Feb. 6, 1971: That’s When UCLA and USC Played . . . : THE GAME

It looks like a USC season. UCLA is suddenly vulnerable. For the first time in recent memory, the Trojans are ranked higher than the Bruins. The Trojans think they’re a team of destiny. The old order seems ready to crumble. Revolution is in the air.

This isn’t tonight. This was Feb. 6, 1971, when the Bruins met the Trojans in the Sports Arena. It was the high-water mark of their basketball rivalry.

The Trojans, with Paul Westphal, Mo Layton and Ron Riley, were 16-0 and ranked No. 1 in the country.

The Bruins, defending national champions with Sidney Wicks, Curtis Rowe and Steve Patterson, were 15-1, ranked No. 2.

The Trojans took a 59-50 lead, then scored one point in the last 9 minutes, 30 seconds and lost, 64-60. The Bruins went on to another national title. The Trojans lost one other game--at Pauley Pavilion--finished 24-2 and went home.

Nothing else in this series ever matched that night. The Trojans and Bruins no longer face each other to determine who’s best in the nation. They haven’t been running 1-2 in the Pacific 10, either. USC Coach Stan Morrison has knocked off UCLA in five of his six seasons, but in only one, so far, did it help earn him an NCAA bid.

What passion remains can be traced to the natural competition and loathing--if not mutual respect--that these two fine institutions have for each other. When they met four weeks ago in the Sports Arena, in USC’s dramatic 78-77 double-overtime win, the crowd was a non-sellout 13,640. Both schools were glad to see that many.

Tonight, though, they’re back to playing for more than bragging rights. The Trojans are tied for first in the Pacific 10. The Bruins are 1 1/2 games behind.

It isn’t exactly the matchup they had in 1971, but then what else ever could be?

THE PROLOGUE Bob Boyd started coaching at USC in 1966, the same year that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor, began playing at UCLA. Boyd’s appearance had a less-dramatic effect.

John Wooden was the undisputed king of the mountain, so Boyd took to the hills. He fought guerrilla-style. He held the ball.

In Abdul-Jabbar’s junior year, the Trojans stalled and led by two points with four seconds left, but Lynn Shackelford drilled one in to tie it. Guess who won in overtime?

Wooden said the USC stall was bad for basketball. USC Athletic Director Jess Hill scolded Wooden at a luncheon shortly thereafter. Hill told him that anything but a stall would have been bad for USC.

In Abdul-Jabbar’s senior year, Boyd held the ball and beat the Bruins. It was Kareem’s second loss in his three-year career, the other being the Elvin Hayes game in the Astrodome.

But by 1971, Abdul-Jabbar was gone, and Boyd was coming down out of the hills. He was recruiting top Los Angeles players. He had beaten Wooden to Aviation High’s coveted Westphal, and had upset the Bruins again in their last meeting in 1970. The same Bruins then won a fourth straight NCAA title when the 6-8 Wicks went eyeball to eyeball with Artis Gilmore, whose eyeballs were about six inches higher off the ground.

But now, the UCLA dynasty was tottering. That was the word everyone used.

From Sports Illustrated’s account:

“The disturbing note at UCLA (before that game) was the lack of teamwork. Wooden worried about it publicly several times. Word leaked out that NBA-ABA war was on the minds of the seniors, and they were most concerned with what kind of juicy pro contract awaited them once they got this silly college business out of the way. At one point, an agent who expected to represent Rowe in negotiations with the pros approached a Los Angeles sportswriter and told him his man was unhappy about all the ‘ink’ Wicks was getting.

“ ‘Let’s just say it will be better for college basketball when the merger is completed,’ Wooden said.”

USC was in the midst of a renaissance. That was the word everyone used.

“It was great,” said Westphal, now a TV commentator living outside Phoenix. “There had been such a dramatic change in the fortune of SC basketball. And it wasn’t something like a carry-over from Alcindor and Goodrich and Erickson, something handed down. It was us. It was real exciting.

“Coming out of high school, I felt that if I went to UCLA and won a national championship like they’d been doing, that would have been nice. That would have been great. But I thought if I did it at SC, that’d be fantastic. Number two, I just didn’t think John Wooden was enjoying coaching. He told me he’d be there for my four years, but I wasn’t sure he would. . . .

