Of all the motivations the UCLA women’s basketball team
has used to fire itself up against its opponents this season,
revenge hasn’t been one of them.
Until now.
“What the Arizona schools did to us here is still very
fresh in our minds,” said junior Lisa Willis, referring to
when the Sun Devils and Wildcats swept UCLA at Pauley Pavilion four
weeks ago.
When the Bruins travel to the Southwestern desert to take on the
Arizona schools, beginning with tonight’s game at Arizona
State in Tempe, they’ll be looking to achieve a lot more than
just playing good basketball.
The Bruins will be looking for payback against two teams that
soundly defeated them at home.
They’ll be looking to show they’ve made adjustments
since their embarrassing 42-point performance against the Sun
Devils on Jan. 14.
But most importantly, the Bruins will be looking to take their
up-in-the-air NCAA Tournament hopes and firmly place them in the
palm of their hand.
“If we want to go to the tournament, we need at least a
split, and I feel we can take both of these teams,” Willis
said. “We need to win these games because there are teams in
the tournament that are better than ASU and Arizona.”
So when will UCLA firmly know when it’s safe to take a
sigh and prepare its dancing shoes?
According to Willis and UCLA coach Kathy Olivier, the Bruins
will surely receive an invitation if they can secure 18 wins going
into the Pac-10 Tournament.
“We need 18 wins going into the Pac-10 Tournament,
period,” Olivier said. “Eighteen wins, and I’m
comfortable. Seventeen wins is getting freaking old. It’s
going to start giving me gray hairs.”
Currently holding down third place in the Pac-10 at 15-7 and 9-4
in the conference, UCLA’s standing is just as precarious as
it was a year ago when the team finished the season on the
bubble.
While the team has recorded three more victories this season
than it had at this point last year, its road to the finish is
tremendously more difficult.
Four of UCLA’s five remaining opponents currently are
ranked ahead of the Bruins (No. 51) in the latest RPI rankings:
Stanford (No. 6), Arizona State (No. 22), Arizona (No. 34) and USC
(No. 36).
And the Bruins can’t sleep on the fifth team, California,
because the Golden Bears just made waves around the Pac-10 with
their surprising victory over Arizona.
Though the path is difficult, the Bruins know they can’t
stray from it, because backing into the tournament is getting
tiresome.
“It’s a very, very tough schedule,” Willis
said. “If we get to 17, then it makes it seem like an
accident that we got in. It wasn’t an accident last season,
but that’s how it seemed, like it was a flip of the coin.
“I don’t want to have any doubt this
year.”
Much of the uncertainty surrounding the team’s tournament
status will be resolved this weekend.
Against Arizona State, the Bruins are hoping to solve the Sun
Devils’ zone defense, eager to improve on their horrid
23-percent shooting effort in the teams’ last meeting.
Against Arizona, UCLA will be looking to contain center
Shawntinice Polk (12 points, 11 rebounds) and point guard Dee Dee
Wheeler (19 points, 11 assists), who torched the Bruins in
mid-January.
But while the Arizona schools pose a threat to UCLA’s
chances at reaching the NCAA Tournament, Willis feels it’s
the Bruins’ crosstown rival who could be giving her the most
competition for a tournament bid.
“It could be USC, they’re playing well this
year,” Willis said. “I cannot have ‘SC go to the
tournament and we don’t go. Either we both go, or nobody
goes.”