For UCLA, the party has just begun
NCAA champions return from Seattle to
a hero’s welcome and ‘The Tonight Show’
By Esther Hui
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Bright lights, live music, crowds, confetti. Sounds like a day
at the circus. Media circus, that is.
Ever since the buzzer blew Monday night, signaling a Bruin
national championship, UCLA’s fans  and what sometimes feels
like the entire country  have stopped in their tracks. The
spotlight now rests on Westwood’s featured act, the 12 members of
the UCLA men’s basketball team.
It started with the celebration in Los Angeles, described by
KNBC Channel 4 as "the crisis," in which thousands flocked to
Westwood Village to revel in UCLA’s first national championship in
20 years. On Tuesday, the Bruins emerged from their airplane to
cheers from crowds of excited fans, and then returned to Westwood
for a short rest before appearing on "The Tonight Show." Today the
men’s basketball team will have a parade at Disneyland, and a rally
in Pauley Pavilion at 5 p.m. President Bill Clinton has extended an
invitation for the Bruins to visit the Rose Garden.
"I’ve never seen anything like this myself," freshman forward
J.R. Henderson said. "As a freshman you don’t expect anything like
this. It was great to have support, the fans were there to meet us
at the airplane. But it got kind of wild. I expected kind of a
ruckus, but not a riot."
The Bruins do seem to be a team caught somewhere in between
basketball and status as national icons, and dealing with the media
can sometimes be overwhelming.
"I try to ignore it as much as possible," Henderson said. "If
you get involved with it too much, you’ll get tired of it really
fast, and you won’t want to do it anymore. You just try to back
away."
The excitement level was high in downtown Burbank, as the Bruins
jogged onto "The Tonight Show" set and threw layups at a makeshift
basket. There were a couple of misses, one apiece by Toby Bailey
and Ed O’Bannon, and another by head coach Jim Harrick. Confetti
rained from the stands onto the team, and host Jay Leno presented
the team with an advance copy of Sports Illustrated, the cover of
which featured Ed O’Bannon. One media relations person remarked
that the energy hadn’t been this high on the show since Howard
Stern was there.
Indeed, it is amazing that the Bruin basketball players have
handled the veritable barrage of attention suddenly thrust upon
them so calmly. While Leno joked with Martin Landau, the Bruins
quietly passed the Sports Illustrated back and forth which declared
them the "Wizards of Westwood".
"It’s not bad (dealing with the media)," O’Bannon said. "There’s
not anything wrong with it, we did something pretty special. It’s
everything I imagined. You see different teams win championships,
you hear about how they travel and visit places, and make
appearances. I’m enjoying it, I’m having a good time."
The tournament is over, and eventually the cheers from the fans,
and the buzz of the reporters will die down. The "Wizards of
Westwood" will return from the White House and begin studying for
midterms. But the feeling of the NCAA tournament will probably
linger long after the media circus has dispersed.
"The only overwhelming thing for me was when the game ended,"
O’Bannon said. "I realized that we were the national champions
 then I was overwhelmed."