ARE UCLA'S GHOSTS OF NCAAS PAST PRESENT?

Byline: KAREN CROUSE

C'mon, admit it, UCLA fans. When Rhode Island popped up as the No. 12 seed in the Midwest during the NCAA Division I Tournament selection show on Sunday, you braced yourself for the punch line. It would have been just like those merrymakers on the NCAA Tournament committee to make the Bruins the fourth seed in the same bracket, setting up a possible second-round showdown between the Jim Harrick-coached Rams and the school that so unceremoniously let him go in the fall of 1996.

Had UCLA beaten Arizona in its regular-season finale on Saturday, the 12th-ranked Bruins might well have found themselves in New Orleans, on a collision course with their former coach. Instead, the seeding went to the Wildcats.

That's not to say the Bruins escaped their past.

UCLA's placement in a South sub-regional in Indianapolis - it'll face Detroit in the first round on Thursday - can't help but trigger flashbacks to a horrible mugging the Bruins suffered there, one that left deep scars.

It was at the RCA Dome in 1996 that the Bruins, the defending national champions and the fourth seed in the Southeast, were upset in the first round by 13th-seeded Princeton 43-41. The Tigers' decisive points came on a layup from freshman forward Gabe Lewullis off a backdoor pass by Steve Goodrich with 3.9 seconds remaining.

Bruins sophomore guard Baron Davis was a junior at Santa Monica Crossroads School at the time. He remembers watching the final seconds of the game on television and saying to himself, ``Man, how'd UCLA lose?''

Good question. Three years later, the best answer the only remaining eyewitness in sneakers, Brandon Loyd, can come up with is ``It was one of those mysteries.'' One that Agatha Christie herself couldn't have solved.

The 1995-96 Bruins had cruised to the Pacific-10 conference crown, reason enough to presume they'd put up a sturdier defense of their national title. Looking back, the Bruins began to unravel days before Princeton's precision play put them back on their heels.

Loyd, the lone senior on this year's squad, remembers Lewullis' layup (how could he forget?). But he also recalls how livid the Bruins were at being shipped out of the West despite having won the Pac-10 title and how they seethed over the lack of respect they read into their No. 4 seeding.

They talked so much about being regarded as unworthy, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

``We probably were, as the players would say, a little salty (over the seedings) and the hangover carried over to that first game,'' agreed Bruins coach Steve Lavin, then a fifth-year assistant by way of Purdue.

Because of his Boilermakers ties, Lavin professes to be revved up for a return to Indiana - never mind that Ind. stands for indignity if you're a true-blue Bruins fan. Loyd, too, has memories of the place that aren't all bad.

Harrick put the freshman into the Princeton game in the second half and he sank two 3-pointers for a fairly productive 12 minutes.

Loyd recently saw a replay of the game while watching the Classic Sports Network. Imagine that, he said with a laugh, watching Pistol Pete Maravich one day and Pete Carril's charges shooting down the Bruins the next.

``I don't think I'm ever going to erase that memory,'' Loyd said. ``I don't think I'd even want to. It was Pete Carril's last tournament (before retiring), a huge upset over the defending national champion. It really was a big deal.''

Well, maybe not to the three sophomores and two freshmen who are slated to start against a Detroit team that has won seven straight and 17 of its last 19 on the way to a 24-5 record. The Bruins are so young, they probably have no clue that before he became the loudest barker in college basketball's circus, Dick Vitale coached Detroit into the NCAA Tournament, in 1977.

``With this group,'' Lavin said, ``anything that happened a year ago is considered prehistoric.''

The Bruins better respect the Titans' tenacious defense and their tremendous backcourt of Jermaine Jackson and Rashad Phillips, lest ancient history repeat itself.