These Former Bum Bruins Now Could Be Contenders

On the first day of March, there was madness at Pauley Pavilion.

Get ready for a ride this tournament season, Bruin fans. This is not a Detroit Mercy kind of year.

Not if UCLA’s 79-75 thriller over California on Thursday night was an indication of things to come at NCAA time.

Not if the intensity of this game, the nose-to-nose defense and the devil-may-care crashes on the offensive boards were an indication.

Not if Earl Watson keeps driving the middle and stopping and popping; if Dan Gadzuric keeps playing like Shaq without Kobe; if Matt Barnes turns in performances that are reminders of Bob Cousy passing and Jim Loscutoff toughness.

So much had been expected from this UCLA team, but then, so much is always expected from every UCLA basketball team.

After all, where else could you play where they have 11 national championship banners hanging from the ceiling, or where a legendary 90-year-old man sits behind the bench in the second row of the stands and signs autographs most of the night. Where else, with the score tied at 73-73 late in the game, could they flash a huge picture of John Wooden on the scoreboard for inspiration?

So much had been expected, and now, at the perfect time, so much is being delivered.

This was a springboard game. All the talk has been about UCLA-Stanford, here in Pauley on Saturday. But the Cal game was, in many ways, bigger. UCLA has beaten Stanford, at Maples Pavilion, when Stanford was No. 1, which it is now. The Bruins have been there, done that.

Cal offered an opportunity to win No. 20, and--more important--to wipe out the memory of the Bears’ 92-63 romp at Cal on Feb. 1. On the first day of the next month, turnabout was fair play.

UCLA hasn’t lost since that Feb. 1 debacle, eight games ago.

It was at that point that the Bruins, and their coach, Steve Lavin, may have reached the bottom. Lavin was under fire, as he seems to be every year, and the shadow of Rick Pitino seemed to be lurking over his shoulder. This season, the bullets aimed at Lavin appeared to be real.

The Bruins were playing so badly that they heard the song “Who Let The Dogs Out” and assumed it was about them. They lost to Cal State Northridge, played like chumps against an unheralded Georgia Tech in the Wooden Classic and turned the airball and dribble off the foot into an art form.

Thursday night, they faced a turning point. Their opponent was also trying for win No. 20, and had a candidate for Pac-10 player of the year in 6-foot-7 Sean Lampley, who is Jamaal Wilkes smooth and a threat to score each time with the pro-style isolation Cal lets him play.

Add to that Lavin’s current probation status for his lost-poise conduct against Oregon State--meaning one more technical foul and he might spend some time watching assistant Michael Holton run the team. Along the sideline Thursday night, Lavin looked like a guy trying for a Nobel Peace prize. Mother Teresa would have been tougher on the officials.

On this night, Lavin didn’t need to scream and holler, just coach. And that he did, as his team, playing against a team that will be right there on the board with the other big guys when the NCAA bids come down, kept rebounding from Cal runs.

“This team now comes out on the floor before a game,” Holton said before tipoff, “and they no longer think they are going to lose.”

There was another element of this victory, one that hasn’t always been there in the past. The crowd.

It numbered 11,753, not quite a sellout, but a gathering deep in loyalty and throat. In the last minute, when the Bruins needed it most, they got a wildly supportive crowd, one that pushed and cajoled and provided the inspiration for things such as Watson taking a headlong dive right into, and through, the Cal bench for a loose ball.

There was also a new wrinkle in Pauley, the Michael Buffer rallying cry that starts just about every boxing match in America now: “Are you ready to rumble?”

Both the Bruins, and their fans, were.

And it was fitting that it ended with the ultimate rumbler, Barnes, twisting and bumping and grinding to the basket for the lead basket, snatching down the key rebound on the other end and then making the final free throw that clinched things.

March Madness is here. The Bruins are ready to rumble.