Bruins Finally Run Out of Steam, 88-62

It’s not as if the UCLA women’s basketball team hasn’t had glory days.

Sometimes it seems as if history happened last weekend and it is easy to forget that the Bruins have a basketball past.

As this latest version of the Bruins had moved into the NCAA Elite Eight portion of the tournament and into a West Regional championship game against top-seeded Louisiana Tech on Monday night at the Sports Arena, It has been written frequently much about how this is UCLA’s first-ever NCAA final eight appearance and how the Bruins are were aiming for their first-ever NCAA Final Four opportunity.

Which is a fact, but which also forgets history.

Billie Moore, a vibrant 55-year-old Fullerton woman who says she does “whatever I feel like,” in retirement, was happy to reminisce about the back-to-back Final Fours she coached the Bruins to in the late 1970s. Women’s sports was governed by the Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women.

As an unfortunately small but noisy crowd of 5,302 gathered for a television-mandated 9 p.m. tipoff, Moore was remembering how the 1977-78 AIAW Final Four was held at a jam-packed Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins won that tournament, beating Montclair State in the semifinals and Maryland in the finals. A year later, in Norfolk, Va., Moore’s Bruins lost to Old Dominion in the semifinals.

In 1982-83, the NCAA took over women’s collegiate sports and until this season, under Coach Kathy Olivier, the Bruins had never gotten to the regional finals. Olivier was once Moore’s assistant, and Moore compliments her by saying “Kathy is the most loyal person in the world.”

Moore is impressed with the way that Olivier, a graduate of Valencia High in Placentia and a former player at Cal State Fullerton and UNLV, brings a special intensity to the game. Moore also thinks Olivier is successful because, Moore says, “obviously Kathy has a feel for the game. A lot of coaches learn the game from books and through studying game film. But Kathy, once the game starts and she’s on the bench, she just has a real feel.”

When the Bruins were warming up, 10 minutes before tipoff and just after it was announced that Duke upset Tennessee, you could almost feel the shivers running up the spines of the women on both teams. Suddenly the 1999 title that was deeded to the Lady Vols since they’d won in 1998 is up for grabs.

Olivier came up behind freshman point guard Michelle Greco and whispered into Greco’s ear. Greco was starting in place of junior Erica Gomez, who badly sprained an ankle in Saturday’s semifinal win over Colorado State. Olivier patted Greco on the head and then on the shoulders. And then Greco made two head-long drives to the basket for layups in the first two minutes, shocking the Lady Techster guards and drawing the crowd into the game.

Tennessee and Louisiana Tech joined UCLA and Old Dominion in Moore’s last trip to the Final Four. Tennessee, Louisiana Tech and Old Dominion have been consistently powerful through the transition from AIAW to NCAA as more schools began upgrading programs under the legal pressures of Title IX. UCLA had not stayed at the top, though.

Moore said that women’s basketball had an eastern and southern flavor from the start but she also said it was “really impressive” the way that schools like Tennessee and Louisiana Tech had stayed so powerful.

Olivier is bringing UCLA back.

Maylana Martin, the graceful warrior of a forward whose every movement is precise and who is never a showoff or a braggart, spoke with deep feeling about how her class, the juniors like Marie Philman, Melanie Pearson, Janae Hubbard and Carly Funicello, came to UCLA with the goal of building something special, something of its own. With the talent to play anywhere, Martin said, she and her classmates preferred to bring UCLA to a Final Four and start a new tradition rather than continue a dynasty.

This is hardly a work in progress. There is no senior on this UCLA team and making this NCAA run, playing televised games, adjusting on the fly to new teams, beating Colorado State, the No. 2-seeded team, after Gomez, the team leader, got hurt in the first minute and didn’t play again, this will all be a boost for next season.

On this night, next season seems so far away. And suddenly the past doesn’t seem so far either. Moore is proud that Olivier, her assistant and her friend, has built, carefully and correctly, a team of mostly California girls who have long played together on AAU teams.

“It’s a good group,” Moore said. “It’s a fun group. I enjoy watching them. It brings back memories.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com