Mbah a Moute out this week

Fifth-ranked UCLA will be without starting forward Luc Richard Mbah a Moute when it begins the second half of the Pacific 10 Conference season Thursday night with a game at No. 17 Washington State.

Mbah a Moute, who rolled his left ankle in the second half of Saturday’s win over Arizona, will be sidelined at least seven days, the school said after an evaluation of the 6-foot-8 junior Monday.

That means Mbah a Moute also will miss UCLA’s game at Washington on Sunday. The Bruins’ next game after that is Feb. 17 at USC.

Mbah a Moute is averaging 9.2 points and is the team’s second-leading rebounder at 5.1 a game. Coach Ben Howland also considers Mbah a Moute and Russell Westbrook his top defensive players.

The most likely starting lineup adjustment would have Alfred Aboya starting at power forward with Josh Shipp at small forward, Westbrook and Darren Collison at guard and Kevin Love at center.

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UCLA’s wins last week over Arizona State and Arizona -- by a combined 55 points -- weren’t enough to move the Bruins ahead in the Associated Press media top 25, but the Bruins did get a boost in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll.

UCLA, 20-2 overall and 8-1 in Pacific 10 Conference play, remained fifth behind Memphis, Duke, North Carolina and Kansas in the AP poll but moved ahead of Kansas, which lost at Kansas State last week, and into fourth in the coaches’ poll.

Stanford, a game behind UCLA in the Pac-10 standings, jumped five spots in both polls, to ninth. The only other ranked Pac-10 team is Washington State, which dropped from ninth to 17th in both polls after losing twice at home, to California and Stanford.

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At the halfway mark of the conference season, Love, a freshman, is averaging 11.2 rebounds, tied with Washington’s Jon Brockman for the league lead. Love is also tied with Arizona center Jordan Hill atop the Pac-10 leaders in field-goal percentage. Both are shooting 61.1%. . . . Despite a series of injuries that has depleted UCLA’s bench almost all season, only Westbrook ranks among the top 20 in the conference in minutes played. Westbrook is 13th with an average of 32.36. USC’s O.J. Mayo is first with 36.48.

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diane.pucin@latimes.com