Is the Pacific 10 Deep or Sea of Mediocrity?

My only knowledge of the Pacific 10 Conference at this moment is that USC and UCLA are tied for first place, that Stanford is fifth in the conference but somehow 18th in the nation, that Arizona State lost the Rose Bowl and that Washington State is somewhere near Idaho.

Life is a box of chocolates in Pac-10 college basketball these days. Stanford routs UCLA. UCLA whips USC. Cal beats UCLA. USC beats Cal. UCLA climbs back from the slime to rout Stanford. You never know what you’re going to get.

I bet very few of you hoop dreamers expected a Feb. 19 USC-UCLA game at Pauley Pavilion to have more of an NCAA tournament impact than a UCLA-Duke game there four days later. Me, neither. But that is the way this college basketball season is shaking down, so hang onto your Pacific rims.

How many Pac-10 teams could be looking at NCAA tournament bids now?

Beats me, but Princeton scored 32 points Saturday against Harvard, obviously getting itself in tournament condition.

Meanwhile, how about this wacky Pac-10 race?

“Well, it’s a dandy,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said, after a 19-point defeat Saturday against a UCLA team his Cardinal had previously pulverized by 48.

(Secretly in practice this week, UCLA Coach Steve Lavin drew the ol’ 67-point play on the chalkboard.)

Brevin Knight, alleged to be the best guard in the conference, personally turned over the ball nine times--one more and he could have had a double-double--as the 18th-ranked Stanford Cardinal played like a team that would have had trouble with the 1,000,008th-ranked Irvine Anteaters.

Two hours earlier, the worst-to-first USC Trojans--who went 0-9 last season in Henry Bibby’s brief term as coach--proved themselves to be smarter than the average California Bears, with an impressive 93-85 victory at the Sports Arena. Bibby is making a strong bid to be the conference’s coach of the year.

Something has clearly clicked for Stais “The Final Frontier” Boseman and the rest of the Trojans. They are playing like a team looking to be the conference’s top-seeded representative in the NCAA tournament, although winning the Pac-10 didn’t work for UCLA Coach Jim Harrick when last season’s bids came out, Arizona getting the West Regional while the Bruins went all the way to Indianapolis to get spanked by Princeton.

Is the Pac-10 strong from top to bottom, or mediocre throughout?

“I don’t think there’s a clearly dominant team. Five or six teams are still in the hunt,” Montgomery said.

“What I’d love to see now is Washington jump up and beat Cincinnati. I’d like to see Arizona take care of Tulane. I’d love to see UCLA play this kind of game against Duke. It would say something about the strength of this conference.”

USC is fresh out of nonconference opponents. With no conference tournament, the Trojans are putting all of their eggs in the Pac-10 basket. That recent blowout at Cincinnati’s hands did USC’s national stature no favors, but peaking at the right time is important, and USC could be peaking.

The team I saw against UCLA and Cincinnati was not impressive in the least. But the way USC handled Stanford and Cal tells me this team has enough talent to end UCLA’s long rule. Let’s see now if the Trojans keep or lose their focus.

UCLA remains America’s mystery team, champs one night, chumps the next. When these guys lose, they lose big and nasty. When they win, they remind you that Harrick’s teams often played consistently well during the season but poorly in the tournament, so perhaps Lavin’s team will do the opposite.

Lavin, recalling the 109-61 debacle at Palo Alto, told his team this time, “The last thing I want is for you guys to come out and try to win by 50. By 20, yes, but not because of revenge. The rankings for the tournament take margins into account, so a 20-point win versus a four-point win is significant. But forget that winning-by-50 stuff.”

Or win by 48? Stanford didn’t even get its 48th point Saturday until 7:27 remained in the game.

Said Montgomery: “You’ve got to disregard that first game. That was one of those fluke things you rarely see in sports, where one team can do no wrong.”

Here’s another fluke thing:

I am hot for UCLA-USC. I’m lukewarm about UCLA-Duke.