It Ends Up Dutch Treat for Bruins, Wooden

When John Wooden attends UCLA games at Pauley Pavilion and is shown on the scoreboard’s video screen, he always gets a nice round of applause.

When he is shown during today’s game against Stanford, the man sitting next to Wooden, Dutch Fehring, is deserving of a standing ovation. He’s the reason Wooden came to UCLA.

Fehring and Wooden, lifelong friends, were teammates on Purdue’s national championship team in 1932. Fehring, who will turn 92 in May, also was the most valuable player on Purdue’s football and baseball teams. He would later become a longtime assistant football coach and head baseball coach at Stanford, but in 1948 Fehring was an assistant football coach at UCLA.

“Wilbur Johns had given up the basketball coaching job to become athletic director,” Fehring recalled Friday from his home in Menlo Park before leaving for Los Angeles on a flight scheduled for this morning. “I kept reading in The Times that Johns was getting turned down by the people he was interviewing for the basketball job. So I went into his office and suggested he try and hire Johnny Wooden, who at the time was at Indiana State. And the rest is history.”

*

Full credit: “I have often said I wouldn’t have come to UCLA had it not been for Dutch,” Wooden said. “Not only did he recommend me for the job, he also convinced me to take it.”

*

Trivia time: When was the last time UCLA’s men’s basketball team defeated a No. 1-ranked team?

*

Appraising the best: Wooden says that Fehring, his roommate for one year at Purdue, might have been the state of Indiana’s all-time best all-around college athlete. “He was a three-year starter in three sports,” Wooden said, “and good at everything. But Indiana’s best high school athlete was Tom Harmon [from Gary].”

*

She’s wowed: The Lakers have played three games in the last four nights. So how did Coach Phil Jackson spend his one night off? He went to a party at Bliss in West Hollywood put on by WOW Events. The WOW stands for Women of Wrestling.

Jackson was there with girlfriend Jeanie Buss. No, she does not plan to compete. She is a business partner of WOW creator David McLane. They plan to launch their tour this summer.

“The first time I saw it, I fell in love with it,” Buss said. “It’s great entertainment without being degrading to women.”

*

Trivia answer: The Bruins recorded a 96-89 overtime victory over No. 1 Arizona in last season’s Pacific 10 tournament at Staples Center. Note: The Bruins defeated Stanford when the Cardinal was ranked No. 1 in 2000 and 2001, both times at Stanford.

*

And finally: Shaquille O’Neal is quite the kidder. Laker radio commentator Mychal Thompson, on XTRA Thursday, said: “On the plane last night, we’re coming back [from the Golden State game] and Shaq was walking up and down the aisle, shaking everybody’s hands and saying goodbye to everybody. I said, ‘What are you doing, Shaq?’ He said, ‘Well, I think I’m getting traded tomorrow.’ ”

*

Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.