MARCH 27, 1971

The 1970-71 UCLA basketball team was the second of two teams sandwiched between the Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton eras. Walton was enrolled at UCLA, but as a freshman at that time wasn’t eligible to play for the varsity until his sophomore year.

The question was whether the team that had surprisingly won the previous season--the Bruins’ fourth national championship in a row--could continue Coach John Wooden’s extraordinary string of titles.

On this date 28 years ago in the Houston Astrodome, the Bruins prevailed again, but they did it in a manner few would have expected from a Wooden-coached team.

The game against Villanova started out like another runaway UCLA victory--UCLA had a 45-37 halftime lead--but took a surprising twist in the second half.

UCLA had shot 51% over Villanova’s 2-3 zone defense in the first half, and Wooden wanted to pull his foe out of the zone. So the record crowd of 31,765 was shocked to see UCLA walking the ball upcourt and starting the second half with a stall.

This, from a coach who’d long advocated a 30-second shot clock for college basketball.

Villanova came out of its zone, but it turned out that UCLA had much more trouble with the Wildcats’ man-to-man defense than it had with the zone.

Villanova cut the gap to 61-58 with 2:38 to go before Henry Bibby--today USC’s head coach--produced the game-turning play. Working off a pick by Steve Patterson, he took Sidney Wicks’ pass from the corner and scored underneath for a 63-58 lead. UCLA eventually won, 68-62, for its fifth consecutive championship, and with Walton at center, would go on to win the next two national titles as well.

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Also on this date: In 1976, Indiana, playing only six men, beat UCLA, 65-51, in the NCAA semifinals.