Bruins ranked No. 2 in first coaches’ poll

UCLA, the pick by some publications as college basketball’s preseason No. 1, landed second behind North Carolina in the first ESPN/USA Today poll Friday.

One quirk: The Bruins, coming off consecutive Final Four appearances, had more first-place votes from the panel of 31 coaches, with 12 to North Carolina’s 10. But the Tar Heels, with three starters back from a 31-7 team and a player-of-the-year candidate in center Tyler Hansbrough, edged UCLA in overall points in the poll, 739 to 734.

“I think there are probably 10 or 12 teams that all are going to have a legitimate chance to win the national championship,” UCLA Coach Ben Howland said, recalling that Florida was unranked in the preseason polls before its 2006 championship.

“The margin between the No. 1 team and the 20th team in the country is not that big,” Howland said, noting that he used to vote in the ESPN/USA Today poll when he was coach at Northern Arizona.

USC, which added freshman guard O.J. Mayo after reaching the Sweet 16 last season, was ranked No. 18 in the ESPN/USA Today poll.

The Bruins and Trojans were two of six Pac-10 teams in the poll. Others were No. 10 Washington State, No. 13 Oregon, No. 17 Arizona and No. 21 Stanford.

The Associated Press preseason poll, which is voted on by a panel of media members, will be released next week.

Kevin Love was kicked in the left shin near the end of practice Friday and suffered a bruise Howland described as a “pretty serious contusion,” but the Bruins’ standout freshman was able to walk off the court unassisted.

Precautionary X-rays were negative, and UCLA said Love would return to practice today.

“When he went down -- any time these guys go down -- my heart always ends up in my throat because you never know,” Howland said. “I’m pretty confident he should be fine.”

With center Lorenzo Mata-Real limited by a sprained right ankle, Howland said the team would practice today before taking the next two days off “to try to get healed.”

Howland, inducted into the Boys & Girls Club of America Hall of Fame this week at a dinner at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, called the event “really special.”

“The Boys Club there in Goleta was where I learned to play basketball and fell in love with basketball,” Howland said, adding that the 850-person dinner raised some $1.4 million for Boys & Girls Clubs.

With less than a week to go before the Bruins’ first exhibition Friday and less than two weeks before their opener Nov. 9 against Portland State, Howland said there is a lot of work to do, not only in terms of settling on lineup combinations but putting in new offensive sets and focusing on defense and myriad details.

He also expressed dismay at how early the season starts, compared with when it traditionally began after Thanksgiving.

“Today was our 13th practice and we don’t have an out-of-bounds play in yet. We don’t have a zone play in yet,” he said. “So we have a lot of things to do between now and our first game.”

robyn.norwood@latimes.com