“There was some of that (arrogance). People said the same thing about SC football at the time. When I was being recruited, you’d hear people there (Pauley Pavilion) talking in the stands, if some other team had a good player: ‘That guy’s good. He probably could be a sub on our team. He might be able to make our team. He couldn’t start, of course.’

“It was kind of like nobody was any good unless he went there. And if you’re in that environment, players tend to start believing that stuff. The next thing, they’re showing up at halftime of the freshman game, one by one, walking in front of the student section in their leather jackets. That didn’t happen at SC at the time. That’s what struck me as arrogant at the time. It still does. . . .

“That’s natural with rivalries. (UCLA guard) Henry Bibby and I were kind of rivals. We were the same year, in the same town. We didn’t really know each other, but it was kind of like, ‘Who is that guy?’ Now there are no lingering feelings. We’re friendly. When you’re competing for the same turf, you kind of want to find a reason not to like the guys you’re going against.”

Meanwhile, back at the dynasty:

“Tottering?” says Wicks, now a volunteer UCLA assistant coach, in disbelief. “We were kicking everybody’s butts. We were 29-1. You tell me, is that tottering?

“If that’s tottering, then totter us right now, OK?

“We didn’t have as good a team as we’d had two years before. Bibby was our only starting guard back. We’d lost (John) Vallely, our cold-blood executioner. We had to grind out a lot of games with our UCLA system. We were rated No. 1 and then we lost to Notre Dame. They really homed us back there. Then we came back here and got ready to play USC.

“We went over there to play. We were really excited, our cross-town rivals. And they had some players I really didn’t like. Who? I’m not going to name any names. They talked on the court. We never talked. All we did was play.

THE GAME The game drew a sellout 15,307. It was televised locally and carried by about 100 other stations.

Said Wicks: “I was too pumped. I started making mistakes. The coach jerked me out and said, ‘Sid, what are you doing out there?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to win the game.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re trying too hard.’ . . .

“(Ahead 59-50) they started to stall, and we pressed ‘em. And they rested Mo Layton. We got a couple of hoops, and before they could get him back in we ran off 10 straight points. Boyd looked down the bench and said, ‘Where’s Mo?’ He was at the scorer’s table. He had someone call time out, but when the USC player tried to call time--rip!--we took the ball from him again and got another basket.

“And then we went to a stall.”

Said Westphal: “We weren’t stalling. We just played our game. I can’t remember what we were in, zone or man-to-man, but whatever it was, people said we should have been in the other. I was in the game but I don’t know who the other guard was, Mo Layton or Dana Pagett. Whoever it was, people said it should have been the other.”

From the SI account:

“Wicks, 6’8” and certain to go among the first in the pro draft, helped waste away the time, dribbling right-handed and left-handed, never losing the ball. Fouled with 20 seconds left, he sank both free throws and started mugging for the cheering UCLA fans, flexing his muscles like a body builder. . . .

“The two teams play a rematch March 13 at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion, where Boyd has coached both his victories over the Bruins. That game very likely will decide the Pacific Eight championship. It could also decide the national championship.

“ ‘The season isn’t over by a long shot, said USC’s Westphal.’ ”

When they met again, the Bruins ran up a 19-point lead in the first half, won, 73-62, and went on to a fifth straight NCAA title. Conference rules said that only one team could play in a postseason tournament, so USC couldn’t even go to the NIT.

A year later, the window of vulnerability in the years between Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton slammed shut. The Bruins tottered to sixth and seventh straight NCAA titles.

In Walton’s senior season, the Bruins and Trojans met in the season’s last game, tied once more for first in the conference. At the Sports Arena, the Walton Gang won, 82-52.

USC never got over the top. And if the Trojans had held that nine-point lead in the first meeting in 1971?

“I don’t think it would have changed very much,” Westphal said. “Maybe if we’d won the national championship that year. But SC had a great recruiting year the next year: Gus Williams, John Lambert. Walton had already been recruited. And no matter who USC got, they wouldn’t have beaten Walton.”