No Tears Shed for Lavin Here

As Steve Lavin approaches his inevitable firing, UCLA fans should resist the temptation to feel sorry for him. How many of you can say that you were hired to do a job for which you were grossly under-qualified, grossly overpaid and it took six years before your boss realized that you didn’t know what you were doing?

Every night before he goes to bed, Steve Lavin should thank Peter Dalis for his incredible ineptitude and short-sightedness in hiring a totally unprepared assistant coach to assume the leadership of the greatest basketball program in NCAA history.

Leonard Levine

Los Angeles

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Has anyone noticed Louisville under Rick Pitino just won its 16th in a row, with less talent then the Bruins? Pete Dalis almost did one thing right in his UCLA tenure. Maybe it wasn’t proper for him to talk to Pitino at that time, but even he had seen the writing on Bruin Walk.

Allan Kandel

Los Angeles

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If Henry Bibby was quoted accurately Feb. 4, he and J.A. Adande, who quoted him, did Bibby’s ex-coach John Wooden a disservice -- unintentionally, I’m sure -- when Bibby said, “It took Coach Wooden at UCLA 17 years to get his program going.”

Not so! The truth is, Wooden instantly turned a moribund UCLA program into a scourge of the West:

* During Wooden’s first four years at UCLA, his teams won four Pacific Coast Conference Southern Division titles and two PCC titles.

* Wooden’s eighth UCLA team (1955-56), led by All-American Willie Naulls and Morris Taft, joined the nation’s elite, winning 22 of 28 games, including a rare sweep of the conference. Two of those losses were inflicted by Bill Russell-led USF, then in the midst of back-to-back national championships.

* Wooden’s 14th team (1961-62) advanced to the Final Four, losing by two in a semifinal to Cincinnati, which also was winning back-to-back national titles.

Jeff Prugh

Lake Arrowhead