The college basketball season has barely started; by the traditional calendar all the main events are yet to come. Yet the regular tournaments may seem a bit anticlimactic because of a single match-up last weekend that pitted the nation's No. 1 team, U.C.L.A., against the lean and hungry No. 2, North Carolina State. When the rough and often ragged tangle was over, U.C.L.A. was still No. 1; the Bruins won 84-66. They won with superstar Bill Walton on the bench half the game.
The Wolfpack and their constituents, adopting the Avis we-try-harder mentality, prepared...