Bruins Take Care of No. 1

PALO ALTO — Long after they had torn off their jerseys at midcourt, danced out of their shoes on the way to the showers, joyfully ripped away the tape and pads and months of gloom, one thing remained.

It was a list, scrawled on an oversized chalkboard in a cramped locker room underneath Maples Pavilion.

It was the last thing the UCLA basketball players saw before embarking on the biggest adventure of their season Saturday.

It was the first thing they saw when they finished with perhaps the biggest win of their young lives.

A checklist of desperation.

Pack of Wolves, read the first entry.

Selflessness.

Collective Ego.

Excited for Others.

And on it went, challenges to a team to act like a team, little dares to greatness.

Steve Lavin wrote it, explained it, pleaded it.

At which point, the most amazing thing happened.

His players bought it.

And No. 1-ranked Stanford felt it.

Today, after UCLA’s shining moment of a 94-93 overtime victory over the Cardinal, that list has been replaced by one filled with questions.

Where on this green earth has this team been for the last four months?

Is JaRon Rush really that good?

Does this mean we have to start thinking Steve Lavin can coach?

For now, the answers are who knows, who knows, and who knows.

But for now, who cares?

UCLA’s darkening future became a mad, jumbled, delightfully bright mess Saturday when Rush beat Casey Jacobsen to the ball, threw it in the basket, and changed everything.

The bouncing Maples floor froze. The bouncing crowd stood still. The deafening din was reduced to the cries of 20 players and coaches twirling off the floor.

“It was so nice,” Rush said.

“It was so crazy,” Stanford guard David Moseley said.

“It was Pulp Fiction,” Lavin’s father, Cap, said.

“It was Cameron Dollar beating Iowa State,” UCLA’s Sean Farnham said.

It was a somersault, is what it was.

A team that might have been shut out of the NCAA tournament should now be a lock.

A team that was destined for a second consecutive first-round loss now looks as though it could survive into the second weekend.

And of the embattled coach, who might have only one more season’s worth of lifeline remaining? Not so fast.

While this was arguably the biggest win of his coaching career--”Considering all the circumstances, it’s very special,” he said--Lavin is not out of the woods yet.

His team, however, has preceded him there, playing with an intelligence and fire not seen around Westwood since Ryan Bailey’s brother ran the team.

They are playing like, well, like they are supposed to play.

There was Jerome Moiso, who seemed to snooze through much of the season, rattling the Stanford big men like an alarm clock.

It was Moiso who took over at the end of regulation, scoring eight of the team’s final 15 points, tying the game twice, including that last-second jump hook.

“Moiso and [Dan] Gadzuric are bright, sensitive kids, but they need time,” Lavin said of his sophomores. “Unfortunately, people expect them to be like Walton and Jabbar right out of the gate.”

There was Earl Watson, the most criticized player on a criticized team, running around for the entire 45 minutes, collecting 13 assists with four turnovers, a real point guard.

“Usually teams get better in the summer,” Watson said, shaking his head. “But it’s like, this team got better during the season.”

That’s how it has been for two of the previous three Lavin teams. Shaky in January and February. Men come March.

Maybe it’s the NBA attitude of the players he recruits. Maybe it takes that long for them to listen to him. Maybe it takes that long for them to ignore him.

In this case, it might also be that this was the first game this season when he had his entire team intact.

Finally, there was Rush.

Everyone knew this team would be better with him. Nobody dreamed they would be save-their-season better.

“He takes us to another level,” Watson said.

And to think, this was Rush’s first day of eligibility after sitting out 24 games because of rules violations.

He took the floor to discover several thousand Stanford students waving dollar bills at him in honor of those violations.

“I saw all that and, man, I got nervous,” he said.

He started the game on the bench. He watched the Bruins trail 12-0, then 19-4, and really got nervous.

“I thought we could be looking at one of those 50-point massacres,” Moseley said.

Then Rush came into the game, and the Stanford sprint stopped. The Bruin run started. Moseley was proved wrong.

At the bottom of that chalkboard checklist, there was an equation.

3 + 6 = 9.

Before Saturday, that would be the number of regular-season games plus the number of tournament games a team must win to become NCAA champion.

All of which proves the Bruins have gone totally crazy.

But for once Saturday, the craziness was fun. The craziness worked. A season finally begins.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].