Los Angeles — Eleven national championship banners hang from the rafters of UCLA's Pauley Pavilion.
That's right, 11 most of any program in NCAA men's college basketball history.
"To look at the banners, to think of the moments all those teams have had, it's impressive to me. It gives me cold chills," Kansas coach Roy Williams said.
His No. 1-ranked Jayhawks (13-1), who practiced in a near-empty Pauley Pavilion on Friday, today will meet No. 11 UCLA (11-3) in a nonconference game before 12,800 fans.
Tipoff is 2:05 p.m. Central time with a live telecast on channels 5 and 13.
"I like Pauley Pavilion as a 'gym' I'm ol' fashioned enough to still call 'em 'gyms,''' Williams said of the 37-year-old gymnasium UCLA coaching legend John Wooden made famous.
"I have respect for coach Wooden and how he has treated me throughout the years has been marvelous. The spring before last I had a 3-hour, 45-minute sit-down conversation with him that's one of the great days for me."
Wooden, the 91-year-old "Wizard of Westwood," went 620-147 in 27 years at UCLA. His Bruin teams won 10 NCAA titles, including seven in a row from 1967 to '73. Steve Lavin, current Bruins' head coach, has a 12-2 team many expect to contend for Pac-10 and perhaps national honors this season.
"They do like to have balanced scoring, just like we do," Williams said.
Three Bruin starters 6-foot-8 junior Jason Kapono (18.6 ppg), 6-6 senior Billy Knight (15.3) and 6-7 senior Matt Barnes (13.0) are double-digit scorers, while 6-11 senior Dan Gadzuric checks in at 8.9 ppg with 6.6 boards. "They do like to run the basketball up and down the court just like we do," Williams added.
"They use a matchup zone defense, but in the past have done a lot of pressing. I'd expect they'll try to do some of that against us. They are a unique team in they can put a lineup out there where everybody looks the same size 6-5 to 6-8 then you'll have Gadzuric in at 6-11. They present a lot of problems."
UCLA is a deep team with two of its better players sophomore forward T.J. Cummings and freshman point guard Cedric Bozeman coming off the bench.
Bozeman, a 6-6, 193-pounder from Santa Ana, Calif., had arthroscopic right knee surgery on Dec. 3. He returned to action just last week.
Bozeman is a good buddy of KU freshman point guard Aaron Miles.
"Yeah, that's my boy," Portland, Ore., native Miles said of Bozeman. "It (friendship) started going into my junior year in high school. We went to Nike camp and kind of clicked. I talk to him on the phone. I called and checked on him because he had knee surgery. I checked to see how he was doing. He was bummed. He is all right now. He's back on the court now."
Miles tried to inspire Bozeman during his rehab.
"I told him to keep his head up and I'd pray about it," Miles said. "He's a tall point guard, 6-6, 6-7. He keeps growing. It'll be a fun battle."
KU freshman/Portland native Michael Lee also is acquainted with Bozeman.
"He is real long to be a point guard," Lee said. "He's 6-6, has got great handles. He can get to the basket and can shoot."
Following today's game against UCLA, which is coming off a loss to rival USC, the Jayhawks return to Big 12 play on Tuesday at Oklahoma State.
Gooden's recruiting: Junior Drew Gooden grew up in Richmond, Calif., a 5 1/2-hour drive from Pauley Pavilion. He followed UCLA as a youth, but ultimately chose KU over UCLA, USC, Cal, Michigan, UConn and others.
Williams recalled how the Jayhawks first became involved with Gooden.
"Fortunately for us Matt Doherty (former KU aide now at North Carolina) saw him at the adidas camp (in New Jersey) and called me that night and said, 'I think I found the player you've been describing to us,' because I do that a lot telling my staff what I'm looking for and what I want to add to our team in recruiting.
"I went to the adidas camp a day early so I could watch him. I called him that night because I had not spoken to anybody and he had not heard from Kansas up until that point. I spoke to his dad and told him how impressed I was and that we were going to be recruiting the heck out of him and that's when it started. Then after the summer evaluation period he had gone to see his mom in Fayetteville, Ark., and so they came through here and spent an afternoon with us and that enabled us to get to know him a little bit better as opposed to just with the mail and the phone.
"In September he committed to us. We went into his home the second night of the recruiting period, he committed that night and canceled all his other visits. UCLA wanted him badly," Williams explained. "I remember when I followed him around on the summer (camp) circuit that UCLA would be at the games, Cal would be at the games, Southern Cal was probably the school that recruited him the hardest, the earliest. A lot of people were watching him play because he was pretty doggone impressive."
Pauley practice: The Jayhawks practiced at Pauley Pavilion on Friday morning, then traveled to Venice Beach for the afternoon.
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