USC's Win Is No Miner Upset : College basketball: With their star player in foul trouble, Cooper and Sanders spark the Trojans' 86-82 victory. The Bruins' winning streak ends at 14.

By JERRY CROWE

Jan. 30, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

USC Coach George Raveling was startled Wednesday morning when he saw that his 25th-ranked Trojans were listed as 15 1/2-point underdogs in their game against second-ranked UCLA later that night at Pauley Pavilion.

“It really shook me a lot because usually those guys are pretty close,” Raveling said. ‘I said, ‘Man, we’re going to get killed.’ ”

But the oddsmakers weren’t close, and neither was Raveling.

USC built a 22-point lead and then withstood a furious second-half rally by UCLA to upset the Bruins, 86-82, ending UCLA’s bid for an unbeaten season, moving into a first-place tie with the Bruins in the Pacific 10 Conference and giving Raveling his first victory in Westwood after 16 losses.

In front of a sellout crowd of 12,842, USC increased its winning streak to six games, improving to 14-3 overall, its best start since the 1974-75 season, and 6-1 in the Pac-10.

UCLA, which was off to its best start in 19 years, fell to 14-1 and 6-1 after losing for the first time since last March, when it was upset by Penn State in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

USC hadn’t beaten a higher-ranked team since March 6, 1970, when it upset the top-ranked Bruins, 87-86, at Pauley Pavilion.

As surprising as the result was the way it was accomplished.

The Trojans were led by point guard Duane Cooper, who scored a game-high 23 points, made four of five three-point shots, seven of 11 shots overall and had seven assists and two steals, and by center Yamen Sanders, who scored a career-high 20 points, took 10 rebounds and made seven of 11 shots.

The Trojans’ high-scoring guard, Harold Miner, scored 22 points, but he missed nine of 15 shots and, because of foul trouble, was not on the floor during the latter stages of a first-half surge by the Trojans that ultimately killed UCLA.

“It was one of those nights when it wasn’t in the books for them and it was in the books for us,” Raveling said.

Said UCLA Coach Jim Harrick, whose team has lost three of its last four games against USC: “We had an opportunity to win, but we didn’t execute when we needed to. We got too far behind. They played awfully well.”

Raveling had praised the Bruins all week, describing his own team as a group of overachievers and heavy underdogs.

“Every now and then in your coaching career, you get a team that’s kind of special,” he said. “You look at them and say, ‘How could they be that good?’ Once you get past Miner--it’s a little bit of ‘Harold and his buddies.’ If you stopped the average person on the street, I’d bet you nine out of 10, unless they were SC fans, couldn’t tell you our starting lineup. And I’ll bet you that (some) SC people couldn’t tell you our starting lineup.

“It’s an interesting team. Here we are at 5-1 (in the conference race), and most people couldn’t tell you who starts for us. And yet, we have some kids who are doing a great job for us.

“It’s a team that has kind of made itself good by just utilizing a lot of the little intangible things that make for a good team. We’re not one of the more talented teams in the league. We don’t get ranked in any of those recruiting polls. It’s like I like to say, ‘We don’t get the McDonald’s (high school All-Americans). We just beat the teams that do.’ ”

USC built a 15-point halftime lead with little help from Miner, who missed five of his first seven shots before picking up his second foul and spending most of the last eight minutes of the half on the bench.

He left in the midst of a 35-10 run by USC that enabled the Trojans to build a 39-17 lead with 3:37 left before halftime.

After jumping out to a 7-4 lead, UCLA fell apart.

In the next 13 1/2 minutes, the Bruins missed 14 of 18 shots, made 10 turnovers and generally looked awful as USC, getting 13 points from Sanders and 11 from Cooper, threw the Bruin faithful into a panic.

UCLA rallied and pulled to within 58-56 with 7:39 left, but Rodney Chatman made a three-point shot at the other end to start a 7-0 Trojan run that built USC’s lead back up to 65-56 with six minutes to play.

USC maintained its lead--UCLA never got closer than three points--as the Trojans made 17 of 20 free throws in the last 3 1/2 minutes.

Bruin-Trojan Notes

Harold Miner needs eight points to replace Ronnie Coleman as USC’s all-time scoring leader. . . . Don MacLean, who led UCLA with 21 points and 11 rebounds, needs 69 points to replace Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as UCLA’s all-time scoring leader, 299 to replace Arizona’s Sean Elliott as the Pac-10’s all-time leader. . . . Miner would rank sixth on UCLA’s all-time scoring list behind Abdul-Jabbar, MacLean, Reggie Miller, Trevor Wilson and Bill Walton, but his average of 23.2 would rank second to Abdul-Jabbar’s 26.4.

Coach Jim Harrick said that UCLA hasn’t played better this season than it did in the last 7 1/2 minutes of its 83-77 come-from-behind victory over Stanford last Saturday at Palo Alto. . . . USC Coach George Raveling said that probably only Duke and Arkansas have talent equal to UCLA’s. “And I’m not sure anybody has the depth (UCLA) has,” Raveling said.

COLLEGE BASKETBALL: A look at the winners and losers so far this season. Gene Wojciechowski’s column, C4

GIANT KILLERS: Center Yamen Sanders and guard Duane Cooper emerged from Harold Miner’s shadow to help USC upset UCLA. C5