Time to Reach Final Frontier

Steve Lavin and the UCLA Bruins have to get to the Final Four this year. It’s time. The team has the best mix of talent and experience since Lavin’s first squad in 1996-97. And it’s UCLA.

The statistic they like to throw out in Westwood is that Lavin is one of three coaches to take his school to the Sweet 16 four times in the past five seasons.

They leave out the corollary: The other two, Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, have gone to multiple Final Fours and captured one national championship apiece during that span.

Look at two other schools that can compare basketball heritage with UCLA: North Carolina and Kentucky. Each has gone to three Final Fours since UCLA won its last championship in 1995. They’ve added fresh coats of paint and kept people talking about their programs in the present tense.

Sweet 16s don’t suffice.

“I think the goal [at UCLA] should still be to win the national championship, to win the Pac-10 championship,” Lavin said. “What you hope to have is, during a stretch when you’re not winning Pac-10 championships and national championships that you’re still competitive nationally with the elite programs in America.”

While Lavin has regular-season victories against Duke, North Carolina and Kentucky, he has not been able to match their tournament success. College basketball is all about March. Reputations or redemption can be found in the NCAA tournament.

For Lavin, it has usually been the latter. Win back-to-back games, knock off a higher-seeded opponent, get to the Sweet 16 and retain some measure of Bruin pride.

It’s basically the only defense he has for everyone who predicted doom for the program when he took over for Jim Harrick in 1996.

“Pretty much people thought we were going to be in the tank,” Lavin said. “The expectations were that we were going to be set back four to five years.”

No tank. But no penthouse view, either.

“It’s a double-edged sword working at the greatest basketball school in the country,” Lavin said. “If you don’t win the national championship, you come up short. If you do, it’s ‘What about next year?’

“You don’t get bitter about it or defensive or salty. You keep coaching as long as you can.”

That’s what Lavin does best, is keep coaching. With Peter Dalis announcing he will retire at the end of this school year, it looks like Lavin will outlast his athletic director. Who would have bet on that outcome, even as recently as last year?

He’s entering his sixth year. Of the six coaches who followed John Wooden at UCLA, only Harrick’s eight-year tenure lasted longer.

Lavin rallies the Bruins whenever their season and his future look bleakest. With one exception (Detroit Mercy in 1999), they’ve been ready when it matters most. His four other tournament losses have come to higher seeds, including two eventual national champions.

He says he has learned from his mistakes. For instance, If he had to do it again, he would have left Baron Davis in against Detroit and simply played a zone defense after Davis picked up his fourth foul.

Lately he has cut down on the esoteric stuff. In the middle of last year’s travails, when his athletic director was courting Rick Pitino, Lavin described himself as a “Chaplinesque kind of tragicomic figure.” (Of course, that’s when Dalis was creating his own terms, describing the “yawn effect” that had set in around the UCLA basketball program.)

These days, Lavin talks about basketball. UCLA needs to focus more attention on the basics, nail down the details that ultimately have been the biggest impediment to further success in the tournament. With a better regular season and a higher seeding, UCLA wouldn’t have to face such tough teams in the round of 16 every year.

Winning the Pac-10 ought to bring a No. 1 seed. And it ought to be possible with a roster that has size (with Dan Gadzuric and T.J. Cummings), shooting (with Jason Kapono) and a talented point guard (Cedric Bozeman).

“Overall, I like our experience, I like our depth,” Lavin said. “I like our leadership. This is a team I feel good about.”

It’s too bad Bozeman is only a freshman, If he were a sophomore, I’d love this team’s chances. As it is, with the coaches praising his maturity and teammates loving his unselfishness, he could get the Bruins where they need to go. Where they have to go. To the Final Four.

We’ll get an early taste next week at the Maui Invitational, where Duke lurks in the field.

Arizona, whose national runner-up team roster was gutted, just showed it’s a contender for the Pac-10 with a very impressive showing at the Ikon Classic in New York. Lavin’s Bruins have never won one of these preseason tournaments. In fact, they’ve suffered some of their worst defeats outside the continental U.S., including a 109-68 demolition from North Carolina in Alaska and a one-point loss to Colorado State.

Lavin’s to the point that he can joke about that Carolina game. He even talks about creating a nonconference schedule filled with all of his bad losses: Cal State Northridge, Gonzaga, Detroit, etc.

He laughs because he’s still here. Despite all the pressure that comes with that job, UCLA’s basketball coach remains one of the top positions in the profession.

Now Lavin has to keep it that way.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at: j.a.adande@latimes.com