pauley, I look over to Coach Wooden and wonder how much more the poor man can take, how much more we can all take?

DAVID N. HOWARD, Los Angeles

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Here are a list of things I never expected to see from the USC team in a USC-UCLA basketball game: more intensity, more confidence, better defense, better offense, more intelligent play, better conditioning, quicker players, better coaching and better looking uniforms! The times, they are a-changin’; maybe it is time for a change at UCLA.

JOE HILBERMAN, Westwood

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Steve Lavin must go and Peter Dalis should be working on his resume. UCLA basketball is hurting and drastic action is necessary. It isn’t about one game, or even one season. It’s about the future. UCLA has already lost its recruiting edge to Stanford, Arizona and others. Pathetic performances and weak schedules will make recruiting even more difficult, plus UCLA’s lack of television exposure sure doesn’t help. I wonder if any coaches in Utah might be interested in saving a program.

CECIL WORTHINGTON, Los Angeles

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As long as you have a coach concerned more about the gelling of his hair than the gelling of his squad, we may be in for a long year in Westwood.

JESSE WOLAK, West Covina

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For six weeks, your front page has covered every detail of the Bruins’ season, while I have had to turn to Page 12 just to confirm that USC still plays basketball. I guess I shouldn’t expect more from a sports staff that thinks Hank Gathers was a Trojan! Now will you give both teams the coverage they have earned?

PATRICK PASCAL, Los Angeles

Editor’s note: Gathers was a Trojan, for one season. He and fellow Philadelphian Bo Kimble transferred from USC to Loyola Marymount after their freshman year.

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I was curious as to why Scott Howard-Cooper in his Friday and Saturday UCLA pieces had so little verbiage from Lavin. Then I realized that the quotes would probably be the same old thing. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

KEN SHREVE, Studio City

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Regarding “Second Fiddle,” on Jan. 12:

USC’s problems started some 70 years ago when Ed Doheny took that Teapot Dome money and funded a huge library on the SC campus. Several decades later, Ed Pauley comes along, takes his oil money and builds a basketball pavilion in Westwood. Somewhere along the line, the Trojans got their priorities mixed up.

DOUG HAYS, Glendale