The first question directed at Guthridge after his 13th-ranked Tar Heels were stunned 71-68 by UCLA at the Smith Center on Saturday afternoon was whether or not the Heels had played as hard as the Bruins. The second question touched on the same subject. So did the third.

Finally, Guthridge, looking like a hapless witness undergoing cross-examination by Perry Mason, had heard enough. He bristled.

“All anyone wants to write about and talk about is our intensity — or lack thereof,” snarled Guthridge. “Well, when you make shots like UCLA was making them today, your intensity looks a whole lot better. Maybe we don’t have rah-rah kids, but I do think we have competitors. I do think we are intense.”

OK, so maybe a better word for what ails the Heels, who are now a mortal 11-6 and have lost two nonconference home games in the same season for the first time since the 1940s., is assertiveness — or lack thereof.

The two guys who have to be assertive if the Heels are to be a top-10 sort of team, are point guard Ed Cota and 7-foot junior Brendan Haywood. Both were more deserters than asserters on Saturday.

Haywood shot the ball just six times, managed exactly one offensive rebound in 31 minutes (reserve Julius Peppers had three in his first seven minutes) and was outjumped and out-thumped all afternoon by slim Bruin sophomore Jerome Moiso, who had 19 points and 11 boards, and hustling 6-11 soph Dan Gadzuric, who had 10 of each.

Cota also took only six shots, backed away from another half-dozen openings, and committed four huge turnovers.

UCLA coach Steve Lavin was determined that UNC’s guards were going to have to beat him, not its towering inside people.

“We swarmed Haywood like bees going after honey,” offered Lavin, now in his fourth year at the helm of the Bruins. “I’m not going to be asked to speak at clinics on what we did defensively. We didn’t re-invent the wheel. Everything was so basic. All we did was play 2-3 zone, match up out of it and sag on their big people. You pick your poison. We knew if Carolina made enough outside shots, they’d win. If they missed some, we’d have a chance.”

UCLA (10-4) is talented, but the Bruins are so young that few expected them to win a road game of this magnitude. Partly because a Lavin-coached UCLA squad was run out of Cameron Indoor Stadium by Duke not so long ago. Partly because the Bruins were knocked off in their previous game by rival USC. That loss put them at 1-2, good for ninth place in the Pac 10.

“But losing that one to USC didn’t make us bitter,” quipped Lavin. “It made us better.”

UCLA played no better than average statistical basketball for the final 32 minutes, but for the opening eight, the Bruins were supernatural. They connected on 10 of their first 13 field goal attempts, including back-to-back 3s to start the game by Earl Watson and freshman Jason Kapono.

The Bruins would never trail.

“UCLA got off to a fantastic start,” said Guthridge. “We could get close after that, but could never get over the hump.”

UCLA had doubled the Tar Heels at 24-12 at the 11:52 mark when Kapono, its leading scorer and a player with moves as slick as Lavin’s Pat Riley-ish hair, got his third foul and had to sit.

Then the Heels surged, getting to within 27-26 on a Cota 3-pointer with 7:43 to go in the half. UCLA nearly folded under the Carolina wave, but was able to hang on to a 38-37 halftime lead.

The bad news on the stat sheet for the Heels was that they shot 59 percent in the first half and outrebounded the Bruins, but still trailed. Mostly, because of 12 turnovers, many of them foolish.

The Bruins quickly re-asserted themselves after intermission. Carolina’s sophomore forward Jason Capel did what he could, scoring the Tar Heels’ first 10 points of the half, but UCLA steadily edged away, killing the bigger Heels (24-14) on the boards the entire half.

When Greenville, N.C. product Rico Hines scored on a driving, lefty layup with 7:40 left in the game, the Bruins were in complete command at 62-51. But at that point, whether through embarrassment or desperation, the Tar Heels did find some intensity.

Freshman Joseph Forte drilled clutch shots and the moribund Heels’ defense picked up. A 3-pointer by Cota cut UCLA’s lead to 69-66 with 27 seconds left and two Capel free throws made it 69-68 with 14.9 seconds remaining. Then after a timeout, the Heels were able to foul their highest priority target, “Moose” Bailey, the Bruins’ most unreliable free throw shooter.

“I knew they’d foul me,” said Bailey. “I would have too. But I went up there thinking I’d make them.”

The final-seconds scenario seemed to fit the profile of dozens of amazing Heel comebacks over the decades. But not this time. Bailey’s first free throw was way long, but somehow banked in. His second one took a friendly victory lap and dropped through and the Heels trailed 71-68.

“He missed them so far that he made them,” sighed Guthridge. “But that’s part of it.”

So was some great Bruin defense on Carolina’s final futile possession. The Tar Heels had to have a 3 to tie and UCLA defended the arc savagely. Capel was forced to fire an off-balance prayer that missed badly. Kris Lang rebounded the miss and wisely fired the ball back out to Cota. But Cota’s hurried fling landed well short of the mark as time expired, touching off a serious celebration by the Bruins, who hadn’t beaten the Heels since 1987.