Wooden Put Success in Bruins’ Court

Often when UCLA basketball is the hot topic, and it constantly sizzled this season, John Wooden’s name creeps into conversations.

Comparisons to the Bruin teams coached by Wooden, a longtime Encino resident, are inevitable.

Many successors have tried to live up to the legacy left by Wooden when he retired after the 1974-75 season, fresh from guiding the Bruins to an unprecedented 10th national championship, but none has been truly able to shake his sizable shadow.

When Wooden arrived in Westwood for the 1948-49 season, the Bruins had posted winning records in only two of the previous 17 seasons under two coaches. The tide changed immediately.

In 27 seasons under Wooden, the Bruins were 620-147, never had a losing record and won their first NCAA title in 1964, finishing 30-0. They were undefeated three more times and were virtually unbeatable at Pauley Pavilion, where Wooden was 149-2 after the arena opened in 1965.

Wooden, an All-American guard at Purdue University, was inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame in 1960 as a player and in 1972 as a coach. He preached a philosophy he called “The Pyramid of Success,” a motivational tool frequently used by coaches.

Of course, it didn’t hurt Wooden’s teams to have formidable players such as Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Bill Walton, Gail Goodrich, Lucius Allen and Sidney Wicks.

It also could be argued that Wooden got to UCLA on a snow job.

While coaching at Indiana Teachers College (now Indiana State) in 1948, Wooden was waiting for an offer from the University of Minnesota, but the phone call never came. Instead, he received a call about the UCLA job and accepted it.

He later learned that the Minnesota athletic director had been caught in a blizzard and couldn’t get to a phone. To UCLA fans, that goes as an assist for Mother Nature.