UCLA Sees a Familiar Bad Picture : Basketball: Bruins, who face USC tonight, played well early in season, then lost to Cal. Sound familiar?

Same team, same place.

Yes, the UCLA Bruins know what everyone else is thinking, and they would have to be numb not to be affected.

The pattern: Win impressively through January. Lose to California right before February and the official start of stretch-run NCAA basketball.

Last year, UCLA went 14-0, lost to Cal, then lost momentum, confidence, offensive consistency and, eventually, a first-round tournament game to Tulsa, capping a 7-7 post-January collapse.

This year, UCLA started 12-1, including two victories in Arizona, then lost handily to Cal last Saturday. And to kick off the post-January schedule this year, the Bruins tonight visit the Sports Arena, where USC has defeated them in four of the last five years, including last year’s 85-79 game.

“Everybody’s talking about what happened last year,” senior forward Ed O’Bannon said. “They’re saying, ‘Oh man, it’s going to happen again this year.’ ”

Through the big victories and assorted bumps, O’Bannon said the Bruins always knew this season would come down to February and March and how they react to the down periods.

Lose to Cal, then what?

“I think it all goes back to the summer, when we would always talk about winning and staying together and playing in the Kingdome (site of this year’s Final Four),” O’Bannon said. “I think if you believe in yourself and you believe in the guys around you, that’s when the mission starts.

“We’ve won a lot of games in the past, but we’ve never won the ones that really counted. And this year we’re going to really try. If we don’t win them, then fine. But we’re going to go down fighting.

“Last year, I think we were kind of happy being No. 1 at one point. We weren’t really focused on the long run and the end result of the season. This year, we really are.”

Last year, UCLA went 8-1 in the first half of the Pacific 10 season, then, thanks to flat play, defensive breakdowns, an inconsistent half-court offense and a few minor injuries, had a 5-4 conference record in the second half.

But the Bruins, whose ranking fell three spots to No. 7 after the Cal defeat, remain atop the conference and have beaten the other teams with only two losses in conference play--Arizona and Washington State.

Though UCLA is a far deeper team this year with the addition of freshmen J.R. Henderson and Toby Bailey, the bench contribution has been shrinking and the Bruins, in a conference stacked with quality teams, have seemed dependent on O’Bannon, Tyus Edney and George Zidek, the three seniors.

“You lose at home, you lose the driver’s seat,” Coach Jim Harrick said. “But everybody’s lost at home except Washington State (which is 5-0 in Pullman), but they haven’t won on the road (0-2).

“It’s a crazy league and it’s a good league and it’s a tough league. And we’ve got to bring it Thursday night or it’ll happen to us again.”

Last year’s team, with Edney slowed because of back problems and O’Bannon in a second-half shooting slump, lacked a steady scorer in half-court play.

Two games ago, Stanford slowed the pace in the second half, setting up a rally that UCLA barely withstood. Against Cal’s 2-3 zone in the second half Saturday, the Bruins struggled to get off any kind of effective shot.

The Bruins assume that Bailey, who has been off his shooting form recently, and Henderson will not disappear now that it’s February, and they are counting on freshman Kris Johnson and backup guard Cameron Dollar to score.

“I think if you’re not very good and you’ve failed many, many times before. . . ,” assistant Lorenzo Romar said. “(But) we were talking . . . we added up about 10 state championships those guys participated in in high school.

“And Ed and George and Tyus, they’ve all been to the NCAA tournament three or four times. They know what it’s like. Those guys are more warriors than going out there scared that something bad is going to happen.”