She Needs to Be Nastier for Her Own Good : College basketball: UCLA’s Kisa Hughes has All-American potential but her game lacks one element--aggressiveness.

At a recent UCLA women’s basketball game, 6-foot-10 Ron Hughes sat in his Pauley Pavilion seat and studied his 6-4 daughter, Kisa.

Blocked out under the Arizona basket on one play, Kisa Hughes broke boldly through the screen, freed herself about 12 feet from the basket near the free-throw line and signaled for the ball.

In an instant, she received a pass from a wing player and shot a turnaround jump shot.

The ball bounced softly about the rim and fell in.

In freeing herself for the ball, she had shown some rare aggressiveness.

Her father cheered, then said: “A year ago, she couldn’t have taken that shot to begin with because she wouldn’t have gotten open to get the ball.”

Kisa Hughes is a talented player on the rise, who runs the court gracefully, often gliding smoothly through traffic to the basket on drives. She possesses a soft touch in the low post and generally plays with grace and style. She scored 25 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the 64-61 loss to Arizona. But there is a missing element.

UCLA Coach Kathy Olivier would like to add any of the following to her game:

--Nastiness.

--Rage.

--Aggression.

“It’s the one thing with Kisa’s game we’d like to change,” Olivier said.

“She’s just too nice.”

Olivier would like to occasionally see in Hughes’ game a little less Nureyev and a little more George Foreman.

Hughes’ parents accept full responsibility.

“Kisa’s just like all our kids,” said Barbara Hughes, Kisa’s mother.

“We raised them all to be nice kids. But Kisa is the mellowest child I have.”

Kisa Hughes and Olivier had some long talks last summer.

Subject: The separation of on-court and off-court personalities.

“I tried to convince Kisa that if you’re a nice, mellow person off the court, it’s OK to be a tough, aggressive player during competition,” Olivier said.

Early in the game against Arizona, Hughes was getting knocked about under the basket. Then she suddenly unloaded an elbow that struck an Arizona player in the throat.

The referee didn’t see it.

“Yes, I saw that elbow--wasn’t that great!” said Olivier.

Hughes’ UCLA team plays USC today at 2 p.m. in Pauley Pavilion.

Although Hughes isn’t yet playing with the attitude Olivier would prefer, she hasn’t exactly been a washout, either.

On the Pac-10’s last-place team (2-6), Hughes leads the conference in field-goal percentage (59.7%) and rebounding (10.8) and is fifth in scoring (17.7).

More aggressiveness would elevate Hughes’ game, Olivier believes, to an All-American level.

Like Natalie Williams’ game, for example.

Last season, Hughes wasn’t a good match with her Pac-10 player-of-the-year teammate Williams, who graduated.

“Nat and Kisa were both low-post players and they were sometimes literally running into each other,” Olivier said.

“But Nat was a tenacious, aggressive rebounder and that’s where we want Kisa.”

Olivier says Hughes has shown flashes of aggressiveness, but most of them occur late in games.

“I know Coach wants me to play more aggressively, but it takes me a long time to get mean during a game,” Hughes said.

With the Hughes family, there are two themes:

--Basketball.

--Tall.

“I had a seven-foot great-grandfather who died in the 1920s,” said 5-11 Barbara Hughes, the only one in the family who never played basketball. She’s a teacher at Riverside’s Fremont Elementary.

Dr. Ron Hughes played basketball at Cal State Fullerton in the late 1960s and is now professor and chairman of the school’s sociology department.

Kisa Hughes, 21, the oldest of five children, reports there’s a seven-footer-in-the-making at the Hughes home.

“My little brother, Solomon, is only 15 but he’s 6-8 and wears a size-17 shoe,” she said.

Reports her father: “Kisa hasn’t seen him for a few weeks. He’s 6-9 now.”

Ron, Jr., 18, is a 6-5 high school senior and sister Kilee, 19, is a 6-1 USC volleyball player. Youngest brother Gabriel, 14, is way behind at 5-10.

Hughes was the Big West Conference freshman of the year at Fullerton, where she was the nation’s leading freshman rebounder with a 10.9 average. She also led the Big West in rebounding and blocks.