In Reply to: FAVORITE UCLA basketball game? posted by lafong on February 22, 2026 at 18:44:08
I've never been great at remembering specific games and players, as mrnewguy can attest. (Holy smokes, he remembers EVERYthing, including specific plays and exactly what happened in those plays as many as 40-50 years ago, both UCLA and NBA.)
I'm nearing the end of my 50th season attending most games, with a history of missing zero to only a couple of games a season. There were amazing games with HUGE and VERY loud crowds versus $UCks, Arizona, and others.
As for favorites, there are several that stand out (in no particular order):
* The ASU game mentioned below, in which we scored 6 points in 9 seconds to win the game
* A WSU game that was wild and exciting
* Smacking down the Oregon Ducks, coached by Dick Harter, when they were known as the "Kamikaze Kids." I'll never forget how loudly we booed when their players, instead of warming up during...pre-game warm-ups, stood still along the center court line staring at -- and I guess trying to intimidate -- our players
* When an arrogant hot-shot PG for the Ducks -- one we loved to hate -- broke his hand when he punched the stanchion of the basket on the west side of the court, in frustration. Do any of you remember who that was? Google's AI can't figure it out
* So many of the pre-game antics we pulled back in the late '70s as part of the lead-up to Frisbee's "Is this a basketball?" cheer. We had a bunch of items prior to the game against the Chinese National Team, led by a very slow-footed 7-foot 8(?)-inch giant man named Mu. "Is this chop suey?" "Are these chopsticks?" etc. Another of my favorites was the season after the summertime oil sheikh scandal at $UCks. Frisbee had one guy who built a 5-foot tall oil derrick, and several of us dressed up as sheiks
* The first game against $UCks the season after $UCks player Purvis Miller had apparently brandished a handgun at someone over the previous summer. We harassed him with "Shoot Purvis, Shoot!" chants
* The Gonzaga (Adam Morrison) game. I wish I could have been there, but I did get to hear what probably turned out to be Gus Johnson's most famous shouted exclamations in those last moments! (And for the record, it was Cedric Bozeman who knocked the ball loose, enabling Jordan Farmar to pick it up and make a perfect pass to Luc Richard Mbah a Moute under our basket. Farmar often gets erroneously credited with the steal, when it was Bozeman who did it.)
* The 1995 championship run. From the Regional semi-finals through the Championship Game, I drove from Altadena to the Coop in Ackerman Union to watch the games on their big TV with several hundred others. That was insane, and wildly exciting.