Bruins Have a Study Haul

The hotel lobby is alive with the tinsel and tittering of America’s greatest collegiate spectacle.

Balloons in bright college colors bounce above fans in thick varsity sweatshirts. Boosters and scouts mingle to the sound of Muzak and boasts.

On this splendid morning in the middle of the month invented for college basketball, everyone is smiling.

Everyone, it seems, except for the college basketball player in the middle of it all.

Visible through an open door of the hotel business center, he is wearing a light-blue sweatsuit and sitting at a computer.

There is a nylon sock over his head and a glare on his face. He stares at the monitor and rubs his chin.

He is UCLA guard Ray Young.

While everyone else here is doing March Madness, he is doing his homework.

There is math. There is sociology. There are final exams next week.

“The price you pay,” he says, shrugging.

Down the hall, the buzz continues.

Down the hall, so does the studying.

At round tables inside a cavernous meeting room, breakfast is cleared, and the other Bruins spread out to cram.

Not for today’s second-round game against Utah State, but for the finals.

Ryan Bailey, who brought five textbooks on this trip, worked until 3 a.m. Thursday writing a paper.

Todd Ramasar has already pulled one all-nighter on this trip, then missed Wednesday’s pre-Hofstra practice to finish a paper.

“When people asked me where he was, what was I going to say?” Coach Steve Lavin said. “The kid had to study.”

Earl Watson brought eight textbooks along, but he considers himself lucky. At least here, he can study for next week’s astronomy and history exams at a lighted hotel table.

Before one home game earlier this year, he wrote a research paper while planted in a chair under the Pauley Pavilion bleachers.

“The question is, do you want to graduate?” Watson says. “If you want to graduate, this is what you do.”

In some form or other, this is what they are all doing these next three weeks, these basketball stars who, many conveniently forget, are still in college.

While we are thinking about Cinderellas, Billy Knight is thinking about Folklore 155.

While we look for one shining moment, Knight is looking for a quiet place to study for that final.

Two nights ago, he camped out in his hotel bathroom.

“It’s an amazing paradox,” said Duke’s Shane Battier, probable college player of the year. “The NCAA preaches to us that we are student-athletes. Yet this time of year, they make us miss school.”

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Before staying up all night in a Greensboro hotel room to finish a paper, Ramasar had an idea.

The seldom-used Bruin swingman, who wants to attend law school, asked one professor for an extension.

The professor angrily turned him down, saying, “I don’t understand you people.”

Indeed, she doesn’t.

Many assume that high-profile scholarship athletes are automatically given special academic privileges.

It’s the opposite.

“I’ve never asked for anything special from a teacher, and never will,” said Watson, who is scheduled to graduate with his class in June. “People are harder on us because we’re in the spotlight.”

Many assume that while players are representing their school in such high-profile events as the NCAA tournament, their schooling stops.

It’s the opposite.

Teachers are appropriately wary of letting players take tests after their classmates have taken them.

“They think somebody is going to tell us the questions,” Bailey said.

So UCLA players take their tests at the same time as everyone else, which is fair.

But the NCAA often makes it impossible for them to take those tests in the same place as everyone else.

Last year, the day after losing in the Sweet 16 to Iowa State, a couple of players took seven hours’ worth of exams in the ballroom of a Detroit hotel.

Ramasar said the tests resulted in the worst grades of his academic career, one of them a D. He said his grades are always far better in the spring.

“Everyone thinks it’s so glamorous when, in fact, it is much harder to take a test in a hotel ballroom,” said Mike Casillas, UCLA’s director of student-athlete counseling. “It’s not an academic environment.”

Some also assume that, because of the lure of the NBA, many college players don’t need to care about school anyway.

Yet of almost 400 remaining tournament players, there are probably only a couple of dozen NBA prospects.

“Sure, there are different levels of concern about school,” said Bailey, who once composed a paper sitting in a quiet hotel hallway. “But most of us need our degrees.”

The Bruins, who attend one of the few tournament schools on the quarter system, are paying such heed to final exams that they will be exhausted if they advance to next week’s regional semifinals in Philadelphia.

Instead of staying on the East Coast, the Bruins are going to immediately return to Westwood if they beat Utah State today. They will take finals Monday before flying cross-country again Monday night.

The remaining exams will then be administered by Casillas in a Philadelphia hotel.

“Even if it’s just for one day, for me, it would be better for these kids to be in a setting that is consistent with that of their peers,” said Casillas, who works for the College of Letters and Sciences, not for the athletic department.

This attention to academic detail has resulted in either the on-time graduation or scheduled graduation of all 10 players who have been in school for at least four years under Lavin. After fall quarter this year, the team’s cumulative grade-point average was 2.4, higher than the university standard of 2.0.

Those numbers would probably improve, of course, if the NCAA realized that UCLA has final exams this time every year and put the Bruins in a West Regional closer to home.

Right, and the NCAA will also give back that $6 billion it recently was paid by CBS for broadcast rights.

Although many schools have vacations the first week of the tournament, nowhere is college sports’ governing body more hypocritical than in its handling of its biggest event.

All of the moderators at postgame news conference pointedly refer to the players as “student-athletes.”

Yet many of these news conference are held after games on midweek school nights in towns far from the players’ schools.

Said Duke guard Mike Dunleavy Jr.: “This time of year, that ‘student’ part gets overlooked.”

Said Ramasar: “Instead of ‘student-athlete,’ it becomes, ‘athlete-student.’ ”

The NCAA also consistently penalizes schools and athletes for compromising academics.

Yet the championship basketball game is held at a neutral site--on a school night.

The UCLA players are some of the few who have it rough during the first round, but Duke players understand because they take midterm exams a week earlier.

Dunleavy remembers working on a British history paper until 2 a.m. this year before the Blue Devils’ second-round conference tournament game.

“Overall, people have no clue,” Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “They talk about the game of the year, the No. 1 matchup, and they’re wondering why a certain kid didn’t play well in that game? . . . Well, that kid just took two tests.”

Bruin players are quick to note that studying in a hotel lobby is often no more distracting than studying in a loud dormitory.

They agree that many students pull all-nighters and sweat big exams and compromise extracurricular activities.

“I make it clear, they do not want special treatment,” said Casillas, who travels with the team at tournament time as a liaison with their teachers.

But it would be nice to play a tournament schedule that would allow them the same treatment.

This week, they are missing the review sessions offered other students. They are missing the tutoring available to other students.

Each week of the tournament, if they are still playing, they will miss as many as four days of class or tests.

“Finals are stressful for anybody,” Casillas said. “This makes it even worse.”

No, this makes it worse:

Their opponent today, Utah State?

Hardly a book in sight.

“Spring break, man,” center Jeremy Vague said with a smile. “All week.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.