POWDER BLUE, GOLD & MAROONED

With that haymaker win at No. 1 Stanford buying another 60-hour canister of breathing room, and tonight’s game against USC looming at the Sports Arena, and the walls still closing in around him, UCLA Coach Steve Lavin embarks on the most treacherous stretch of his five-year “interim” career.

The soap opera could be called “As the Westwood Worm Turns.”

UCLA basketball is at a critical crossroads, and what happens between now and mid-March could define the program for years.

You say Lavin was in a bigger fix last year, when he rope-a-doped his way out of a 4-8 Pacific 10 Conference corner to mount a Sweet 16 run?

No way.

Last year, it was UCLA vs. the world.

Last year, when UCLA trounced Maryland in the NCAA tournament, Athletic Director Peter Dalis took a victory lap through the press room, gleefully “tee-heeing” reporters who doubted his coach.

This year, Lavin has lost his administrative cover; he’s all alone--like Tom Hanks on that island.

You’ve probably noticed the UCLA brass has slowly distanced itself from its embattled coach.

It has been a dribs-and-drabs campaign, a circumstantial case oozing out between ballgames and newspaper press runs.

News item: Lavin and Dodger General Manager Kevin Malone caught in a second-rate phone prank with a UCLA recruit. Could it be a violation?

News item: Dalis concerned about sagging attendance at Pauley Pavilion. An indictment of shoddy play?

News items: Dalis admits to making informal phone calls to soon-to-be-ex-Boston Celtic Coach Rick Pitino. Crushing blow to incumbent’s ego?

News item: Two UCLA players said to be carrying a “D” average after fall semester. Program on the academic slide?

News item: Lavin helps son of a prominent high school coach gain admission to UCLA as a walk-on player. Looks shaky, given said high school coach’s star player will be UCLA’s starting point guard next year?

You sense a larger mosaic being drawn.

If UCLA is angling to make a coaching change, this sure looks like the year.

No matter your opinion of Lavin as coach, the Bruins can never make a dismissal look like a pure basketball decision--there must be just cause.

Because?

Because, most places, three Sweet 16 trips in four years is not grounds for termination.

Yet you sense UCLA’s frustration and urgency.

There is a window of opportunity here that may not pass this way again.

This is probably the only year UCLA has the chance to replace Lavin with Pitino, who many think would put the Bruins back on a national championship course for years to come.

“If UCLA got the right coach in there, nobody could beat them, nobody,” one current Division I-A coach said recently. “How can they play as bad as they play certain nights? One blowout at UCLA by 30 points should never be allowed.”

Pitino will be somebody’s coach.

He reiterated this week on ESPN he is not interested in UCLA but, for now, we’ll file that news in our pile next to Virginia Tech quarterback Michael Vick saying he’s not turning pro and Butch Davis vowing to remain football coach at Miami.

This is also the year UCLA has the funds to help buy out Lavin’s contract--he would be owed $765,000 if fired--thanks to the extra $500,000 the school earned from Oregon State’s trip to the lucrative Fiesta Bowl. Pac-10 schools share all bowl revenue.

The problem here is getting Lavin to go along with the plan.

Saturday’s victory over Stanford, in the wake of a 29-point loss to California, exasperated those Bruin fans who envisioned a Bay Area sweep as the beginning of Lavin’s end.

One prominent UCLA booster, who requested anonymity, guesses it will take a Final Four run to save Lavin’s job.

But who wants to put even that past Lav?

UCLA is 13-6 headed into tonight’s game against USC.

The Bruins then play at DePaul on Saturday, host Arizona and suddenly hot Arizona State next week, travel to the Oregon schools the week after before hosting Stanford and Cal in early March.

Not much fat in the meat of that schedule.

This could cut a number of ways:

* Lavin seals his fate by tanking down the stretch; UCLA misses the NCAA tournament.

* UCLA goes on another late-season tear, Lavin saves his job, and the one-chance-only Pitino card is burned.

Fallout: this year becomes next, Lavin welcomes another great recruiting class and the promise of tomorrow.

In other words, another season of manic Mondays: horrific losses countered by job-saving victories in another walk-the-plank 20-win season. A terrific mission statement for Boise State, no doubt, but perhaps no longer acceptable at a school that hangs 11 national title banners.

* UCLA splits its final 10 games, finishes 18-11, and wins a first-round NCAA tournament game?

