Westwood beats out Lawrence

Today is only the fifth time that UCLA and Kansas have met in the NCAA tournament, with the Jayhawks looking for their first victory. Yet few college basketball teams can claim richer traditions. Consider these points:

* Kansas had Wilt Chamberlain. UCLA had Lew Alcindor.

Advantage: Alcindor won three NCAA titles. Wilt went to one title game, in 1957, and lost. He jumped ship a year later to clown around with the Harlem Globetrotters.

Note: Alcindor became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and traded martial arts blows with Bruce Lee. Chamberlain appeared in “Conan the Destroyer” and had a long and apparently fruitful dating career.

* Kansas had James Naismith, inventor of a thing called “basketball.” UCLA had John Wooden, inventor of thing called “Dynasty.”

Advantage: Naismith may have thought up the game, but Wooden showed people what to do with it.

Note: When Kansas was playing in the 1957 title game, the Bruins had a coach who in nine years had only three NCAA appearances and had won one tournament game -- a West Regional consolation game, no less. If that were today, imagine the number of “Fire Wooden” websites that would be out there?

Trivia time

How many coaches have led the UCLA men’s basketball team to the Final Four?

Common ground

Both schools were also stops on Larry Brown’s quest to coach every basketball team. So what did Brown do for each? Kansas’ Brown gave the Jayhawks their first national title since Phog Allen. UCLA’s Brown gave the Bruins NCAA sanctions.

The year that was

The first time the Bruins and Jayhawks met in the tournament was in the Final Four in 1971, maybe the wildest year the NCAA had seen since 1951, when CCNY showed the mob how to make money off college basketball. In 1971:

* Only two of the Final Four teams are recognized by the NCAA. Villanova and Western Kentucky were expelled from the records because of NCAA violations. The name of Villanova’s Howard Porter, the finals MVP, was also erased.

* USC went 24-2, was ranked fifth nationally, yet stayed home because it didn’t win the Pac-8.

* Marquette and Pennsylvania finished the regular season undefeated yet the Associated Press ranked them second and third, respectively, behind one-loss UCLA. That dang West Coast bias.

* Long Beach State reached the West Regional final, blew an 11-point lead and lost to UCLA by two. It was Jerry Tarkanian’s national coming-out party and the beginning of a golden age for NCAA investigators.

And the game? The Bruins beat the Jayhawks, 68-60, in the semifinals, then beat Villanova for their fifth consecutive title.

They weren’t in Kansas anymore

Here are a few Kansas athletes who made it big in L.A., or at least made it to L.A.

Chamberlain -- one NBA title with the Lakers.

Danny Manning -- one bum knee with the Clippers.

John Hadl -- one in a long line of quarterbacks who lost playoff games for the Rams.

Pitter-patter-son

Steve Patterson is the answer to the trivia question, “Who played center for UCLA between Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton?” but he was also the star of that title game. Patterson, who died of lung cancer in 2004, scored 29 points against Villanova.

After the game, he revealed that while dining with his parents the night before, “I had a little vin rose wine too. Maybe that’s what did it.”

Still, Patterson had trained hard for that moment, spending two years guarding Alcindor in practice.

“I became a bit demoralized,” he wrote years later. “I found myself thinking, ‘Lew is either the best player who’s ever lived, or I’m lousy.’ ”

Trivia answer

Five -- Wooden, Gene Bartow, Brown, Jim Harrick and Ben Howland, who could become only the second to get the Bruins there twice.

Footnote: Brown’s 1980 team may have finished second to Louisville on the court, but that team doesn’t even exist in the Final Four records because of NCAA violations.

And finally

Patterson, joking about his abilities, once said: “My sophomore year, I was the ‘human victory cigar.’ Coach Wooden would put me in when the game was not in jeopardy.”

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chris.foster@latimes.com