Bruins look to break Cardinal rule, moving for first-place tie in Pac-10

Thursday, February 12, 1998

Bruins look to break Cardinal rule, moving for first-place tie
in Pac-10

W. BASKETBALL: Win on the road will give UCLA chance to be
conference champions

By David Arnold

Daily Bruin Contributor

Tonight, two teams will do battle for first place in the
conference.

The home team has won 55-straight games in their arena and
61-straight conference games. They’re ranked sixth in the nation;
they’ve won 73 of their last 74 conference games and have gone to
the Final Four five of the last seven years.

The visiting team hasn’t beaten its opponent in four years, and
not on the opponent’s territory in a decade. The visitors haven’t
been ranked all season, were under .500 last year, and haven’t even
gone to the tournament in six years.

Sound like the tale of David and Goliath? It’s not: this year
David’s got a brand new bag of stones.

The visiting team, UCLA, heads to Palo Alto to meet Stanford
tonight, having turned themselves right around this year, going
from a sixth place Pac-10 finish last season to a current second
and the best conference start in school history.

The Bruins now lead the Pac-10 in both field goal and
three-point defense and are still basking in the joy of a season
sweep of the Oregon schools. Evidence enough to say that this is
not the Bruin team the league is used to confronting.

However, the two teams met once already this year, a 70-75
Cardinal win in Pauley Pavilion, which the Bruins sorely
regret.

After that game, every UCLA thought travelled along the same
lines.

"I feel like they should have beat Stanford," said UCLA head
coach Kathy Olivier.

Center Janae Hubbard agreed, "I think it’s a surprise that we
didn’t beat them."

And right now, the team is thinking alike once more.

"Second (in the Pac-10) is good, but we want to get on top,"
said freshman LaCresha Flannigan

Added Olivier, "The rankings mean nothing: we know we’re a good
team."

With the Cardinal undefeated in conference games at home this
year and the Bruins undefeated on the road, and with Stanford on a
seven-game winning streak and UCLA on a streak of five, someone’s
momentum will be broken tonight.

In the meantime, Olivier will prepare her slingshot for a
Goliath that has two players averaging 18.8 points per game, the
conference’s leader in assists and a home court that, though it
seats a mere 7,391, is usually full of fans and noise.