Bruins look to BYU for first win of season

  BRIDGET O’BRIEN/Daily Bruin Senior Staff Freshman guard
Gennifer Arranga surveys the defense in the home
opener against Utah last Friday. UCLA will face BYU Saturday.

By Pauline Vu
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

The UCLA women’s basketball team heads to Utah this
Saturday to play Brigham Young. Like the Bruins (0-3), the Cougars
(0-1) are still looking for their first win this season.

Last season, BYU went 22-9, placed second in the Mountain West
Conference, and advanced to the first round of the NCAA
Tournament.

“They’re a solid basketball team that is very good
fundamentally,” said Bruin head coach Kathy Oliver.

BYU is the third team on the Bruins’ schedule that earned
a bid to the Big Dance last year. Earlier this season, the Bruins
lost to Duke 80-52 and Utah 65-42.

The Bruins figure they just need to get that first win to get
the ball rolling on their season.

“I don’t know if (a win is) gonna help us the whole
way, but it’ll help us build up our confidence and help us
know that we can do it,” said sophomore forward Natalie
Jarrett. “We’re not gonna lose our whole
season.”

After the 82-78 loss on Sunday to Love and Basketball, the
Bruins discussed re-learning the fundamentals.

“We have to focus on what we have to do,” Oliver
said. “We have to beat them on rebounds, beat them on the
boards.”

“At practice today we did a lot of fundamental stuff, like
rebounding. We’re trying to work through all that stuff, all
the little things that we need to do,” Jarrett said.
“Hopefully we can carry it over to our games and play well in
Utah.”

But the Cougars don’t intend to make that easy.

In their first game, a 76-71 loss at Arizona, sophomore guard
Erin Thorn tied a school record with eight three-pointers, scoring
a career-high 36 points.

Junior guard Stacy Jensen added 13 points and forwards Lisa
Osguthrop and Caroline Beus had seven and eight rebounds,
respectively.

Freshman guard Julie Whetten, voted by the media as the Mountain
West Conference’s top newcomer, didn’t score in the
season opener, but nonetheless gained valuable experience playing
in her first collegiate game.

“I liked the way we played against Arizona,” BYU
head coach Trent Shippen said in a press release. “We played
them competitively and had a chance to win.

The Cougars, however, will be without 6-foot-1 sophomore forward
Jennifer Lietner. Lietner tore ligaments in her left foot during
conditioning and will be out for roughly eight weeks.

UCLA, meanwhile, will return some of its injured starters.
Junior guard Michelle Greco will be back after an ankle injury that
she re-aggravated during the game versus Utah. She sat out the
exhibition game against Love and Basketball.

“They have a great player in Michelle Greco and
they’ll create chances for her to shoot the ball, so we need
to take care of her as much as possible,” Shippen said

Shippen added that playing on the Cougars’ home court
should be to BYU’s advantage.

“We’re excited to play at home and want our fans to
support us,” she said.

UCLA leads the all-time series with BYU 7-1. The Bruins
haven’t played the Cougars since Dec. 17, 1987, when the
Bruins won, 77-69.