A SU(3) basis is used to study a Hamiltonian with realistic quadrupole-quad
rupole and spin-orbit interactions. The ground state band main components a
te the S = 0 leading irrep and the leading S = 1 irreps in the proton and n
eutron subspaces. The quadrupole-quadrupole interaction is found to give do
minant weights to the 'stretched' coupled representations, supporting a str
ong truncation of the Hilbert space.