UCLA Women Rally but Fall Short : After Trailing by 22, Bruins Beaten, 68-64, by Tennessee

The UCLA women’s basketball coach, Billie Moore, has been, as she says, “impatiently patient” waiting for her team to mature. For the fiery Moore, that means the volume of her yelling goes down two decibels.

What has Moore taxing her tonsils is the Bruins’ propensity for slacking off in the middle of games, as they did Sunday against 11th-ranked Tennessee. The Lady Vols won, 68-64, before 749 fans at Pauley Pavilion, and the Bruins were kicking themselves for letting the game get away.

Tennessee (6-2) ran off 14 straight points in the first half, taking the game from 18-18 with 8:59 left in the half to 32-18 with 4:10 left. Meanwhile, the Bruins (3-4) were running up and down the court, wondering why they couldn’t score.

“None of us know why we do that,” UCLA forward Shari Biggs said. “If we knew how to correct it, we would. Believe me, we would.”

Biggs was part of a lineup shuffle that Moore came up with a week ago in an effort to spark the team’s intensity. Biggs, whose role had been to come off the bench and score, started against UC Santa Barbara and came through with 16 points in a 78-51 win.

“Shari has played very well for us,” Moore said. “She’s been our most consistent basketball player over the seven games. I was hesitant to start her, because she did so well for us coming off the bench. Sometimes our lineup looks like a revolving door.

“What I want to do is find a lineup. We seem to have those great droughts where the ball doesn’t go into the hole. Once we can gain some confidence and get some experience playing together, I think we can cure that.”

Moore, whose only senior on the team is Anne Dean, starts two sophomores and one freshman. With that youth, it was remarkable that the Bruins could even stay close to Tennessee.

After trailing, 38-26, at halftime, the Bruins went into another scoring lag. The Lady Vols twice led by 22 points but lost their intensity and, consequently, their lead.

“We have had a lot of people who have not played a lot of minutes for us,” said Tennessee Coach Pat Head Summitt, who was the U.S. Olympic coach in 1984 and who played on the 1976 Olympic team that was coached by Moore. “We played very well for 30 minutes, then we lost our intensity. UCLA very easily could have won this game. Our inside people didn’t do the job for us like they did against USC.”

Summitt was referring specifically to Sheila Frost, a freshman who bombed the Trojans for 24 points last Friday night but who managed only eight Sunday. One explanation may be jet lag; the Lady Vols have been on the road since Dec. 4 and won’t return to Knoxville until Christmas Eve. In fact, when the team flew to Chicago two weeks ago for a tournament, it was the first time that the 18-year-old Frost, from Pulaski, Tenn., had been on a plane.

While Frost was managing to score only six points in the second half Sunday, the Bruins were taking advantage of Tennessee’s cold spell and cutting their deficit to only two points, 64-62, with 30 seconds left in the game. With seven seconds left and the Bruins behind, 66-64, UCLA guard Kristi Moore drove the length of the court for a layup, missed the shot and was called for traveling.