UCLA could have tough road to top seeding in Pacific 10 Conference tournament

Getting the top seeding for the Pacific 10 Conference tournament could be considerably more difficult for UCLA than catching Arizona atop the conference standings, which the Bruins accomplished Saturday at Pauley Pavilion with a 71-49 victory over the Wildcats.

The Bruins face a far tougher road than the Wildcats over the final week of the regular season and lag behind their counterparts in the current tiebreaker scenarios.

While UCLA travels to play at Washington on Thursday and Washington State on Saturday, Arizona plays host to Oregon State on Thursday and Oregon on Saturday. The Bruins have not won in Seattle since January 2004, a span of six consecutive losses.

Even if UCLA (21-8 overall, 12-4 Pac-10) won both games and finished the regular season tied with Arizona (23-6, 12-4), the Wildcats would probably get the No. 1 seeding for the conference tournament based on tiebreakers.

Since the teams split their head-to-head meetings, the next tiebreaker is each team’s record versus the team occupying the highest position in the final regular-season standings and then continuing down the standings until one team gains an advantage.

Arizona went 1-1 against third-place Washington, and UCLA lost to the Huskies in December, meaning the Bruins need to avenge that defeat Thursday to keep pace with the Wildcats. Both Arizona and UCLA went 1-1 against fourth-place USC.

Thus, the Bruins’ 76-72 overtime loss to fifth-place California on Feb. 20 could come back to haunt them because Arizona swept both of its meetings with the Golden Bears.

UCLA’s best shot at the top seeding for the Pac-10 tournament March 9-12 at Staples Center rests with sweeping the Washington schools and hoping Oregon or Oregon State can upset the Wildcats in Tucson. Oregon State defeated Arizona, 76-75, in January.

Pulling rank?

UCLA’s 22-point drubbing of the 10th-ranked Wildcats could catapult the Bruins back into the national rankings Monday for the first time since the end of the 2008-09 season. Not that it would spark a celebration among players.

“We don’t care if we’re ranked,” freshman center Joshua Smith said Saturday. “We don’t really focus on that. I remember when we had a five- or six-game winning streak [earlier this month], people were talking about us being ranked. We just go out there and we play.”

Funny you asked

Coach Ben Howland did not hesitate when asked whether there was anything about Pauley Pavilion he would not miss.

“I am not going to miss the floor for our players’ sake,” Howland said. “The most important thing we’re getting in this whole new building for me is the floor for our players to play on.”

Howland said the floor that will be installed before Pauley reopens in the fall of 2012 is a quarter-inch thick and will feature considerably more give than the 21/2-inch thick floor that the Bruins have played on for years.

Want a ride?

Howland disclosed for the first time Saturday that he had awarded a scholarship to walk-on Blake Arnet after the first quarter ended in December.

Arnet, a junior guard who attended Santa Ana Mater Dei High, turned down a scholarship from another Division I school to attend UCLA, Howland said. Arnet’s mother, Brigitte DeRouen, died in July 2009, more than two years after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

ben.bolch@latimes.com