Pac-10 makes case for six-pack

It’s conference tournament time in the Pacific 10, which means coaches locking arms and intoning that there are six mortal locks for the NCAA tournament.

“I think six are already in,” UCLA Coach Ben Howland said.

USC Coach Tim Floyd was right there with him.

“I think we have six solid teams,” he said. “If I thought it could help the league by getting the seventh team in if, say, Washington came up and won it, then I think that would be great.”

UCLA and Washington seemingly have the most to play for in the tournament, which starts tonight and runs through Saturday at Staples Center.

The Bruins -- who along with the rest of the top six have a bye into Thursday’s quarterfinals -- could erase any remnant of a doubt that they deserve the No. 1 seeding in the NCAA West Regional, which could allow them to reach the Final Four in Atlanta without leaving California the first two weeks of the tournament.

Washington, after reaching the Sweet 16 the last two seasons, has a last-ditch chance to make the field of 65 again. But to claim the Pac-10’s automatic berth, the seventh-seeded Huskies would have to win four games in four days, starting against 10th-seeded Arizona State tonight at 8:30.

Washington State, Oregon and Arizona, like UCLA, are playing largely for seeding, though moving up one or down one usually doesn’t make much difference.

“There’s such parity in college basketball that seeding -- if you’re a three, four, whatever -- I don’t know how significant that is,” Washington State Coach Tony Bennett said.

The intrigue lies in the middle of the pack, in the third quarterfinal game Thursday between third-seeded USC and sixth-seeded Stanford.

USC, with sweeps of Oregon and Arizona, is a near lock for the NCAA tournament, but not quite a mortal one after losing four of its last seven, including one to lowly Arizona State.

A slip against Stanford could at least send the Trojans’ seeding tumbling into a potentially difficult first-round game.

Stanford is on even less firm ground having lost five of its last eight, but the Cardinal has beaten UCLA and won at Virginia, which shared the regular-season championship in the Atlantic Coast Conference with North Carolina.

Floyd said the Cardinal, like his team, should be in either way.

“You know, they’ve beaten a team that’s a No. 1 seed in UCLA, and they go to Virginia and beat a Virginia team that was leading the ACC,” Floyd said, making it clear he’s irritated with talk that the ACC will get seven teams.

“Well, I can’t believe their sixth-place team is better than Stanford,” he said. “These leagues they’re talking about taking seven? You tell me their seventh-place team is better than the University of Washington? I don’t think there’s any way in the world.”

One of the issues is the Rating Percentage Index, which the NCAA tournament selection committee considers, though less than many once believed.

Those figures, which take strength of schedule into account, are one reason Arizona, with a No. 13 RPI, and Oregon, at No. 28, are ahead of USC, which has a No. 54 RPI even though it beat both of them twice. Stanford is No. 57.

The ACC has nine in the top 50.

“Starting at the beginning of the year, all we heard out here in the West was the Pac-10 was the No. 1 conference in the country,” Oregon Coach Ernie Kent said. “It seems to me like the closer we got to March, the Pac-10 started slipping.”

North Carolina’s 92-64 victory at Arizona was one reason.

Kent is touting six teams, which would tie the Pac-10 record set in 2002, or even seven.

“I think it’s the No. 1 conference in the country. If it’s not No. 1, it’s No. 2,” he said. “We’ve been tough all year long. We’ve kind of beaten each other up, but the games have been fantastic games and nobody has dominated.

“I watched all those years with the ACC, the Big East, the Big Ten, the Big 12, and heard possibly six or seven teams. Now it’s the Pac-10’s turn. Hopefully, we’ll be rewarded for being a very, very good conference.”

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Stanford guard Anthony Goods, the Cardinal’s second-leading scorer, has returned to practice and “probably will play” against USC after sitting out six games because of a high-ankle sprain, Coach Trent Johnson said.

Goods, who is averaging 13 points, scored 10 points during Stanford’s 65-50 victory over the Trojans on Jan. 25 at Maples Pavilion but did not play in the Cardinal’s 69-65 loss to USC on Feb. 22 at the Galen Center.

“He changes your coverages because he creates space,” Floyd said. “His ability to shoot it, his willingness to shoot it, changes a lot of things that we were able to do in the last game.”

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Times staff writer Ben Bolch contributed to this report.

robyn.norwood@latimes.com