After Sprinting Start, UCLA Is Being Caught in the Stretch : College basketball: With games against Louisville today and Oregon and Oregon State this week, Bruins have little time to turn it around before tournament.

Is it too soon to panic at UCLA?

Actually, panic attacks are never really out of season at Westwood, where Bruin followers must come to grips with a newly diagnosed condition affecting their basketball team as it walks onto the court at Pauley Pavilion for the final time this season.

Yes, UCLA is hurting from something. Call it a reality gap. Are the Bruins the 14-0 team that started the season or the one that has gone 5-5 since?

It must be a pretty good question because even the coach doesn’t have an answer.

“No one knows what kind of team we have,” Jim Harrick said.

That’s not entirely true. Right now, he’s got a .500 team, at least for the last month.

USC Coach George Raveling said teams are catching on to the Bruins.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them morale-wise. It’s late in the season, teams adjust and this league has good coaches,” Raveling said.

“Teams are going to adjust to the things the first time you beat them. The second time around, it’s a lot harder to win.”

Three times in UCLA’s last four games, it has been impossible. The Bruins took their first trip through the conference at 8-1, but are 4-3 in the second half.

When USC knocked off UCLA, 85-79, Thursday night at the Sports Arena, it wasn’t exactly great news, not with Louisville (24-4) bringing its run-and-dunk act into Pauley Pavilion today and the start of the NCAA tournament less than two weeks off.

The Bruins aren’t exactly catapulting themselves into the tournament. What they have done is all but guarantee that they will be shipped out of the West region as the result of a second- or third-place finish in the Pacific 10.

UCLA is 19-5, 12-4 in the Pac-10, but could still finish 22-5 and 14-4 by sweeping Louisville, then Oregon State and Oregon this week in the Northwest.

Maybe UCLA will snap out of it, but it’s going to have to start this afternoon against Denny Crum’s Cardinals, ranked No. 10 and anointed by some as a potential national champion.

Crum noted that four of UCLA’s defeats have been on the road--at California, at Notre Dame, at Arizona and at USC.

“I’ll tell you what, that’s not too surprising because anybody can beat you in a road game today,” Crum said. “So I don’t know what that makes them. I know they’re a good team--excellent athletes, play hard--and I know we’ve never beaten them in Pauley Pavilion.”

It remains to be seen if this is good or bad news for UCLA. The way things have been going, it’s hard to tell. Is Louisville due or do the Bruins simply have the Cardinals’ number?

UCLA’s number has been had more than a few times lately.

The common denominator in Bruin defeats has been poor shooting, including 41% against USC, which translates into poor offensive execution.

It’s no secret opponents try to make UCLA play a slower-paced half-court game that not only takes away the Bruins’ strongest asset, but also exposes one of their biggest problems: lack of outside shooting. Only Stanford has made fewer three-point shots in the conference.

Add that the offense calls for few screens to free Ed O’Bannon, who has to get open on his own; that Shon Tarver has either been injured or disappointing; that Charles O’Bannon has semi-disappeared in the half-court set; that Kevin Dempsey has been a bust as a reserve; that Rodney Zimmerman has been injured and that UCLA’s inner defense has suffered, then it’s not hard to figure out what has gone wrong.

But plenty has gone right, too. George Zidek has been a pleasant, if slow-moving, surprise; Cameron Dollar is a real find; Tyus Edney prevents a press by his mere presence and Ed O’Bannon is one of the top frontcourt players in the West.

Harrick continues to have his share of critics, but he might always have them. He probably could win an NCAA title and UCLA people would say he was still nine short.

Nevertheless, Harrick has shown greater flexibility in player rotation, substituting by situation instead of by the clock as in the past.

Whatever happens, it’s possible that there are Bruin basketball fans who are impossible to please, anyway. Crum said it is easy to recognize them.

“These are the people who are not real realistic,” he said. “My guess is that there are 15 or 20 teams that can win (the NCAA title) because the balance is so good. But some (UCLA) fans think they should always win.

“Well North Carolina has eight McDonald’s All-Americans and they’ve lost six games. Do you think North Carolina fans are happy they’ve lost six games? No, but they aren’t after Dean Smith. Why? Because they’re more realistic. People at UCLA are spoiled. They think they are supposed to win it every year.”

If so, they’ve been supremely disappointed since John Wooden won his last one 19 years ago.