Isn’t This The Ticket? Ucla-Washington State Matchup In Arena Ends Years Of Palouse Envy

Well, it’s no Rubber Chicken game, but it’ll have to do.

UCLA is on the guest register at the Spokane Arena tonight, the occasion being a little run with Washington State to ring in the basketball new year.

As if you didn’t know. Tickets, officially, are unavailable.

So what else is new? In its first four months, the new joint has already filled the seats for, variously, the Sharks, the Canucks, Reba, John Stockton, Shawn Kemp, Barnum, Bailey, Beauty and the Beast.

But, obviously, there are sellouts and then there are sellouts.

And from a athletic point of view, it’s hard to think of anything which has passed through our city with the fundamental marquee appeal of UCLA basketball.

Sure, it’s been 20 years since the Wizard coached and nearly 30 since Big Lew and his fellow freshmen spanked the varsity. These aren’t the Bruins of 88 straight. These aren’t even the Bruins who smoked Arkansas at the Final Four in Seattle last spring to finally satisfy two decades of ridiculously inflated expectations.

But close enough.

The talent, the talk, the swagger are all the same.

So are the four block letters across the front of the uni.

And tonight, they’re here. The next thing you know, the three surviving Beatles will be harmonizing in your shower.

This is all a happy accident of WSU’s academic calendar not meshing with the Pac-10 Conference schedule, of a suitable new building being available in Spokane and of an athletic director with the guts to look his hometown season ticket-holders in the eye and tell them it makes sense to have them drive 75 miles out of their way for a ballgame.

And if we sound a little breathless, it’s probably because we don’t have to make the drive, for once.

Pardon the fuss. We’re quite aware that the biggest basketball game we’ve ever seen staged here is an every-year deal down in Pullman.

Maybe what we have is Palouse envy.

We adore the charming cacophony of a Ferris-LC game or the B tourney, but the sound and fury seem to signify less when down the road Lew Alcindor’s appearance at Bohler Gym is making the fire marshal look the other way or when 12,000 loons packing Beasley Coliseum bring George Raveling to tears.

Here or there, UCLA is the game the Cougars and all college teams - measure themselves by. It’s all those NCAA banners and all those Ws Wooden, Walton, Wicks, Wilkes.

Wins.

Hell, it’s the game up here because the Cougars are 0-and-bloody-38 against the Bruins in Los Angeles.

But while this has always been the big match on campus - at least in non-Apple Cup years - it hasn’t always been treated as such.

Eleven years ago, the Cougars shocked UCLA 66-58 in overtime in front of a measly Beasley gathering of 2,600. The Bruins being just 10-11 at the time kept down the count, but so did a blizzard. In 1986, they played six days before Christmas and the Cougars won again, 81-73, but only 3,500 showed. It was after this one that UCLA gunner Reggie Miller groused, “We have to stop playing like girls and grow up.”

Wonder what sister Cheryl had to say about that?

But those are the exceptions. So as a sample of what we could be in for tonight, a top 10 of what too many of us missed:

1. 1983, WSU 70-68. Never have more people - 12,422 - squeezed into Friel Court, made more noise or experienced such delirium. Forward Aaron Haskins belts out a positively riveting rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” on saxophone - hey, it was written as a fight song,was it not? Bryan Pollard tips in Chris Winkler’s miss at the buzzer. Fans who had torn down a goalpost at Martin Stadium after the Cougs upset Washington the previous fall rip down the rim in celebration. Rather than throw it in the river as they did the goalpost, they give it to Pollard - who had fainted in the commotion. Alas, with a chance to win the Pac-10, the Cougs faint against UW five days later.

2. 1979, UCLA 110-102, 3 OT. Don Collins burns the Bruins for 36 points, but Bryan Rison’s short bank shot rolls off the rim at the end of the second overtime.

3. 1982, WSU 57-51, 3 OT. Tyrone Brown his nickname was “Turnover” - turns up an unlikely hero, his steal and feed to Guy Williams for a dunk breaking the final tie.

4. 1986, UCLA 81-80, 2 OT. Mondo bizarro. Cougs lead by four with 33 seconds left in regulation. By five - with the ball - with 40 seconds left in the first OT. By eight with 2 minutes left in the second OT. Lose. The legacy of Lenny Stevens.

5. 1980, WSU 80-64. Raveling’s first win over the Bruins breaks a string of 27 straight losses in the series. Fans chant until he returns to center court, weeping.

6. 1959, WSU 71-54. The Cougs’ first win over a John Wooden team. Duane Ranniger scores 19 - and fouls out with 13 minutes left. UCLA’s Rafer Johnson misses the game to fly to New York to accept the “Sportsman of the Year” award. There it is again - the SI jinx.

7. 1965, UCLA 70-68. Eight days earlier in L.A., the defending NCAA champs win by 42.

8. 1966, WSU 84-83. Dennis Kloke drains a one-and-one with five seconds to play. Wazzu won’t win again until 1980.

9. 1970, UCLA 72-70. The Cougs lead for 37-1/2 minutes as Rick Erickson shreds the vaunted UCLA press for 28 points, but Steve Patterson’s putback puts the Bruins ahead for good.

10. 1993, WSU 67-56. Tony Harris gets four breakaway dunks in the first half, punctuating each with a twist or reverse. “I was running out of things to do out there,” he says.

And tonight?

WSU coach Kevin Eastman would feel more comfortable at Friel, but understands he’d have half as many witnesses.

“We’ll need an extra boost (from the crowd),” he admitted. “If it’s just our players against their players, then we’re going to have a tough time. We need a boost from them and even when UCLA is making a run, they need to be a smart crowd.”

He has a head start. They’re already a crowd.

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