Bruins Play What’s Left of Cardinal at Stanford

STANFORD —  The Stanford basketball team that UCLA will play tonight at Maples Pavilion bears little resemblance to the team that Coach Tom Davis put together to start the season.

The Cardinal lost two senior starters in an 11-day span just as the conference season was getting under way, and the records of 8-10 overall, 2-4 in the Pacific 10, tell how much that hurt.

UCLA is taking an overall record of 8-5 and a Pac-10 mark of 3-2 to the Bay Area for the game against Stanford and another Saturday afternoon against Cal. UCLA is working with a depleted lineup, too, but the Bruins’ injuries are less serious.

Davis has had to do some shuffling of Stanford’s lineup, then some more shuffling when one of the replacements went down.

Senior guard Steve Brown, co-captain and starting shooting guard, suffered a stress fracture in his right leg, the same injury that cost him all of last season, at the end of December.

He rested it while Novian Whitsitt started in his place, then learned on Jan. 8 that he would have to sit out the rest of his collegiate career.

That was one day after Whitsitt went out of the lineup because of a pulled back muscle. He has missed four games but is practicing and may play against the Bruins.

Meanwhile, last Saturday against Cal, Earl Koberlein, a 6-6 senior and the Cardinal’s starting power forward, suffered a torn ligament in his right knee. He underwent surgery Monday and is out for the season.

To patch the holes, Davis brought 6-11 sophomore Greg Butler off the bench to replace Koberlein and put senior Andy Fischer back in a starting spot at small forward so that he could move small forward Todd Lichti, a freshman, to the Brown/Whitsitt shooting guard spot.

Davis tried John Paye, the football quarterback who wound up last basketball season as a starter, for three games as shooting guard but wanted more firepower from the position.

Davis said when Brown was lost: “Steve was our best offensive, defensive and rebounding guard. We will greatly miss him for all those reasons, as well as for his leadership qualities.”

And when Koberlein went out, Davis said: “It’s a terrible thing for a senior to have to go out. He was our first recruit, somebody nobody else wanted. He’s been our cornerstone, and I just couldn’t feel more badly for him.

“We’ll just have to do what we did after we learned that Steve Brown was out. We’ll have to regroup and hope some of our younger players fill the void.”

Lichti has been doing his part, leading the team with a 16.6-point average. Another freshman, 6-8 Howard Wright, has been starting all season at center. And another freshman, Bryan McSweeney, a 6-6 forward from Dana Point, has been getting a lot of time off the bench.

Despite all the injuries to the Cardinal team, UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard was concerned about getting a couple of key Pac-10 victories this weekend.

“This is a very big week for us,” he said. “Tom Davis is a very good basketball coach. He does his thing and he does it well. You have to respond to those things--like the bounce passes, the spinning bounce passes, the pump fakes in the lane, the multiple substitutions. . . . You have to have your thinking cap on when you play Tom Davis.

“I remember losing games at Stanford when I was playing for UCLA. For some reason, we couldn’t beat them up there. We played all kinds of barn-burners up there.”

Bruin Notes UCLA’s game at Stanford tonight at 7:30 will be broadcast on KMPC (710). There will be no telecast. . . . Stanford has lost four of its last five games and has scored 69 points in each of those defeats. Stanford lost to Washington, 70-69; to Arizona, 77-69; to Oregon, 83-69, and to Cal, 75-69.

UCLA Coach Walt Hazzard, who mentioned the possibility of dropping Notre Dame from the UCLA schedule last Saturday said Tuesday: “We have a contract with Notre Dame. It’s a good series. TV is interested in it.” Also, because of Notre Dame’s effort to coordinate a USC-Notre Dame basketball series in the same home-and-home rotation with its football series, the next two UCLA-Notre Dame basketball games will be at Pauley Pavilion. . . . Bruin guard Corey Gaines, who missed the last two games because of a hip pointer, may be able to play at Stanford and Cal. Hazzard said his status will be determined from day to day. . . . Bruin forward Kelvin Butler, who is out with a torn abdominal muscle, has started riding a stationary bike but is not running yet.

Bruin center Jack Haley obviously is a long way from being the dominating big man the Bruins need in the middle, but he has made progress this season. After good games against Washington State and Arizona State, Haley struggled against the physical play of Notre Dame’s Tim Kempton, but he didn’t back down and didn’t seem to get flustered. “He’s not uptight like he used to be.” Hazzard said. “He’s even calling for the ball. He doesn’t have much experience, but he can play in the Pac-10.”