Pac-10 Goes to New Depth

Lute Olson said it clearly: This is the strongest he has seen the Pacific 10 Conference in his 22 years as Arizona’s basketball coach.

“Top to bottom, in my opinion, it’s the best,” Olson said Thursday at Pac-10 basketball media day. “There’s no gimme game. Everybody’s pretty good, and the road schedule is brutally tough. I won’t be surprised if the winning team has five losses.”

According to preseason rankings released Thursday, Arizona is supposed to be that winning team, followed by Washington, Stanford, Oregon, and then UCLA and USC fifth and sixth.

Concern about the strength of the league caused some squirming in the conference after last year’s NCAA performance -- only three teams made the tournament and none was left after the first weekend.

“I’d be disappointed if we had fewer than four or five teams this year,” second-year UCLA Coach Ben Howland said. “It’s a stronger, more experienced league.”

The league will have 39 of its top 50 scorers back. Olson has 10 players from last year’s 20-10 team, including seniors Channing Frye and Salim Stoudamire, both candidates for league player of the year.

“In this day and age, senior leadership can make a big difference at tournament time,” Olson said.

Although the Pac-10 had no teams in the 2004 Sweet 16, it does have one new coach who was involved. Trent Johnson, who led Nevada to upsets of Gonzaga and Michigan State and into the third round, has replaced Mike Montgomery at Stanford. Johnson downplayed any suggestion that he was under pressure to continue Montgomery’s success.

“I’ve told the guys they have to make up for a drop of about nine levels in coaching,” Johnson said.

The highest-rated player in the league is Arizona State’s Ike Diogu, a junior forward and the first preseason All-American in Sun Devil history.

“Impossible to guard with one person,” was the description most often applied to Diogu on Thursday even though his team was picked to finish last.

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Ike Williams, a sophomore walk-on at UCLA, was suspended indefinitely after he was briefly detained by police Sunday night after an altercation outside a Westwood apartment building. According to the Los Angeles Police Department, no arrests have been made. Howland said Williams was still enrolled at UCLA but had no other comment.

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UCLA fans will get their first look at the acclaimed freshman class tonight when the Bruins play Simon Fraser, an NAIA school from Burnaby, Canada. Howland expects improved guard play, thanks to freshmen Arron Afflalo of Compton Centennial High and Jordan Farmar of Woodland Hills Taft High. *

Howland said senior Dijon Thompson, who cut his right hand during practice last month, would have the stitches removed in time for tonight’s game.... Saturday, John Wooden will join Howland in a clinic for area coaches. Wooden will give a presentation at 9:45 a.m., and attendees will watch a UCLA practice in Pauley Pavilion. Interested coaches can contact the UCLA men’s basketball office.

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USC Coach Henry Bibby said that he had talked with ineligible point guard Rodrick Stewart about the sophomore possibly redshirting this season.

“A kid like that, a 6-foot-4 point guard, I’d love to have for another year,” Bibby said.

Stewart, who started 17 games as a freshman at the point last year and averaged 4.4 points and 2.1 assists, is academically ineligible for the fall semester and could lose valuable time while freshman Gabe Pruitt and senior Derrick Craven battle it out for the position.

Times staff writer Paul Gutierrez contributed to this report.