Surely, John Wooden, the former UCLA basketball coach and living legend, was watching this one at home, I thought. Then I wondered if the Wizard of Westwood had flipped to another channel in disgust.

As bad as the Bruins looked against Kansas in the first half, you couldn’t have blamed him.

Nah, I’m sure Wooden didn’t give up on UCLA, and he was rewarded for his faith by a second-half comeback that had the fans in Allen Fieldhouse wondering if Bruins’ coach Steve Lavin was descended from the Grinch.

With 5:13 remaining — after the Bruins had cut a KU first-half lead that had reached as many as 26 points to 13 — Roy Williams removed his suit jacket, historical indication he has lost all reason to smile.

When Williams throws his jacket after removing it, he’s usually miffed at the officiating. When he takes it off and hands it to a student manager, he is usually unhappy with his players. This time he handed the jacket to the manager.

Moments after Williams doffed the coat, UCLA cut the lead to 11 and the Jayhawks responded by turning the ball over. Gulp. But a TV timeout — one of the interminable CBS variety — came to the rescue and slowed the Bruins’ momentum.

Still, with about three minutes remaining, UCLA was within a basket of cutting the Jayhawks’ once massive bulge to single digits.

That’s when I said to no one in particular: “The Jayhawks need Kirk Hinrich to do something.” Why Hinrich? Because when the going gets tough, you go to your go-to guy, and the letters on the back of Hinrich’s No. 10 jersey should be: GO-TO GUY.

Darned if with 2:44 on the clock Hinrich didn’t bottom a three-point goal from the corner. Boom. UCLA’s balloon burst like a bad tire on the Santa Monica Freeway. Hinrich’s trey emptied the Bruins’ tanks.

Back in November, I was talking to a sports writer from the Big 12 Conference area who remarked Hinrich sure wasn’t performing like the preseason All-American he was. The writer had seen Hinrich during the Preseason NIT and in the televised game against Oregon.

That wasn’t, I told the scribe, the real Kirk Hinrich. I explained to him Hinrich had suffered a back injury in Madison Square Garden and the injury had obviously affected his shooting. But the writer wasn’t convinced.

I hope he was watching Hinrich on television Saturday because, as KU coach Roy Williams gushed, “Kirk was sensational.” Or stupendous. Or awesome. Or any other form of hyperbole.

Hinrich played 32 minutes and scored 27 points with four assists and no turnovers. Yes, ZERO turnovers. He made 8-of-13 shots, including 5 of 9 from beyond the three-point arc, and 6-of-7 free-throw attempts.

That was the real Kirk Hinrich — the healthy Kirk Hinrich whose back woes seem now to be little more than a bad memory.

“I sure hope so,” Hinrich said. “It feels really, really good.”

At least one irony was in evidence Saturday, and perhaps two.

It was ironic that Jacque Vaughn, one of the best backcourt performers Williams has ever had, was honored with a jersey-retirement ceremony at halftime of a game against a team from his home area — Vaughn is from suburban L.A. — and a team he rejected to play at Kansas.

As the adoring fans stood on their feet and revered him, Vaughn remarked how amazing it was “that a little 6-foot point guard from California would come to Kansas and fall in love.”

After Hinrich’s yeoman performance against UCLA, it sure wasn’t difficult to envision the 6-foot-3 guard returning to Allen Fieldhouse a few years down the road and uttering heartfelt words similar to Vaughn’s.

If a coach wants to emphasize to his players how to play the game, then he should show them a tape of the Kansas-UCLA game and tell them to watch No. 10.