This is personal for me. I attended UCLA in those years. I got to know Walt (played some bridge together - pretty often). This takes me back now 60 some years - some great times of course. Story is up on uclabruins.com.
Forgive the reminiscences (for those younger than I and some others here who didn't have the pure joy of watching Walt play ball:
As you probably remember, i started watching UCLA basketball when i was five years old, watching with my parents - that was 1947, the year a new young coach arrived from the midwest - John Wooden - his very first season in Westwood. My folks had season tickets and i'd go often with them - and then we'd watch Dick Enberg on KTLA-5 at 11 doing the game on tape delay!
As you also probably remember, i believe Walt Hazzard's arrival on campus was the final piece for Coach in assembling his complete vision on the court.
Walt was tough as nails and a really fun and funny guy. He broke all Wilt Chamberlain's records at Overbrook HS in Philadelphia. He really, honest to goodness repeatedly kept throwing passes through traffic that would hit his teammates right in the face his first - Sophomore - year. They had to learn about Hazzard. As that season's AA, guard Johnny Greene, put it, "If you don't have the ball, break for the basket. If you still don't have the ball, jump into the air. And if the ball's still not there, put your hand up because Walt's going to get the ball to you. It's coming."
Wooden was the ultimate teamwork coach but there were a couple exceptions he would make at the ends of games when his team had to score to prevail. The first was Walt Hazzard. Later on it would be Sidney Wicks. He would spread the court and just have Walt (later Sidney) isolated on one side of the court alone, just dribbling the ball. The opponents would have their best defender on him but it made no difference: if the guy came up on him and tried to stop him, he'd easily just dribble around him for the layup and if he stayed back and played off him, Walt (later Sidney) would rise up and sink the jump shot. End of game.
When Walt was a senior in HS, the great Willie Naulls got to know him and, even though at that time - late 50s - JRW was known as a "forwards' coach" for having groomed players like Naulls and Barksdale, etc., Naulls told Hazzard his game was perfect for Wooden's system and he ought to look into John Wooden and UCLA. Hazzard had upwards of 100 scholarship offers from all over the country. UCLA was not one of them. So he wrote to Wooden and said he wanted to come play for him. To do so he'd not only have to cross the country but also do a year in JC to qualify for UCLA (not required of him most places) but come he did and he ignited a 12 year run unprecedented in college basketball history). Kris Johnson has made the same observation and others as well.
So well deserved.