What then?

That one’s in UCLA’s court.

Lavin, of course, is capable of anything. Twenty-five of his 44 losses at UCLA have been by double digits, 18 defeats by 15 or more points.

He has lost to Stanford by 48, to Duke by 36, to North Carolina by 41.

But, 14 times, he has followed a 15-point-or-more loss with a victory.

Bottom line: It’s Lavin’s fight now, for sure, with only his up-and-down kids in his corner, and we expect him to keep swinging until judgment day.

Yet, as clouds form over Westwood Village, you have to wonder how many Bruin fans are really rooting for another Lavin comeback?

LOOSE ENDS

Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery isn’t ready to concede that his team’s first loss, to UCLA last weekend, came at the perfect time.

“Is the loss at home to UCLA good?” Montgomery said. “Absolutely not, in no way shape or form.”

Silly coach. One of the last places you want to be late in the season is top-ranked and undefeated. No team has gone unbeaten since Indiana in 1976, so why bother? Who needs the headaches?

“There is pressure, it does mount,” Montgomery confessed.

We are only too happy to provide the research. Since 1978, only three schools that were ranked No. 1 in the final Associated Press regular-season poll went on to win the national championship. UCLA was the last school to do it, in 1995. The others were Duke in 1992 and North Carolina in 1982.

It is only important for Stanford to retain one of four top seedings in the NCAA tournament, preferably in the West.

Nip and tuck: Believe us when we say people in both states are keeping track: In the race for all-time supremacy, Kentucky holds a 10-game lead over North Carolina. Kentucky has 1,785 wins to North Carolina’s 1,775.

Ding: The second round of Pac-10 play begins tonight, and the hottest school in the conference is . . . Arizona State? Yep. After a 0-7 start, the Sun Devils own the Pac-10’s longest current winning streak at two games.

Ding II: Loren Woods, this is your wake-up call. The Arizona Wildcat who yelped the loudest about his team’s potential greatness has been its biggest disappointment. The 7-foot-1 senior center, who dominated the Pac-10 at times last season--remember those 14 blocked shots vs. Oregon?--has been gooey soft in the post this year. Woods’ numbers--scoring, rebounding and blocked shots--are down from last year, and he was benched for Saturday’s game against Oregon State after arguing with Coach Lute Olson during a Friday practice at Gill Coliseum.

Olson expects Woods, who sat out the first six games of the season for taking money from a coach, to get his act together.

“With this second round of league, I think you’re going to see more the Loren Woods that we saw a year ago,” Olson said.

Players have long memories: Last summer, Notre Dame star Troy Murphy grumbled about his playing time as a member of the U.S. Select Team, coached by St. John’s Mike Jarvis. Monday, Murphy scored 34 points in Notre Dame’s win over Jarvis’ Red Storm.

Don’t believe sophomore guard Jason Williams when he says he’s going to stay two more years at Duke. Williams is too good to last that long. He surely made the comments to get the media off his back.

Don’t believe the hype, either: St. John’s, Seton Hall and Connecticut had three of the best recruiting classes this year, but all three Big East schools are in jeopardy of not making the NCAA tournament. As a chemistry experiment goes, Seton Hall is a blown test tube. The Pirates fell to 12-8 after a weekend loss to lowly Rutgers. Eddie Griffin may be the nation’s premier freshman, but his selfishness has caused a rift between freshmen and seniors. Seton Hall is 2-6 since Griffin punched teammate Ty Shine in a halftime brawl Jan. 6. “People forget that Eddie won’t turn 19 until May 30,” Seton Hall Coach Tommy Amaker told reporters.

Frankly, we can’t wait until Griffin turns pro.

More on the Big East: In the new divisional format, only the top six schools in the East and West divisions make the postseason tournament. Entering the week, there was still a chance Connecticut (15-7, 4-5) in the East and Seton Hall (12-8, 3-6) in the West would be the odd teams out.

Last year, Conference USA boasted the No. 1 team and player in the country in Cincinnati and center Kenyon Martin. But nothing has gone right since Martin broke his leg in the conference tournament. Conference USA ranks ninth in this week’s RPI rankings, behind the Western Athletic and Atlantic 10 conferences. Neither of Conference USA’s divisional leaders, Cincinnati and Southern Mississippi, is nationally ranked.