A Fitting Opportunity and a Search for Fitness

Finally, the last piece of the puzzle.

UCLA’s women’s basketball team needs only to fit everything together.

The last piece is Erica Gomez, the Pacific 10’s premier point guard, who a year ago was set to lead the Bruins on a run at perennial conference champion Stanford and beyond.

Then, calamity.

In a preseason Pauley Pavilion pickup game, she blew out her knee. While Gomez went into surgery and then months of rehabilitation, her talented yet rudderless freshmen teammates went adrift, struggling to a 13-14 record.

It was a season of lost opportunity, all agree. There was no true point guard to run an offense. Even at that, 6-foot-2 freshman Maylana Martin (now 6-3) rose quickly to star status, shooting 50% from the floor to lead the conference and finishing fifth at 18 points a game.

Now, with Gomez distributing the ball, here’s a frightening prospect for UCLA’s Pac-10 foes:

“With Erica in there, she’ll get the ball to Maylana 10 more times a game this year,” Coach Kathy Olivier said.

Stanford is still the conference favorite to win a fourth consecutive league title, but hopes haven’t been this high in years at UCLA.

Gomez was the Pac-10 freshman of the year two seasons ago and Martin won the award last year.

“We’ll be very good,” Martin said.

“We have all the pieces now, we just have to put it all together. We can all now run the floor knowing that Erica will find us.”

Also returning is Martin’s 6-4 sophomore roommate, Carly Funicello, plus four other promising sophomores: Marie Philman (6-0), Melanie Pearson (6-1), Takiyah Jackson (6-0) and Janae Hubbard (6-4).

Jackson was a high school All-American who missed her first season because of knee surgery, and is coming off a disappointing season.

“Takiyah knows she has to put up some numbers,” Olivier said.

“A lot of players, when they sit out a year, take a year to shake it off and get where they should be. That happened to Ed O’Bannon when he missed a year here. In practice, I’ve seen moments of brilliance out of Takiyah--she needs to sustain that.”

Proven seniors are Tawana Grimes (5-9), Aisha Veasley (5-9) and Carla Houser (6-2).