They Had the Minds for His Kind of Game

Bert LaBrucherie is the answer to this trivia question: Who was UCLA’s football coach before Red Sanders? LaBrucherie, who died in 1986, was at UCLA from 1945 to 1948 and had a 23-16 record.

LaBrucherie was fired a few months after a basketball coach named John Wooden arrived at UCLA.

LaBrucherie went on to coach football at Caltech.

“He could run more trick plays there, because the players could remember them,” Wooden said.

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No spacing out: Dick Van Kirk, Caltech’s starting quarterback in 1956 and ‘57, recalls that LaBrucherie made it easy to remember trick plays.

“He used names rather than numbers to identify the plays,” Van Kirk said. “For example, we had a double reverse named Sputnik.”

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Trivia time: LaBrucherie’s Bruins were 3-7 in 1948, leading to his firing. How did the Bruins fare in the 1946 season, LaBrucherie’s best?

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A matter of opinion: Wooden, who said LaBrucherie never lost his sense of humor, remembers being at a Times awards dinner with him after he was fired.

“Someone came up to Bert and said, ‘Didn’t you used to be the UCLA coach?’ And Bert said, ‘Some people thought so.’ ”

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No Olympic dream: Carmelo Anthony of the Denver Nuggets, a member of the U.S. Olympic basketball team, told the Denver Post that his Olympic experience involved spending nights in his hotel room depressed and wanting to go home.

Anthony, demoted to the bench, said, “I would play my [video] games and hope and pray that it would be over with.... I was in my little funk. I didn’t want to be involved with nobody.”

Is it any wonder a lot of Americans weren’t rooting for the U.S. basketball team?

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A different experience: It seemed every time swimmer Michael Phelps appeared on camera during the Olympics, he was smiling. And for Phelps, the experience is not over. His hometown of Towson, Md., will honor him next Saturday with a parade and party. The event has been billed a “Phelpstival.”

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Odd analogy: Joel Sherman of the New York Post, on the New York Yankees’ dwindling lead over the Boston Red Sox: “The Yanks look like Rosie O’Donnell trying to hold off Michael Phelps in the 100 butterfly.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1998, the Yankees beat the Chicago White Sox, 11-6, for their 100th victory of the season, the earliest date a team had reached 100 victories in major league history.

The 1906 Chicago Cubs and 1954 Cleveland Indians did it five days later.

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Trivia answer: The Bruins were 10-1 after losing to Illinois, 45-14, in the Rose Bowl game.

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And finally: Texas A&M; football Coach Dennis Franchione, quoted by the Austin American-Statesman about why experience is overrated: “I’ve had some crummy experienced players.”

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