Richardson Dishes Up UCLA Win : His 16 Points, 10 Assists Help Shut Down Stanford

Someday, maybe at the same time Stanford wins a basketball game at Pauley Pavilion, they might rename the place for the guy who made the Cardinal hue blue one more time.

Pooh’s Corner?

In 1988, just as it has been every season after 1952, UCLA won on its home court against Stanford. The score in the Pacific 10 Conference game Friday night, before 10,427 at Pauley, was 74-70, and if anybody was responsible, it was Pooh Richardson.

As Stanford’s losing streak at UCLA stretched to 24 games, Richardson did not score as many points as Don MacLean, who had 26, and he did not have to defend one very large brick in Stanford’s Wall of Flesh named Eric Reveno, as Trevor Wilson did.

What Richardson did was rescue the Bruins from ruin when they seemed destined for no other direction.

He had 16 points to go along with his 10 assists, and while each of his field goals were important, so too were his passes.

Take these 2:

Wilson breaks free for an instant inside and he gets a Pooh pass that he converts quickly into a basket and 65-61 UCLA lead.

Richardson spots MacLean loose on the baseline and he sends the freshman the ball earmarked for another basket, 67-63.

“I was just making things happen,” Richardson said. “All I’m out there for is to make my teammates look good.”

Defense? After Bruin freshman Darrick Martin missed 2 free throws in the last 47 seconds to give Stanford a little life, Richardson blocked a shot by Todd Lichti and it went off a Stanford player out of bounds.

“He did a great job on Lichti in the second half,” UCLA Coach Jim Harrick said. “I mean a great job.”

That defensive play protected a 72-68 lead in the last 20 seconds. Then MacLean’s 2 free throws with 13 seconds put it away. It didn’t look at all safe a little earlier.

For a while, Howard Wright could do no wrong. Stanford, which had spent the first half shooting 8-footers 7 feet, began making them.

Wright was the featured player in a Cardinal mini-run early in the second half, which he punctuated with a dunk and 2 4-footers, and Stanford led, 55-49.

At that stage, with Keith Owens getting some playing time, Richardson began to make a difference. His jumper tied the score, 57-57. His 3-pointer gave UCLA a 4-point lead and his basket after an offensive rebound kept the margin at 4.

Richardson then came up with back-to-back assists to help the Bruins maintain their 4-point lead, which was threatened by a series of accurate jump hooks by Reveno.

Stanford, which outrebounded the Bruins, 40-30, got 20 points and 8 rebounds from Reveno to go along with 18 points and 10 rebounds from Lichti.

Cardinal Coach Mike Montgomery said Richardson is special.

“The 2 3-pointers he had, those just killed us,” he said. “But besides the points, he had zero turnovers (actually two) and he handles it all the time.

“He distributes the ball to exactly the right people at exactly the right time. And he defends, too. He’s a great player, a super player.”

The Cardinal had one lead in the first half, but it didn’t last very long.

Only a few seconds and about the same number of dribbles after Reveno’s jump hook from the side of the lane, Richardson let loose a 3-point rainmaker with 2 seconds left.

Richardson’s creation sent UCLA running to the locker room with a 38-37 lead at halftime.

For most of the half, UCLA kept putting Stanford in a hole and the Cardinal kept getting out.

--After 4 minutes, it was 13-4, 6 of the Bruins’ points from MacLean, who had 14 by halftime.

--After 6 minutes, it was 13-13, Stanford’s last 3 on Andrew Vlahov’s 3-pointer.

--After 9 1/2 minutes, it was UCLA, 27-15, at the end of a 14-2 burst, helped along by some fine anti-zone shooting and some just plain dreadful shooting by Cardinal.

--After 14 minutes, it was 27-25 on Wright’s dunk after Kevin Williams gave up the ball when he bounced it off his foot.

And so it went in the half. For UCLA, the constant was to go to MacLean (he was 6 of 6) or Wilson (8 points).

But for Stanford, the idea, as always, was to go to the basket. That is the Cardinal rule. They had 10 offensive rebounds in the first half alone.

All those Cardinal rebounds very nearly made up for the bricks they were putting up, apparently in preparation for postgraduate masonry work.

Lichti, whose 12 first-half points led the Cardinal, was the only starter to make at least as many shots as he missed.

It must have been contagious. The Bruins went without a field goal for just more than 5 minutes as soon as they constructed their 27-15 lead. Just then, Stanford’s inside game began to make its presence felt, and the Cardinal went ahead just in time for Richardson to put them behind again.

Bruin Notes

UCLA is 2-0 in Pacific 10 play and 6-1 overall. Stanford dropped to 1-1 and 5-3. . . . Bob Burnett, 73, who coached the last Stanford team to beat UCLA on the Bruins’ home court in 1952, drove to Pauley Pavilion from his home in Palm Springs to watch Friday night’s game. Burnett, who stepped down after the 1954 season at Stanford, said he had no idea that so many years would have passed without a victory for Stanford at UCLA. “Hell, no,” he said. “(John Wooden) was lucky I wasn’t around. One way or the other, I would have beaten him.” When Stanford finally wins at UCLA, Burnett is certain of his reaction: “I’ll be happy as hell about it.”

The score in Stanford’s 1952 victory at the old men’s gymnasium was 73-71. Dennis Minishian, who provided statistics for ESPN during Friday night’s game, saw the ’52 game, in which the winning basket was scored by Ed Tucker, Stanford’s first black basketball player. . . . How good a shooter is Stanford’s Todd Lichti? He ranks second in the Pac-10 in field-goal percentage, second in 3-point percentage and fourth in free-throw percentage. No other conference player is in the top 10 in all three categories. . . . Kevin Walker’s bad ankles require some extra protection: high-top shoes, a stiff plastic cast, called an air cast, and extra tape.