WOMEN’S BASKETBALL : Post Will Be Key as Trojans Meet Bruins

Natalie Williams of UCLA and Lisa Leslie of USC, two of the dominant post players in women’s basketball, will be matched tonight at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion.

Both teams trail Stanford, which is 6-1 in the Pacific 10 Conference. The Trojans (11-4 overall, 5-2 in the Pac-10) and UCLA (8-7, 3-3) lost at Stanford and at California last week.

USC Coach Marianne Stanley, who said before the season that the conference champion could lose as many as four or five games, is still calling the Pac-10 the nation’s best-balanced, if not the toughest, league.

“No one’s in the driver’s seat in the Pac-10,” she said. “The race is like a truck rolling downhill with no driver. Look at Oregon. I can’t believe they haven’t won a game. They played us a six-point game. It’s unbelievable.”

UCLA Coach Billie Moore maintains that one bad weekend does not settle the race.

“We’re one game from USC, and last year we started out 2-4 and finished 12-6,” she said. “We’re still in the hunt. To me, it’s an even matchup. They seem to play well at our place and we play well at their place.”

Williams, an All-American in basketball and volleyball, is averaging nearly 23 points and 14.5 rebounds. Stanley said USC’s task would be greatly eased if her players could hold Williams to half those totals.

Last season, in two Trojan-Bruin games, Leslie had 42 points and 22 rebounds and Williams had 36 points and 27 rebounds. USC won both games, 62-60, and 73-71.

This season, Leslie, the 6-foot-5 center from Inglewood Morningside High, has 18.1-point and 10.1-rebound averages, and teammate Joni Easterly, from Anaheim Katella High, has 16.3-point, 6.3-rebound and 3.5-assist averages.

In USC’s 76-67 loss at Stanford last Saturday night, Easterly scored 25 points as Leslie played only 13 minutes because of foul trouble.