LOS ANGELES - It is assumed that UCLA basketball players compete for something greater than themselves, as those 11 national championship banners in the rafters of Pauley Pavilion will attest.
For Lorenzo Mata, take that responsibility and double it.
I know from experience that a person needs somebody to look up to, he said.

I just feel like I have to do it.
There aren't many of those somebodies in big-time basketball for young Latinos.
The 2004 Racial and Gender Report Card, compiled by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, revealed that Latinos made up 1.

5 percent of the athletes in men's Division I college basketball.
There is one Mexican-born player in the NBA, Denver's Eduardo Najera, and only a handful of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans in college basketball. Most Latinos in the sport are from Caribbean countries, South America or Spain.

For example, this weekend's Final Four rosters show two players of Hispanic descent besides Mata. Al Horford, Florida's center -- and the man against whom Mata probably will be matched most often in Saturday's national semifinal -- was born in the Dominican Republic. Walter Hodge, a sophomore reserve guard for the Gators, was born in Puerto Rico.

Mata is a first-generation Californian. His mother, Reyna, came to the United States from Manzanillo, Mexico, at 17.
His first love, not surprisingly, is soccer.

I don't play it any more, but I love watching it, he said.
OK, Galaxy or Chivas?
(Club) America, he said.

I'm not a big MLS fan.
It was a natural progression to basketball because of his height -- probably 6-6, 6-7 as a high school freshman, he said -- but less so because of his skill level at the outset. He got interested in hoops from watching the popular And-1 Mix Tapes and trying to imitate the moves and tricks performed by playground legends.

That didn't help much when he went out for basketball as a freshman at South Gate.
They were doing layup lines, he recalled. I said, 'What's a layup?

'
Sal Serrano, South Gate's coach at the time, helped with those basics, then with more advanced basketball coursework. As it turned out, this school -- in a community of almost 100,000 that is more than 90 percent Latino -- was about to graduate its first Division I scholarship basketball player.
Mata averaged 25 points, 18 rebounds and seven blocked shots as a junior, and another 25 points and 18 rebounds as a senior after committing to UCLA.

South Gate won one game in the LA City Section playoffs each of those years, its first such victories since 1992.
Evidently, winning follows Mata around, or maybe it's vice versa. He was never the most heralded of Ben Howland's UCLA recruits but may come closest to epitomizing the coach's vision, succeeding with grit and sweat and effort.

The tattoo on Mata's left bicep is fitting: an Aztec warrior gripping a basketball.
They (the Aztecs) were really hard workers, he said. They fought hard for everything.

That's what I see myself doing: play hard all the time and just do everything in my power to help my team win.
In fact, without Mata's performance in last week's regional semifinal against Pitt 7-footer Aaron Gray, the Bruins are probably home now.
The key thing in his development is that he hasn't been injured, said Bruins assistant Donny Daniels.

His first two years, injuries put him out four weeks, six weeks. Now he's more consistent because he's on the floor more, plus he's a year older and a year wiser.
As a freshman he had a fractured sternum and an ankle injury.

As a sophomore he had knee surgery before the season, then missed 14 games in January and February with a fractured tibia. This year, he has played every game.
It's unbelievably satisfying to see him improve, Howland said.

I'm proud of him.
That won't make the coach's decisions easier in the fall, when freshman Kevin Love arrives to chip away at the playing time of Mata and forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute.
But for now, Mata is a star in two cultures and a popular interview request in two languages.

Among his media obligations this week was a phone interview with a reporter from Mexico City.
That visibility is a reminder to the kids of his hometown that the distance between South Gate High and the UCLA campus really is only 23 miles, rather than light years.
If that's not enough, he returns periodically to deliver the message in person.

I tell them about my experience growing up, playing basketball, and how I got here, he said. I tell them, keep working, keep trying to reach your goal and it'll eventually pay off.
As he said, he knows from experience.