Shipp, in it to grin it, has to bare his teeth now

It's that smile.

The missed shots, missed stops and missed opportunities would be easier for UCLA fans to accept if it weren't for that smile.

Josh Shipp, bless his 22-year-old heart, smiles innately, incessantly, indelibly.

"Life is hard," he says, "but basketball is fun."

The Bruins' most important outside shooter has connected on fewer than one-third of his shots in the last two games, yet he showed up Friday beaming.

"We're winning, so it's all good," he says.

The Bruins' best three-point weapon is 0-for-three-pointers in his last two games, and the grin remains.

"As long as the team is doing well, I don't care about anything else," he says.

In a locker room that has become Midwestern in attitude and East Coast in fight, Josh Shipp remains staunchly Southern Californian.

"He's just silky smooth Josh," says Lorenzo Mata-Real.

"I'm just real, real laid back," says Shipp.

It was a good thing when he averaged 14 points through the Bruins' first 28 games.

It's been a curious thing as he's averaged only nine points in their last seven games.

It could be a lousy thing today when the Bruins need that smile to become a glare, and laid back to become fight back.

It's UCLA against incredibly hulking Texas A&M in a second-round NCAA tournament game that will be slightly more.

"An all-out war," says Kevin Love.

And the Bruins cannot win it without a Battle Shipp.

If Shipp doesn't hit his shot, the sagging Aggies will make Love disappear under a giant maroon quilt.

"The times he's gone through his slumps, we've barely won," Love says. "In a game like this, we need for him to be hitting those shots."

If Shipp doesn't improve on his 20% three-point shooting in the last 14 games, the crabby Aggies will turn this into a two-hour wrestling match.

"He's the key to their offense," says Aggies guard Dominique Kirk. "He can be really tough to guard."

Or, not.

Sometimes it seems as if Shipp, alone among the four original Ben Howland recruits, never quite bought the message.

He's a sprinter, not a brawler. He wants the ball more than he wants to stop the ball. He doesn't grapple with the game, he glides through it.

He has started more than anybody -- all 35 games -- yet he ranks sixth on the team in both second-chance points and charges taken.

"I know what people say, but this is just me," he says. "This is just my personality, I'm not a rah-rah guy, I'm just out there having fun."