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  NICOLE MILLER/ Daily Bruin Women's basketball head coach Kathy Olivier is not swayed by the team's slow start this season.

By Scott Schultz

Daily Bruin Contributor

UCLA women’s head basketball coach Kathy Olivier has seen it all as a coach. Last year, she became only the second women’s basketball coach in UCLA history to win more than 100 games.

As an assistant at USC, she part of their national championship team, which ranks among the best college teams ever.

When she took over the reigns from the legendary Billie Moore after the 1992-93 season, Olivier gradually turned a Bruin program which was hovering below .500 into a top-10 team.

So now that the team is riding a six-game losing streak to open the season, is she panicking? Not a chance.

Listening to Olivier, one becomes absorbed by her positive demeanor.

“There’s a lot of pluses, even though we haven’t won yet this year,” Olivier said. “This year it’s a different team where everyone is still learning what they can bring to the team. The chemistry is good, so there is a lot of positive.”

The women’s basketball team has been a fractured puzzle this season. At the end of last season, they watched four of their five starters from that season’s Elite Eight team graduate. Before this season, the Bruins learned they would start their 2000-01 campaign without All-Pac-10 senior guard LaCresha Flannigan, who was academically ineligible, and All-Pac-10 sophomore point guard Nicole Kaczmarski, who did not enroll in the fall while recovering from an injury.

The Bruins, who exist within a fish bowl existence on this basketball-crazy campus, were forced to play the hand they were dealt. Bench players have started, and redshirt candidates have been playing significant minutes.

With their difficult schedule, the Bruins have gotten off to the slowest start in the program’s history.

Yet the team has, from the very beginning of the season, maintained a positive outlook even in these bleakest of times.

The players credit Olivier with keeping their focus on improving their game, and not dwelling on failures.

“One of the great things about coach Olivier is she’s always positive, especially this year,” said junior guard Michelle Greco. “She’s not the type who points fingers when things go wrong.”

Olivier credits her composure to lessons she learned during her first seasons as head coach.

“When you look at my first two years, we didn’t have great talent, but we had really good people,” she said. “They worked really hard even when they weren’t winning or (were) down by a lot of points. That’s the base that you build your program from.”

Olivier sees similarities between those teams and this year’s team.

“We don’t have a lot of All-Americans on the team this season, but we have hard-working players who want to improve, and that’s important,” she said.

The players appreciate her approachable enthusiastic nature. “She’s very personable.” Greco said. “She has an open-door policy so we know we can come in whenever we have any problems. We know we won’t just see her at practice.”

“People ask me, ‘Don’t I feel a lot of pressure being at UCLA?’” Oliver said. “I tell them that’s the way I am anyway. No matter where I am, I’d feel the pressure. That’s what coaching’s about. You want to succeed, and you want your players to get better. That’s something we’re stressing every day in practice.”