Ucla Lives Up To Hype After Early Humbling Losses, Bruins Bit Better Each Week

As the men’s basketball coach at UCLA, Jim Harrick is hardly a stranger to grossly inflated expectations.

But even he must have blanched a bit when his Bruins - sans Ed O’Bannon, Tyus Edney and George Zidek - were ranked No. 4 in the Associated Press’ preseason college basketball poll.

Granted, UCLA was coming off a dream season that had culminated in the school’s 11th NCAA title. Yet poll voters seemed oblivious to the graduation losses of Harrick’s three fabulous seniors, who contributed 45.3 points a game, unwavering leadership and O’Bannon’s John R. Wooden Player of the Year Award to last year’s championship drive.

What they remembered, apparently, were the 26 points freshman Toby Bailey scored in the title game against Arkansas - not the two he had scored just two nights earlier in a semifinal win over Oklahoma State.

What they remembered, it seems, was freshman J.R. Henderson’s 9-for-12 shooting night against Connecticut in the West Regional finals - not his 2-for-11 effort in the Final Four.

What they overlooked was:

This year’s Bruin roster boasts only one senior - Kevin Dempsey, a backup guard.

Of Harrick’s top nine players, four are second-year sophomores and two are freshmen.

Bailey, Henderson and starting forward Kris Johnson just recently turned 19.

The O’Bannon on this year’s roster, as good as he is, isn’t Ed.

And junior point guard Cameron Dollar, as good as he is, isn’t Edney.

All of which helps explain UCLA’s 1-2 showing in the season-opening Maui Classic, its second-half collapse at Kansas and its dramatic plunge in the polls.

Still, the Bruins come into the Spokane Arena for tonight’s 7 o’clock Pacific-10 Conference opener against Washington State ranked 20th, favored by a bunch and fully appreciated by second-year Cougar coach Kevin Eastman.

A sellout crowd of about 12,000 people is expected, and Eastman, who will be without his leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, Mark Hendrickson (broken hand), is preparing for the worst.

“They are extremely talented and, I think, a night-and-day team comparing how they played in the Hawaii tournament to how they’re playing today,” he said of the Bruins (7-3), who have shaken off early losses to Santa Clara and Vanderbilt to win their last five games.

“Actually, watching film of them kind of shocked me in terms of realizing that something got done after they got back from Hawaii. Who did it and how, I don’t know, but they’re a much more focused, more serious-minded team. And they’re playing with so much more intensity.

“They’re playing like they did last year, and we’re nowhere near the same team we were a week ago when we had Mark.”

Harrick said the early defeats might have served as a wake-up call for his young team.

“We certainly got a rocky start,” he admitted. “We got humbled when we went to Hawaii, but I’m not sure, emotionally or mentally, that we were ready to go over there and play the kind of teams we were playing.

“Since then, though, it seems like we’re getting a little bit better every week.”

Maturity has played a big part in the Bruins’ turnaround. With Dollar’s playing time limited recently by a hand injury, Bailey has moved to the point. And at 6 feet 5, he creates some perplexing matchup problems - especially for the Cougars, who will have to guard him with either 5-10 Donminic Ellison or 5-10 Shamon Antrum.

Bailey, is averaging 16.3 points and 3.5 assists and has become exceedingly comfortable with the responsibility of getting the Bruins into their half-court offense.

“Last year, we just let him run around out there and if he played good, we kept him in. If he didn’t, we took him out,” Harrick said of Bailey. “But this year, he’s become one of the guys we really depend on.

“I asked him to move over and play the point, and he’s really done a great job. He’s hard to guard because of his size, he can go inside and outside and he’s really shooting the ball well from 3-point range.”

WSU’s matchup problems aren’t confined to the point, however.

Charles O’Bannon, a 6-6 1/2 junior, leads UCLA in scoring at 16.5 a game, and Henderson, at 6-9, is averaging 15.1 points and a team-high 7.6 rebounds.

Then there is Jelani McCoy, Harrick’s 6-10, shot-blocking freshman center, who is averaging 10.5 points and 6.2 rebounds. McCoy, last year’s Division III Player of the Year among California preps, has blocked 45 shots in only 10 games this season. His total is already No. 4 on the Bruins single-season list.

“He has not acted like a true freshman,” Harrick said of his prize recruit. “He has not had a bad game for us and he has not been inconsistent. He’s very solid on the defensive end and he’s an exceptional shot blocker.

“He’s really developing into a very fine player for us.”

The other starter is Kris Johnson, a 6-5 sophomore, who can bang inside with anyone.

Dollar, who was so solid at the point in place of the injured Edney in last year’s NCAA title game, hasn’t started since injuring his hand. But he still leads the Bruins with 42 assists.

“I’m not going to start him this weekend,” Harrick said of the 6-1 junior. “But he’ll be in there at the end, I’ll tell you that. He ends every game in the game, so it doesn’t really make any different whether he starts - to me or him.

“We have good size in this lineup. I kind of like it a little bit, but I don’t like it all the time.”

It’s important to remember, however, that the Bruins are only 10 games into their 30-game regular-season schedule. And by the time McCoy completes his first run through an entire Pac-10 schedule and the NCAA’s selection committee asks UCLA to their Big Dance for the 32nd time next March, Harrick might decide he likes his lineup every night out.

And he might find out that all of those preseason expectations weren’t so grossly inflated after all.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo Graphic: Tough break