The loselavin.com web site likely had a lot of hits on Wednesday.

Bruins fans in Internet-land had to be steaming after Tuesday night’s 67-63 loss to Northern Arizona, contested before a tiny home crowd of 5,736 at historic Pauley Pavilion.

It’s a loss that dropped Steve Lavin’s seventh UCLA team to 2-3 overall, the squad having also lost to San Diego and Duke in the regular season and Branch West and EA Sports in the exhibition campaign.

“Obviously, I’m disappointed and discouraged,” the beleaguered Lavin said after the game. “I thought we’d made progress the last week. We took a step backward.”

The Bruins, who travel to No. 19-ranked Kansas University (5-3) Saturday for a 4 p.m. tip at Allen Fieldhouse, thought they’d righted the ship after back-to-back pounds of Long Beach State and Portland.

In fact, before Tuesday’s flop, Lavin had nothing but good things to say about his Bruins.

“I like this team. I’m as upbeat and optimistic about our team and program as I’ve ever been in my tenure,” Lavin said on the Pac-10 Coaches Teleconference. “There are pieces. It’s a matter of putting it together.”

The Bruins return five players who logged 10 or more minutes in last year’s 87-77 victory over then-No. 1 Kansas at Pauley Pavilion.

Jason Kapono, a 6-8 senior who averages a team-leading 17.4 points a game, scored 10 points versus the Jayhawks off 3-of-10 shooting.

Point guard Cedric Bozeman (8.0 ppg) had four points against KU with three assists, while 6-10, 215-pound junior T.J. Cummings (11.0 ppg) chipped in eight points. Ray Young, a 6-4 senior who averages 9.6 ppg, was injured and did not play.

But there were four Bruin seniors on last year’s squad, and they scored 60 total points against the Jayhawks.

“We knew in losing (Dan) Gadzuric, Rico Hines, Billy Knight and Matt Barnes we were going to take a real hit,” Lavin said. “That’s four of our first six players there and losing Evan Burns (McDonald’s All American who did not qualify) was a real hit.

“Not having Ryan Walcott and Andre Patterson to start the season was another real hit,” Lavin added.

Patterson, a 6-7 sophomore, was recently declared academically eligible after missing three games, while Walcott, a 6-1 sophomore, had to sit out the season’s first two games because of an NCAA suspension for playing in an exhibition game his red-shirt season.

“The challenge now is to get players back in the mix, to get the players’ confidence up,” Lavin said. “Getting Andre and Walcott back helps. It gives us some depth, fresh bodies so we can pressure more.”

Tthe UCLA bodies resembled zombies on Tuesday night. And now the Bruins travel to Kansas to face a Jayhawk team stinging from last year’s loss in Los Angeles.

“I remember how bad we played last year,” senior guard Kirk Hinrich said. “We’ll try to play our butts off.”

“They kicked our tails about as bad as you can last year,” KU coach Roy Williams noted. “I was really proud the way our guys bounced back from that — 48 hours later we go and have a big win at Oklahoma State. I do remember last year and I don’t want us to have that same kind of feeling again.”

The Bruins, meanwhile, will have to regroup for Lavin’s 200th career game at UCLA.

For all his critics, he and Mike Krzyzewski of Duke are the only two coaches in the country to take their teams to the Sweet 16 in five of the last six years.

“If your heart isn’t pumping, if you can’t feel the adrenaline against Kansas, you must be dead,” Cummings said. “That’ll be one of those big-time games you go to college for.”

⢠Tickets are available for next Saturday’s Pete Newell Challenge at Oakland Arena. KU will meet Cal-Berkeley at 2:30 p.m., Central time, with Stanford to meet Gonzaga in the nightcap of the one-day event in California. Call 510-762-2277 or log into tickets.com.