Who Are These Guys?

When it was finally done, when UCLA had defeated Notre Dame for consecutive victory No. 61, without dramatics—and without much sign of effort, really—it began to be apparent that the team had accomplished much more than pass the record of Bill Russell and San Francisco. During their long and continuous occupation of the room at the top, the Bruins had survived fashion trends and hairstyles, rockabilly records and devalued dollars, presidents and Hula Hoops. They had outlasted New Frontiers, Great Societies, lunar forays and Frank Sinatra. In the end, UCLA had even outlasted war.

As the Bruins flew into the Midwest last week to take on Loyola, Notre Dame and Immortality, they seemed like the last persons on earth to care very much what they were about. They did not talk of The Streak. They did not think about it. One UCLA man said if the newspapers had shut up they wouldn't even have known about it.

Still they won. Though the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter was aligned with Mars, UCLA won easily. John Wooden and Bill Walton (see cover) and all the rest beat Loyola 87-73 and Notre Dame 82-63 to break the record and in the process convince everybody that even if they are not the best undergraduate contingent ever, they are close enough.

The ironies of the trip that was to extend The Streak toppled all over one another. Thursday night in the Chicago Stadium UCLA-Loyola was on the bill with Notre Dame- Illinois. Loyola is the school San Francisco beat in 1956 for its record 60th and the Ramblers are coached by George Ireland, a Notre Dame player when Wooden coached at a South Bend high school. Illinois is the team that stopped USF's run back there 16 years ago. And Notre Dame is the school that had a hand in another famous streak: the Irish were on both winning ends of Oklahoma's 47-game football record. Also they were the last team to defeat UCLA in basketball.

It was hardly surprising then that the moment the Bruins crowded onto their 747 in Los Angeles, the first-class cabin of TWA Flight 24 was suffused by reporters and TV floodlights. It was stuck up with blue and gold pennants and the team was waited on by hostesses in UCLA shirts. "We aren't the ones on a crusade," said Wooden. "Everybody gets passionately up for us. Oh my, will there be some screaming."

In Chicago a slithery guard named Frank Sanders got 10 of Loyola's first 19 points and the Ramblers closed to 30-29 at one moment in the first half, but the game, in which Walton had 32 points and 27 rebounds, was not close. Afterward, gawkers hung around outside the Bruin dressing room breathlessly waiting for noise or emotion. There was none. Walton went into the shower. Larry Hollyfield opened a soda can. The players stared back at the gawkers in the hall. Then the door closed. "What is this, a museum?" someone asked. It was only UCLA Taking It In Stride.

Later, behind the closed door, Hollyfield said—almost as if he felt he should say something—"That's 60. Saturday is 61. Then 62, 63, 64 and we won't have to think about it anymore."

Walton and Greg Lee, under orders to talk to nobody, interviewed each other. "How was it winning No. 60?" Walton questioned in exuberant tones. "The Ultimate? The Pinnacle?"

"No," Lee answered.

The truth is that the UCLA basketball team, having achieved this honor and earned that trophy, having taken its eight NCAA championships and on the verge of winning its 61st consecutive game—having in fact won and won and won and won until there is nothing new left to win—this very team has reached that inevitable yet harrowing point at which accomplishment becomes commonplace. In fact, a bore. It seems almost as if winning is no longer invigorating or weighty; challenging or recreative; fresh, fun or gay. No cause for celebration. Sad to say, no longer even news. UCLA winning again is a weather outlook, a traffic report, dog-bites-man stuff.