NCAA tournaments have been good to UCLA.

The Bruins have won 10 men's basketball championships in the school's history with names like Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton, reigning supreme in the 1970s. UCLA won seven-straight titles under the direction of coach John Wooden.

Now, with a cast of characters not as legendary but equally explosive, the Bruins (23-8) enter the 1991 NCAA Tournament as the fourth-seeded team in the East. They will face No. 13 Penn State (20-10) Friday night in the Carrier Dome at Syracuse. Game time will be announced later today.

This marks Penn State's first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1965, a first-round loss to Princeton. Penn State received an automatic bid after winning the Atlantic 10 Tournament for the first time in its history.

"I was hoping we would play a team of that caliber," Coach Bruce Parkhill said in a teleconference yesterday. "UCLA is a team with real-high visibility. The better the team, the better it is for us."

Junior guard Monroe Brown watched the selection show in the TV lounge in Thompson Hall. He said he "got a cold chill" adding that "it was funny to finally see us make it."

Parkhill has only seen the Bruins play once, a 112-85 drubbing of Pitt. Parkhill, speaking about that game, said: "I was extremely impressed. They looked like a tremendous team."

The Bruins are a highly-talented, athletic squad that likes to push the ball up court and score quickly. UCLA, the PAC-10 runner-up this year, averages 81 points per game.

Junior forward Don MacLean paces the squad, averaging 22.4 points per game. Fellow forward Tracy Murray, a sophomore, averages 21 ppg this season.

"They really like to get the ball up and down the floor," Parkhill said. "It poses a challenge for us because of their athleticism. We're really going to have to take care of the ball.

"We've picked up our defense in the last few games. We can't afford a letdown -- they can run up the score on you."

The Lions held practice Saturday to get back into the flow after Thursday's A-10 championship. Penn State will run a normal practice week and watch tapes of UCLA games in preparation for Friday's contest.

"It's a relief to finally know our opponent," Brown said. "It gives us something to look forward to -- something to shoot for."

Syracuse and Maryland are the two sites for the East regional first- and second-round contests. The regional semifinals and finals will be held at East Rutherford, N.J.

"If there's one place I didn't want to go, it's Syracuse," Parkhill said. "Penn State is not real popular in that neck of the woods."

The Orangemen are seeded second in the region. North Carolina, the ACC champion, is the No. 1 seed in the East. The winner of Penn State-UCLA will face either fifth-seed Mississippi State or Eastern Michigan, the 12th seed.

Unbeaten UNLV is the top-seed in the West, while Ohio State leads the field in the Midwest. Arkansas is the first seed in the Southeast.

Temple and Rutgers received at-large bids, joining Penn State as A-10 representatives. The Owls are seeded 10th in the east and will play Purdue. The Scarlet Knights, the conference's regular-season champions, are seeded ninth in the Southeast and will face Arizona State.