Bruins Click in Harrick’s Debut, Cruise Past Texas Tech, 84-62

When Jim and Sally Harrick packed their 1960 Chevrolet and moved west from Charleston, W.Va., on their wedding night 28 years ago, the only people who knew them in Los Angeles were Jim’s aunt and three cousins.

But now a lot of people know Harrick as the UCLA basketball coach, and most of them want to see if he can restore the Bruins to their past glory.

He and the Bruins took their first step Saturday night in Harrick’s debut as coach, overpowering Texas Tech in the first 10 minutes and cruising to an 84-62 victory before a crowd of 5,866 at Pauley Pavilion.

It’s only one game, but . . .

“It’s a long, long time before we can get excited about the way we played, but it’s nice to get the first one,” said Harrick, the former Pepperdine coach who was hired by UCLA last April after Walt Hazzard was fired after 4 seasons.

“It was special to me,” Harrick said. “I’ve been around a long time and I’ve got a lot of friends. It was kind of a coming-out party. I got a lot of tickets that (Jim) Milhorn (associate athletic director) didn’t know about.”

Those in attendance watched Texas Tech lose its 18th straight road game as UCLA freshman Don MacLean, also making his debut, scored a game-high 22 points and had 7 rebounds. Teammates Kevin Walker and Trevor Wilson added 20 and 17 points, respectively.

UCLA ran out to a 30-8 lead in the first 8 1/2 minutes, making 9 of its first 10 shots and 13 of its first 17.

“They were really at a fine edge,” Tech Coach Gerald Myers said of the Bruins, who have won 35 of their last 36 home openers. “Jim did a great job of getting them in the right frame of mind. They really executed well.”

Walker, who scored a career-high 21 points in last season’s opener against Oral Roberts, opened an 18-2 UCLA run with a 3-point shot from the right wing that gave the Bruins a 15-6 lead with 16:10 left in the half.

The 6-foot 10-inch center from Brea ended the blitz 4 1/2 minutes later with a dunk off a wrap-around pass from Pooh Richardson, who had stripped the ball from Tech’s Wes Lowe, and ended the half with 18 points, making 7 of 10 shots, including 3 of 5 3-pointers.

“They didn’t really concentrate on me too much,” Walker said. “Maybe they didn’t scout us and didn’t know our capabilities.”

UCLA was nearly flawless in the early going, not turning the ball over even once before reserve guard Darrick Martin was called for an offensive foul with 10:29 left before halftime.

Harrick described Martin as being “out of sync,” but the freshman from Long Beach had reason to be. Wednesday night before practice, his right foot was run over by a car driven by Chanel Landreaux, a junior at UCLA and daughter of Bruin assistant coach Paul Landreaux.

“It scared us all to death,” Harrick said.

The accident, though, resulted only in a bruise, Harrick breathed a sigh of relief and the Bruins concentrated on dismantling Texas Tech.

The Red Raiders--who were 9-19 last season, the worst of their 18 seasons under Myers--closed to within 44-36 late in the half, but a running jumper in the lane by Richardson beat the buzzer to give the Bruins a 46-36 halftime lead and Tech never got any closer.

What was Myers thinking when his team fell behind by 22 so early?

“You just hope that you don’t get beat by 80,” he said.

As impressive as the Bruins were in the early going, though, Harrick said he preferred the more methodical Bruins of the last 20 minutes.

“When you have a run like that, what usually follows is a calm period,” Harrick said. “I’d almost rather play like we did in the second half--just steady. Working real hard every time down. That’s the kind of team we’d like to have--one that just steadily and gradually pulls away.”

Wilson helped the Bruins widen their lead, pulling down 9 of his game-high 10 rebounds in the second half. “Wilson played as well in the second half as he has in any practice or any other time,” Harrick said.

Bruin Notes

UCLA opens a 2-game trip Thursday night at Miami. . . . The starting time for UCLA’s game against Brigham Young next Saturday at Provo, Utah, has been changed, at BYU’s request, from 7 p.m., PST, to 1 p.m., PST, so that the game in BYU’s 23,000-seat Marriott Center will not conflict with ESPN’s telecast of the BYU-Miami football game from Miami. . . . UCLA Coach Jim Harrick, asked if he considered himself a strict disciplinarian: “I don’t ask the players to cut off anything that won’t grow back.” Translation: Facial hair is forbidden. . . . According to talent scout Bob Gibbons of All-Star Sports Publications of Lenior, N.C., UCLA’s signings this month of 6-foot 5-inch Mitchell Butler of Oakwood School in North Hollywood, 6-7 Zan Mason of Westchester High and 6-10 Rodney Odom of Kingwood, Tex., represent the fifth-best recruiting class in the country, behind only those garnered by Georgia Tech, Indiana, Duke and Michigan. Gibbons ranks Butler and Mason among the nation’s top 30 prospects, and includes Odom among the top 100. However, Gibbons also told the Sporting News that this year’s group is “one of the weaker classes in the last 10 years. It is strong at guard, but lacking in quality big people.”