No. 23 Arizona splits in L.A. after witnessing deadly shootout near Beverly Hills area bank

Watching a scary movie is one thing. Witnessing an actual shooting before a game is entirely different.

While driving down Wilshire Boulevard on the way to the game with UCLA Friday night, the UA women's basketball team was witness to the final stages of a bank robbery.

As the team's bus passed the Washington National bank, players saw several police officers enter the bank with guns drawn. The team would later find out that a police shoot-out ensued and one of the two bank robbery suspects was killed, while the other escaped and is still at large.

According to Coordinator of Operations Craig Haubrich, the Wildcats' bus was one of the last vehicles that the police let pass before closing off the street to all traffic.

"It was kind of weird to see it happen," said Haubrich. "It was just really strange. You don't get to see those kinds of things in Tucson."

Haubrich likened the incident to that of a movie and one player even asked if that was what they were witnessing.

"Someone in the back (of the bus) yelled, ÎIs this a movie?' and I said, ÎI don't see any cameras,'" said Haubrich.

Even more pressing than the robbery attempt was the fact that the team was trying to mentally prepare for a huge matchup with UCLA öö an important game for Arizona because of an outside chance to claim the regular season conference title.

Arizona (17-7, 10-5) dropped the opening game of the trip to UCLA 48-47 on Friday at Pauley Pavilion and, more importantly, missed an opportunity to pull within striking distance of Pac-10 leader Stanford.

The Cardinal lost to Washington Thursday night, and if the Wildcats had beaten UCLA they would have been only one game behind Stanford, with a meeting with the Cardinal looming on the horizon.

This was Arizona's lowest scoring output in almost four years, and the team dropped to third in the Pac-10 standings. It was also the team's worst shooting performance of the season, at 32 percent (19-59).

With the loss, UA fell to three-and-five on the road in Pac-10 play.

UA redeemed itself a bit yesterday afternoon when it beat USC 78-64 at the L.A. Sports Arena.

The Wildcats overcame an 11-point deficit with just over 12 minutes left to beat the Women of Troy for the second time this year.

Arizona got a little scare early in the USC game, when freshman center Shawntinice Polk left the game with an ankle injury. However she returned and led the UA comeback.

With the win, the Wildcats remain in third place in the Pac-10 behind Washington and Stanford.

The team plays Saturday against Arizona State and looks to avenge a 73-58 loss earlier this season.

The Wildcats have three Pac-10 Conference games remaining before the Pac-10 tournament and right now the team is fighting for an NCAA tournament bid. UA will either have to win the Pac-10 tournament and receive an automatic bid, or receive an at-large bid from the NCAA tournament selection committee to make its first trip to the NCAA tournament since the 1999-2000 season.