It’s Their Initial Meeting : Bruins: UCLA and UNLV finally play tonight. It’s Massimino’s first game at Pauley.

UCLA has been playing basketball games since 1919, long enough to play 195 games against USC, 189 against California and 41 against Notre Dame.

Through the years, the Bruins have played against the Elks Club, the Joe E. Brown All-Stars, 20th Century Fox and the Los Angeles police, but they have never played Nevada Las Vegas.

But that will change tonight. And so will end one of the most natural rivalries-that-never-were, UCLA versus UNLV.

It has been a long time coming, apparently needing only one thing to make it happen after all these years--Jerry Tarkanian to leave as coach.

But UCLA Athletic Director Pete Dalis said Tarkanian’s well-known dislike of anything powder blue and gold and the many NCAA probes of the UNLV basketball program had nothing to do with scheduling a game.

“We’ve had long-term commitments to play intersectional games that precluded any agreement with Vegas, games like Louisville and Notre Dame, which become almost like conference games,” Dalis said.

“There are a lot of people who are calling us to play them. We turn a lot of people down.”

Although the Bruins (1-0) did manage to find the opportunity to schedule and play intersectional games against teams such as Santa Clara, San Diego State, Loyola Marymount, Long Beach State and Pepperdine, Dalis pointed out that each game was played at Pauley Pavilion under agreements in which there was no home-and-away requirement.

“(UNLV) wasn’t just going to play at your place,” Dalis said.

In fact, Dalis disputed the notion that a UCLA-UNLV series would have been a popular matchup.

“In my 11 years here, I’ve never had one player tell me they wanted to play them,” he said.

At this rate, it’s going to be a short series anyway. The schools have only a two-year deal, which took shape shortly after Jim Milhorn, UCLA’s associate athletic director, telephoned UNLV Athletic Director Jim Weaver looking for a football game after Long Beach dropped the sport. They talked about the possibility a basketball game, then Rollie Massimino replaced Tarkanian and telephoned Jim Harrick.

The rest is history, however belated. Actually, there is more history in store today. Massimino has never been to a game at Pauley Pavilion.

“I think it’s great that we’ve finally gotten together,” Massimino said. “I’m looking forward to it.”

What the Bruins can look forward to is close to a typical Massimino team, one that stresses an aggressive defensive posture. The Rebels are not tall--6-foot-8 freshman Brian Hocevar and 6-8 junior college transfer Patrick Savoy are the tallest--but they all are relentless defenders.

“Our motto is to play with reckless abandon,” Massimino said.

In spite of losing Isaiah (J.R.) Rider and two other starters who as a trio averaged 62.3 points per game, the Rebels are committed to play up-tempo. They averaged 96.5 points in two exhibition games.

This is fairly new territory for Massimino, 21-8 a year ago in his first season in Las Vegas. After all, at Villanova, he never coached a team known as the “Runnin’ Wildcats.”

“Rollie’s between a rock and a hard spot,” Harrick said. “They’ve been the Runnin’ Rebels for so long, he feels compelled to play that way.

“When he won the (1985) NCAA championship, he took care of the ball and worked every possession,” Harrick said.

It’s all true, Massimino said.

“Up and down, yeah, I’ve changed that, absolutely,” he said. “We’re going to run, we’re just not going to chuck and duck.”

No, probably too much of that already has been done in scheduling between these teams.