Jeff Agase Agase invites you to join a
midnight game of touch football between Gates 11 and 12 at Pauley
Jan. 23, the night before the Stanford game. He welcomes comments
at [email protected]. Click
Here for more articles by Jeff Agase
My friend called me up at 5:30 Friday night, asking me if I was
planning on sleeping out for the Kansas game the next day.
“Aw, I dunno,” I said. “After that ‘SC
game, don’t you think we could probably just wake up early
Saturday morning and still get Arena Level priority
passes?”
She told me she had already put me on the list as number
101 ““ at 3 p.m.
To my surprise, 100 other fans had decided to come out and
sacrifice personal sanitation and sobriety to get within shouting
distance of the No. 1 Jayhawks ““ all of this after a
disheartening loss to USC the night before.
Many have claimed that the magic is gone from Pauley Pavilion
and even from UCLA basketball itself. After all, the Bruins have
won just one national title in the past 27 years, and most of us
were starting high school when that one came.
But Saturday afternoon, at an electric Pauley Pavilion, the
Bruins brought back the magic.
87-77. In front of a national television audience, UCLA showed
why it still means something to be UCLA. For the first time since
1986, the Bruins knocked off the No. 1 team in the nation at home.
It was the ninth No. 1 team UCLA has defeated, tying Notre Dame for
the NCAA record.
“This is exactly why I came to UCLA,” freshman guard
Cedric Bozeman said after playing a career-high 27 minutes, most of
which he spent handling the ball and perhaps cementing himself as
this team’s point guard.
Yep, UCLA is back, all right. Two days after an emotionally
draining loss to their red-headed stepchild rival across town, the
Bruins pulled an about-face shocker by beating
the nation’s top-ranked team for the third straight
year.
The last two times were wins over Stanford at hostile Maples
Pavilion with the cheers of maybe only 500 UCLA faithful.
“At Maples we didn’t get any love,” sophomore
forward T.J. Cummings said. “All we got was a bunch of salty
people.”
This time, they got a bunch of loud people ““ most of
12,280 to be exact. From the opening tip to the frenzied
game-concluding court rush, the Pauley crowd ““ even the
alumni ““ stood up and let Kansas know that UCLA, that Pauley
Pavilion, that all of this still means something.
But with just over 15 minutes to play in what was becoming a
tight game, the small section of Kansas fans erupted with a
“Let’s go Jayhawks,” chant. Things looked bleak.
Kansas was beginning to look like No.1, and the Bruins were
beginning to look like, well, the Bruins.
“Before the game you look around at the banners and notice
it all,” Kansas forward Nick Collison said. “But once
the game starts you forget about it.”
If the Kansas players and fans forgot about it ““ about the
ever-present mystique of Pauley ““ they were the only ones.
Matt Barnes calmly dribbled, waited for a play to develop and
weaved the ball through a crowd of Kansas defenders to an awaiting
Jason Kapono, who completed a three-point play. The rest, as they
say, is history.
Barnes still bought into the mystique of Wooden, of Alcindor, of
Walton and O’Bannon. Friday afternoon after practice, the
senior forward, who scored 27 points in a statement to NBA scouts,
stopped by to throw around the football with the camping
students.
“We saw them sleeping out and we wanted to show our
appreciation,” he said.
Barnes and the Bruins were determined to right the wrong that
was the loss to the Trojans. That wasn’t UCLA. Neither were
the home losses over the last three years (Gonzaga, Cal State
Northridge, Pepperdine) that provided fodder to those who claimed
the pride of UCLA and Pauley were gone.
And they did it. They may not have silenced the doubters
completely, but they showed that UCLA still means something, that
there is such a thing as pride and mystique ““ and that this
team should be able to compete with anybody.
Even the notoriously draconian UCLA Game Staff saw what this
game meant to students still licking the gaping wound that was the
USC loss. Instead of macing onrushing students, they cleared out
press table after press table ““ even the one for esteemed
Daily Bruin basketball writer Dylan Hernandez ““ and let the
students revel in the win.
“UCLA means a lot,” Bozeman said. “When we
wear those four letters across our chests we carry it with
pride.”
Even Kapono, who had by his standards a forgettable game, saw
what it meant to be UCLA.
While talking with a reporter after the game, Kapono stopped and
gave 10-year-old Andrew Nairia a gift he will probably never forget
““ his headband.
Nairia had stuck around for an hour after the game. Don’t
tell me UCLA doesn’t mean anything anymore.