Bruins try to show some respect

Let us all give a big Southern California welcome to Mississippi Valley State.

Where is it?

“Hmmm,” James Keefe said.

“In Mississippi Valley?” Kevin Love said.

Name one of its players.

“Jerry Rice,” Darren Collison said.

“Yeah, Jerry Rice,” Lorenzo Mata-Real said.

No, name one of its current basketball players.

“Let me think,” Josh Shipp said.

“Hmmm,” Keefe said.

How many points did it score this season against Washington State?

“We know that,” Collison said.

“Twenty-six, right?” Love said.

“But that was early in the season,” Collison said.

“Real early,” Love said.

Goodness, the UCLA Bruins are trying, they’re really trying.

The No. 1-seeded team in the NCAA West Regional is doing its best to respect the No. 16-seeded team before their game tonight at the Honda Center.

But, goodness, it’s hard.

“It’s OK that they don’t know where we are,” Mississippi Valley guard Michael Clark said. “Lots of people in Mississippi don’t know where we are.”

For the record, it is in Itta Bena, a tiny town in northwest Mississippi, a piece of stubble in the delta between Memphis, Tenn., and Little Rock, Ark.

Which must be the reason for the nickname, Delta Devils, right?

“You know, I still don’t know what a Delta Devil is,” center Larry Cox said.

The Bruins are trying to keep their focus, but there are many confusing things about the team from the 3,767-person historically black college.

The Devils were the champions of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, yet they lost their first 11 games against Division I opponents.

“That was rough,” guard Stanford Speech said.

Especially “rough” was a loss to Washington State, in which they scored -- gasp -- 26 points.

“Phewwwwww” forward Carl Lucas whistled when asked about it.

They are popular enough in their small town to have a Delta Devils coaches show.

But it airs Monday at 2:30 a.m.

“People joke that our town is five stoplights, hey, it’s more,” said guard Mike Davis, a Compton kid. “But not many more.”

Few schools could boast history’s greatest wide receiver as a former student.

But Jerry Rice doesn’t hang out with the basketball team.

Said Cox: “We mostly see him on television.”

Said Davis: “He’s never spoken to the team, and you think he would, especially in a situation like this.”

UCLA is trying, it’s really trying, hoping to summon some bit of worry that a 16th-seeded team will beat a top-seeded team for the first time since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Maybe the Bruins could be fearful of Clark, a 6-foot-2 guard who appears solo on the covers of the preseason and postseason media guides.

Except Clark averages eight points.

“Me being on the cover, that’s just luck,” he said.

Maybe UCLA could be worried that the Delta Devils have traveled to Anaheim with the mind-set of a serious business trip.

Except back in Itta Bena, when they learned they would be playing in Anaheim, Speech shouted, “We’re going to Disneyland.”

Maybe UCLA could fret that all the tournament media attention will give the Delta Devils a sense of belonging that could raise their skill level.

Except when I sat down at the start of their news conference Wednesday, I was the fourth reporter in the room.

When I left midway through the conference, there were seven reporters in the room.

“We know nobody thinks we can win,” Speech said. “People can give you lots of reasons why we can’t win.”

At least they’ll be rested. For the first time this season, and the first time in most of their careers, the players flew on a charter jet, funded by the NCAA, from Jackson to Orange County.

“It’s better than our bus rides,” Cox said.

Bus rides?

“Fourteen hours on one bus trip last year,” Cox said.

And, at least, they’ll eat well here, the players being allowed to venture on their own to sample the finest California cuisine Tuesday night.

“We ate at some good places,” Cox said. “Carl’s Jr., Denny’s, Outback.”

They are such an obscure story, Ben Howland, the UCLA coach and video freak, had been able to watch only three of their game tapes this week.

His video staff, meanwhile, had collected a combined 38 tapes on possible future opponents Texas A & M and Brigham Young.

“In a game like this, you have to find certain other things to get you motivated . . . somewhere, you have to find it from within,” Love said. “I mean, I barely even know where they are located.”

The only location that matters, of course, is the Honda Center court, where Mississippi Valley State will be battling tonight against UCLA, against every imaginable odd, against all known history.

But, bless the Delta Devils, they will do so with heads high, shoulders firm, chins jutting . . . and maps crumpled.

Said the appropriately named Speech: “You know, I don’t exactly know where UCLA is, either.”

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.