CHANGES FOR THE BETTER A BIT OF TWEAKING AT UCLA PAYS OFF.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

GREENSBORO, N.C. - The UCLA basketball team landed safely Tuesday evening after an all-day flight from Los Angeles. All in all, it was much like its season - long and grueling but all things considered, a fairly smooth ride.

The No. 4-seeded Bruins, who will play No. 13 Hofstra on Thursday in the first round of the East Regional, have earned their highest seed in five years. They also posted their best Pac-10 Conference record (14-4) in that span.

It's not a place they were expected to be.

By early December, the Bruins already had stumbled to embarrassing losses to Cal State Northridge and Georgia Tech and were groping for ways to pull themselves out of a funk.

It turns out there were a handful of critical decisions or circumstances that enabled the Bruins to land here.

Seven-and-7, the right tonic

The Bruins were a combustible bunch heading into the season. Who's team was it - Earl Watson's or Jason Kapono's? Would Matt Barnes, Ray Young and Billy Knight, buried on the bench as freshmen and sophomores, give in to frustration if they weren't in the lineup?

When Barnes' play in an autumn pickup game got too chippy for Rico Hines, the senior lost it. He grabbed a stool and cracked Barnes over the head with it.

When the Bruins began practicing in October, there was a feeling among those close to the program that it was only a matter of time before it all blew up again.

But a subtle change in the Bruins' practices helped change the environment. For the first time in UCLA coach Steve Lavin's five years as head coach, the top seven players rarely scrimmaged against one another.

Instead of Watson and Kapono playing against each other in practice, they worked with each other. While Young, Knight, Ryan Bailey and Jason Flowers drifted in and out of the top seven, the team's core - Watson, Kapono, Dan Gadzuric and Matt Barnes - worked together all season. What might have been lost in competitiveness was made up for in cohesiveness.

``I think that's what helped generate good chemistry,'' Kapono said. ``Last year, it took us 25 games to find it and this year it took us eight.''

Meet the press

The Bruins were desperate. Two days before Christmas and they hadn't a clue. Their offense was dysfunctional and their defense porous, too.

Trailing North Carolina by 16 points at halftime, Lavin flipped to the back of his playbook and pulled out a full-court zone press. The Bruins forced turnover after turnover and eventually took the lead. They faded down the stretch and lost the game, but they'd won an identity.

The Bruins, using their press at the outset, jumped to a 15-point halftime lead to win their next game, at Purdue. Their record since that day is 17-3.

No Bruin benefited more from the press than the 6-foot-7 Barnes, whose agility and long arms make him the ideal point man on the press.

``The press pretty much defined our season,'' said Barnes, who averaged 8.7 points and 1.3 rebounds before the North Carolina game and 12.9 points and 4.0 rebounds since.

``We were No. 1 in the conference in forcing turnovers and the press was a main reason. It created a tempo a lot of people aren't comfortable with.''

Hello, Rick? Pete Dalis here

UCLA leads the nation in crisis management, but when athletic director Peter Dalis revealed Jan. 9 that he'd had recent phone conversations with Rick Pitino, it - to borrow Watson's favorite phrase - took things to a whole 'nother level. It marked the first time that speculation surrounding Lavin's future had been fueled by those within the Morgan Center.

Two days later, when 18th-ranked USC entered Pauley Pavilion to face the unranked Bruins, the Trojans ran into a coach and a team with its hair on fire.

With all eyes on the energetic Lavin, the Bruins swarmed all over the Trojans, building a 19-point lead early in the second half. They wilted at the end but hung on for an 80-75 win.

With the Pitino talk following the Bruins on the road - Cal students had signs of the former Kentucky coach with a caption that read, ``I got next Lavin.'' - the Bruins continued to win.

``The Pitino stuff took a lot of the focus off us and the way we were playing,'' Watson said. ``Everyone banded together from top to bottom, from the head coach to the manager. We were comforting each other.

``We'd heard stuff before, but this was as real as it ever got. It seemed more real coming from the head boss if he said it or if the rumors were coming from what he said.''

All the right moves

The Bruins ran off winning streaks of six and eight games this season and both started with lineup changes. First it was Flowers and then it was Knight, a pair of upperclassmen who took advantage of long-awaited opportunities.

Flowers, a fifth-year senior walk-on, was inserted into the lineup in place of Young to prevent another slow start. UCLA had fallen behind 16-2 to Kansas, 10-0 to North Carolina and missed its first 14 shots against Georgia Tech.

Flowers' energy and effort also would be an asset in the press that the Bruins were turning to.

``With Jason, I felt like we needed a spark,'' Lavin said. ``Somebody who would hustle and do the little things. Also, Jason works hard and represents everything a coach wants.''

By February, though, the Bruins needed more than Flowers could provide. They'd been blitzed in two of four games when Lavin inserted Knight into the lineup for Flowers at No. 1-ranked Stanford.

Knight responded with a then-career-high 22 points and the fourth-year guard has been a fixture in the lineup ever since. After averaging 3.8 points and shooting 29.4 percent on 3-pointers prior to the Stanford win, he's averaging 13.4 points and shooting 52 percent on 3s since.

``With Billy Knight, I was looking for someone who could be a threat offensively and execute our sets,'' Lavin said. ``He's been able to take pressure off Dan (Gadzuric), T.J. (Cummings) and Matt (Barnes) in the post when he's shooting well. He's made it very difficult for opponents to decide who to lay off of.''

No. 4 UCLA vs. No. 13 HOFSTRA

When: Thursday, 11:55 a.m.

Where: Greensboro Coliseum, Greensboro, N.C.

TV: Channel 2

Records: UCLA 21-8; Hofstra 26-4

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo: Steve Lavin and UCLA did the little things throughout the season that pulled the team together and got it where it is today.

Kevork Djansezian/Associated Press

Box: No. 4 UCLA vs. No. 13 HOFSTRA (see text)