Dollar Eager to Prove His Worth

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. — Is Cameron Dollar ready to become an imperial guard?

With a grand sense of timing, and a tiny taste of deja vu, UCLA’s 5-foot-11 senior point guard is launching the Bruin attack, assuming the deepest responsibilities, and generally playing the best basketball of his life.

“I’m really enjoying this,” Dollar said Friday. “This is fun.”

It might get even more fun today, when the No. 2-seeded Bruins, never known to back down from a game of run-and-dunk, face fast and furious Xavier in a Midwest Regional second-round game that had UCLA giggling in anticipation.

“If they want to run,” center Jelani McCoy said Friday, “I guess the first team to 100 wins.”

Said guard Toby Bailey: “We can run with anybody, and I think we have some of the best finishers in the nation.”

But the Bruins can’t just grab the ball and go, in this or any of the other fast-paced games potentially looming. They need Dollar to beat the Musketeers’ grueling press defense and keep things under relative control as the flag goes up and the race begins in the Palace of Auburn Hills.

No. 7-seeded Xavier’s two guards, Lenny Brown and Gary Lumpkin, carved up Vanderbilt in the first round, throwing the Commodore offense into disarray and forcing 21 turnovers with their full-court pressure.

UCLA players, pointing to Dollar’s increased point-production (an 11.7-point average in the last 11 games after averaging less than five early in the season) and on-floor leadership, say there is no question that Dollar has developed into the kind of point guard who can lead a team to the Final Four.

A Tyus Edney, circa March 1995 kind of point guard, all the way down to the full-court flash for last-second victory.

“The whole team has total confidence in Dollar--especially since he’s started playing at such a high level,” forward J.R. Henderson said. “He’s making that jumper off the break, or when he’s open, and that’s helping everybody out.

“‘We’ve got so much confidence in him now; the same confidence we had in Tyus, we have in him. Dollar has that experience from ‘95, and we’re definitely seeing it rub off now.”

Dollar’s 1995 experience, of course, ended with his subbing famously and successfully for the injured Edney in the national-title game against Arkansas’ snapping full-court defense.

Now, after some iffy moments last season when his play was limited by hand injuries, and earlier this season, when Dollar’s shooting struggles hampered the whole offense, Dollar’s value has never been greater.

“If you look at every time this team has done real well in the tournament, a senior has lifted them there,” Bailey said. “And we’ve had Charles [O’Bannon] playing at that magic level the whole year.

“But for the last half of this season, Cameron has lifted his game way up--and that’s exactly what we needed to go far in the tournament. There’s no question he can get us there.”

Dollar said he was eager to play against Xavier, which averages more than 80 points a game, because UCLA is always hungry to get in the fastbreak lanes and run through press defenses.

It’s getting his teammates to play at the methodical pace of good, half-court offense that’s difficult.

“It’s harder to say to the guys, ‘Even if you think you’re open, it might be easier to make one more pass,” Dollar said. “When we get into a game like this, where we have to attack, that’s what we do best.

“I’m not really counted on to dribble it to the basket, it’s like, I break the press, give it up to Toby or Charles or whoever, and they’re gone.”

Dollar says the quality of his play went up when he made a single decision--this always-active player realized he had been slightly tentative during the Bruins’ mini-skid in late January and early February, when UCLA lost three of four games.

“With me, it’s all about having the attitude of attacking, on both the offensive side and defensive side of the ball,” said Dollar, who scored 15 points in the first-round victory over Charleston Southern. “If I’m attacking the basket and the other team’s offense, then I’m playing my game.”

For many of the Bruins, including Dollar, this game presents the same kind of challenge that Connecticut did two years ago in the West Regional final. UCLA won that game, 102-96. In the days leading up to it, Connecticut players suggested that no team could run with them.

“It’s kind of a challenge,” Bailey said of Xavier’s style, “but not anything against them, this is the way they always play.”

Dollar said that, because the Musketeers are so persistent in the press--chasing frantically after the ball even after it gets upcourt, reaching from behind to knock the ball away--UCLA has to keep flying toward the hoop, and not be happy with merely breaking the press.

“They play that style all the time,” Dollar said. “It’s the kind of thing where they have to play that way. It’ll be interesting to see what they do against us.”

The Musketeers did knock off cross-town rival Cincinnati, then ranked No. 1, in Cincinnati’s gym early in the season, knocking the Bearcats off stride early with their energy and never allowing them to recover.

The architect of Xavier’s rabid style, Coach Skip Prosser, said that, though he realizes the way to play UCLA probably would be to slow it down, he isn’t apt to dramatically alter his team’s style so late in the season.

“I don’t think there’s a game where we slowed it down that I can remember,” Prosser said. “We made a decision, because of our lack of size this season, that the only way we could win was to press and run.

“I think all kids want the chance to run--they all think they’re Secretariat, even if they’re Clydesdales. We want our players to play quickly, with abandon.

“I don’t think we can change that now--don’t think I’d want to. But if there ever was a game you’d think about it, it’d be against this team.”

His players didn’t seem to even be considering the option.

“We want to force you to go 94 feet,” Lumpkin said. “We want the game as helter-skelter as possible.

“We know Dollar likes to create and pass off to his big guys, so we have to just stay low and not let him penetrate.”

UCLA Coach Steve Lavin, whose nickname for Dollar was “Steve Young,” after he played for Edney against Arkansas, because Dollar was the rambunctious super-reserve already ready for action, said his team needed to be aggressive and wise against Xavier.

“They’ve got cat-like quickness--so they’re like Sugar Ray Leonard combined with a Joe Frazier mentality,” Lavin said. “Our guys like to play at full speed, but sometimes I have to call timeouts to slow us down, we’re going too fast.

“It all starts with Dollar.”