sports
Bruins’ toughest NCAA foe may come first
Photo by Steve Schneider
Roy Hamilton, one of UCLA's fine guards, will face some tough foes
right off the bat as the Bruins face Kansas in the NCAA opener.
f.
By MIKE MARINO
Ot the Emerald
UCLA and Kansas will open the
NCAA tournament against each
other Saturday at 1:15 in Mac
Court, but the game could just as
easily have been slated for the
final hour in St. Louis.
The Bruins are sitting pretty,
ranked number two in the country
with a 24-2 record and a Pac-8
championship under their belts.
And in all their post-season ven
tures, they’ve never once lost a
first-round game.
That could change. The
Jayhawks are ranked eighth or
ninth, depending on poll prefer
ence and stormed through the Big
Eight conference with a 13-1 re
cord. Only they fell victim to that
new enigma — the post-season
league playoff — losing to Kansas
State and ending up in the West.
Still, they pose a problem for Gary
Cunningham and his Bruins.
“It’s tough when you have to
start with a strong team right off,”
Cunningham said Thursday. “But
it’s the only possibility you have,
and you have to take it like it’s the
next game on your schedule.”
A bit tougher than most, though.
KU, like the Bruins, has a bal
anced fast-break-on-offense,
press-on-defense attack keyed by
their backcourt duo of Darnell
Valentine (13.6 points a game)
and John Douglas (12.6).
“They like to run and press,”
Cunningham said. “They have
good guards that can control their
game.”
But, you’ll recall, so do the
Bruins — Roy Hamilton and
Raymond Townsend. And they’re
the key to what Cunningham calls
the UCLA “transition game” —
run like hell, in other words. “We
had a good transition game last
weekend against Michigan (a
96-70 win),” Cunningham said. “I
just hope that we can get it
cranked up and going against
Kansas.”
The real toughie, though, could
come under the boards, where the
Jayhawks boast some size. Junior
Paul Mokeski, at 7-1 the first
seven-footer at KU since Wilt
Chamberlain, paces the team in
reboundings with 8.3 a game. At
forward there is some near-equal
stature in 6-10 Ken Koenigs, an
all-Big Eight selection as a senior.
Koenigs scores 11.3 points a
game with over six rebounds. Add
6-9 Donnie Von Moore and it looks
like a forest.
“Inside they have strength,”
Cunningham conceded. "But we
would hope to rebound well on the
defensive boards to get our run
ning game going.”
That can only mean David
Greenwood, the 6-9 junior All
American who pulls down 11.7 a
game. With every one running,
then, the score should dimb. In
fact, the Bruins rank-number one
in the country in scoring margin
with a 19.1 spread, while KU has
beaten its opponents by an aver
age of 16 points, fourth in the na
tion.
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