A Bright Light Shines Amid Bruins’ Disappointing Season

Under cover of darkness, the shadowy figure tiptoed quietly to the backyard fence.

After looking both ways, the intruder jumped the fence, into the yard, walked stealthily to the edge of a swimming pool, reached inside a jacket and pulled out . . . a squirming, fuzzy puppy, putting it on the pool deck.

Then she stood and shouted, “Look what I found!”

Maylana Lynn Martin, noted animal lover-basketball player, had just completed a broken-court play designed by her mother, Mary Martin.

An hour earlier, Mary and Maylana had bought the pup, an Akita-Rottweiler mix.

And an hour before that, Maylana’s father, Lowell, had said, “Don’t buy any more dogs!”

So, after flicking on the pool deck lights that night, Lowell Martin observed with a frown the newest member of the Martin menagerie.

“Where’d it come from?” he asked his daughter. “How’d it get in here?”

“It was just standing here, Daddy,” Maylana said. “It was lost. It came in to get a drink from the pool.”

Lowell Martin emitted a small groan, shook his head, and walked back into the house, muttering.

On the Martins’ five acres in Winchester, in northern San Diego County, are geese named Goosie-Lucy and Duck-Duck, a dog named Shaq, a steer named Dirt, a pig named Stinkin’ Pig, numerous cats, two breeding pairs of Brittany Spaniels--which recently produced 19 puppies--and, just maybe, the best 18-year-old woman basketball player in America.

Maylana Martin now lives in a UCLA dorm, where security people might be well advised to check her jacket for fuzzy little mammals when she returns from home visits.

“Maylana feels she has to come home every three weeks--she misses the animals too much,” her mother says.

Maylana’s version differs slightly.

“My sister, Laurie, is a high school junior [and a basketball and volleyball player] and I have to go home to check out her boyfriends,” she says.

Then there’s Lowell Jr., Maylana’s 14-year-old brother. He’s already 6 feet tall and plays basketball, but plans to try football as well, his big sister reports.

One of the nation’s most sought high school prospects a year ago at Perris High, Martin is the hot new freshman in the Pacific 10 Conference. Tonight, she will lead UCLA (8-7, 2-4) against USC (11-4, 5-1) in Pauley Pavilion at 7:30.

Just as the Pac-10 says goodbye to its two senior All-Americans, USC’s Tina Thompson and Stanford’s Kate Starbird, here comes Maylana, May to her coach, Kathy Olivier, and teammates.

UCLA’s season has been disappointing. Inexperienced and with little perimeter shooting, the Bruins have dropped into the Pac-10’s bottom half.

But no one is assigning any blame to Martin. To the contrary, the 6-foot-2 forward-center has:

--Averaged 19.5 points a game, fifth in the Pac-10.

--Scored 30 or more points in three games.

--Shot 55.4% from the field, third in the Pac-10.

Eventually, she will dunk, as she did twice last year in high school warmups. Long-armed and gifted with springy legs, she can put her wrist on the rim.

She’s the main woman in the conference’s best freshman recruiting class, which includes her 6-4 roommate, Carly Funicello; 6-foot Marie Philman, 6-1 Melanie Pearson and 6-4 Janae Hubbard.

With them joining returnees Erica Gomez, Takiyah Jackson, Tawana Grimes and Aisha Veasley, some thought UCLA could challenge Stanford’s long Pac-10 reign.

Then, on Oct. 8, in a pickup game, sophomore Gomez, arguably the conference’s best point guard, blew out a knee.

Pushed into the spotlight, Martin responded. In UCLA’s home opener against Texas Tech she had 32 points and 11 rebounds.

Texas Tech won, 95-80, but Martin has since established herself as a force.

“I knew she was a great player when she committed to us, but you know what? She’s better than I thought,” Olivier said.

“She goes up and down the court as well as anyone I’ve ever seen in this game.

“I still can’t get over how poised and consistent she is. And when it’s crunch time, she wants the ball.”

According to Martin’s father, UCLA beat out 149 other schools to sign his daughter.

“Originally, May wanted to go to USC and play for Cheryl Miller, but [Miller] left [for a broadcasting job].”

Martin scheduled visits to Stanford, Colorado, UCLA, Purdue and Georgia. After her UCLA trip, she canceled Purdue and Georgia.

“I loved Stanford,” she said. “It was everything you could want in a university.

“But something just wasn’t right for me. I still don’t know what it was. Colorado was great too, but it was just too far. I wanted my parents to be able to see me play.

“I liked everything about UCLA, particularly Kathy and the players. On my visit, the thing I enjoyed the most was staying up all night talking with Tawana Grimes.”

Martin’s parents attend all of UCLA’s home games. Mary Martin, a teacher, is hard to miss. She’s 6-1 and wears a blue-and-gold top hat, which makes her about 6-6. Father Lowell, a civilian landscape architect for the Navy, is 6-2, and concedes he’s no longer a match for his daughter on the driveway court.

Basketball, he said, was only part of the combination platter of sports his daughter tried.

“She was also very good in soccer. She was the goalie on a boys’ team. And she was all-league in volleyball. And she got her first degree black belt in taekwondo when she was 8.”

Taekwondo?

“It was taekwondo where I first saw that she was naturally competitive,” he said.

“She was sparring at the gym with a boy one day when she was 14. The kid started kicking her too hard. Then she escalated it a bit more, and then it got out of hand. She put him on his back. He got back up and she put him down again.

“From that day on, I knew if she stuck with sports, she’d be pretty good at something.”

Competitive in sports . . . and a hopeless animal lover.

According to her father, once she walked into a supermarket carrying her new three-foot python.

“Young lady, I don’t think you should have that snake in the store!” one angry shopper said.

“Please lady, I’m blind,” Maylana said. “This is my seeing-eye snake.”

With that, she walked out, pretending to be guided by the python, rendering the woman speechless.