Yes, the kid stays in the picture.

It helps that Steve Lavin has seen this movie before.

“It’s a Bill Murray-Groundhog Day situation,” Lavin said, standing outside the locker room Sunday, after UCLA jolted Cincinnati, 105-101, in two overtimes to join Duke as the only teams to make the Final 16 in the past three NCAA Tournaments.

“You lose some close games, and everybody says there’s going to be a new coach at UCLA. But when you hear it every year, it doesn’t bother you as much.”

No.8 seeds are not supposed to beat No.1s. It did not happen in 2001. It did happen in 2000, to Stanford and Arizona, and in 1998, to Kansas. It nearly happened to UCLA in 1995, but Tyus Edney, a bumblebee in flight, beat Missouri.

It happened Sunday.

On Thursday, UCLA plays Missouri in the West Region semifinal, the winner to play Arizona or Oklahoma. A Final Four trip is hazy and indistinct, but it’s out there.

Even before Sunday  when neither UCLA freshman point guard turned it over against one of the nation’s saltiest defenses  Lavin felt secure. He said the chancellor, Albert Carnesale, was happy, and the price for buying out Lavin is being raised.

He also might not have known everything.

But, as someone said, can you imagine the news conference?

“Despite the fact that our basketball team is one of 11 to go to the NCAA Tournament in all six of Coach Lavin’s seasons, and despite the fact that our football team has gone to a bowl game in only three of Coach Toledo’s six seasons, we feel the basketball program needs to go in a different direction.”

All along, Lavin also claimed to see ripening tomatoes in the dumpster of defeat.

“We lost to Arizona State but Cedric Bozeman played well,” he said. “We lost to Oregon but the young kids played well together, in that Gordie Howe substitution pattern, and Ryan Walcott had an open shot at the end of the game and wasn’t afraid to take it.

“We lost to Villanova, which was bad, but we ran our motion offense and had a little success. There wasn’t much mystery to those games. You rebound, you play defense, you make your foul shots and you don’t turn it over, and you win. You don’t, and you lose.”

Pull the ring from the media’s neck, and you hear that UCLA is inconsistent, that UCLA wins because of great talent and loses because of Lavin.

But UCLA, under Lavin, has been quite reliable.

Problems in December. A rally in early January, and a big RPI victory over somebody good. Then a February downturn, followed by a coup at Stanford, and then something special in the tournament.

Under Lavin, UCLA has beaten two No.3 seeds and a No.1. It has only once lost to a lower seed (Detroit in ’99, first round). It beat Maryland by 35 points in ’99. It was eliminated by three No.1 seeds, two eventual champions, and a No.2.

But conference play is a better indication. Lavin’s 74-34 record comes out to a .685 percentage. That’s below Jim Harrick’s .743 and Larry Farmer’s .722.

The Bruins are extremely skilled, but a Mississippi writer saw them practice last Thursday and wanted to know if there was a weight room at UCLA.

Still, it’s worth asking how UCLA could be seeded eighth in the first place.

The players are quite forthright. They say they stunk up the regular season. They also knew that it takes a TV conference team a long time to run out of chances.

“Our defense wasn’t like last year’s,” Billy Knight said last week. “We missed Earl Watson, but we also missed (assistant) Coach (Steve) Spencer (who went to Orange Coast College). He and Earl really were on the same page. Then Ray Young (redshirted) was a great defensive player, and Jason Flowers got in our face every day in practice. That’s four elements we didn’t have.”