Chaotic season gives UCLA men’s basketball opportunity to take Pac-10 title

Normally, there is some sort of order to college basketball conferences. The best teams stand out, and by February it becomes apparent which teams can win their conference and reach the NCAA Tournament in March.

This Pac-10 season is a clear exception. So far, it’s been chaos. No team has proved itself superior, and the task of discerning the best team becomes only more confusing when we look at the conference standings, where Cal and Arizona sit tied for first place at 6-3, UCLA and Arizona State stand at 5-4, and then five teams are lurking back at 4-5. Just five weeks remain in the regular season, and all nine of those squads are in contention.

After his team’s last win at last-place Oregon State (the only 3-6 team in the Pac-10), UCLA coach Ben Howland said the formula for success in the Pac-10 is to win all of your home games and half of your road games.

That means that this weekend is probably the most important of the season for UCLA.

The Bruins host Stanford Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and Cal Saturday at 1 p.m., and they must win these two games if they want to assert themselves as real contenders for the Pac-10 title.

This is a golden opportunity for UCLA to improve to 7-4 in the conference while the other top teams team slide back. Wins over Stanford and Cal will definitely keep the Bruins in second place and may allow them to jump into a tie for first. Arizona and Arizona State are both likely to drop a game or two this weekend when they travel to face the Washington schools. Washington is 4-1 at home this year, and the trip to Pullman to face Washington State is always taxing.

Plus, these are games UCLA can win. The Cardinal is 0-9 on the road this season. The Bruins already beat the Bears Jan. 6 in Berkeley.

At Tuesday’s press conference, I went over all these scenarios with UCLA sophomore point guard Malcolm Lee. Lee doesn’t follow the standings so closely, but when he learned that the Arizona schools would be in Washington this weekend, his eyes lit up.

“(That means) this weekend is really big for us,” he said. “We have to get these two at home. We have to knock these out.”

He’s right. If the Bruins lose, they’ll fall back into the middle of the pile. And, in that case, the bigger problem would be UCLA’s remaining schedule.

As Howland said Tuesday, teams with the fewest road games remaining have a significant edge in the conference race.

After this weekend, Arizona will have five home games remaining. Cal will have four. UCLA will have only two.

In addition to the scheduling, there’s also a momentum factor.

Right now the two hottest teams in the league are Arizona, which has won four straight, and the Bruins, who have won three of four and are thriving in their new zone defense. The Bruins must keep improving in the zone, and they must keep this momentum alive.

“Every team is going to get better,” UCLA freshman forward Tyler Honeycutt said. “Teams are going to adjust to our zone.”

And remember, this is all coming in a rebuilding year for UCLA, a year when the Bruins have little room for error. Howland is trying to work with a nine-man rotation that includes six underclassmen, and he’s missing forward Drew Gordon, his best big man, who decided to transfer in December.

This is the type of year when one bad weekend could make or break the Bruins in the Pac-10 race. This weekend is a perfect example of one of those weekends.

Granted, it’s hard for the players to admit that one weekend feels more significant than all the others. As freshman forward Reeves Nelson said, every weekend in the Pac-10 feels like the most important one.

But Nelson did say the team knows that this weekend could have big implications, and that wins over Stanford and Cal would be huge.

“We are going to try to make a statement,” he said.

If they do, the Pac-10 may finally start making some sense.

E-mail Allen at [email protected].