Howland: It’s Not a Blow for Pac-10

Pacific 10 pride was on the line when UCLA played host to Big East leader West Virginia on Saturday at Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins lost, 60-56, but Coach Ben Howland was not about to take the blame for any further tarnishing of his conference’s lagging national reputation.

“Part of our problem,” Howland said, “is that we have schools playing low majors or mid-majors on the road.”

Howland cited Oregon State’s season-opening loss at Tennessee Tech and Stanford’s losses at Montana and UC Davis as games that shouldn’t have happened.

“I have no idea why Oregon State did that,” Howland said. “I don’t understand why Stanford would play at Montana, at UC Davis. I’m against that for our conference schools.”

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Howland said freshmen centers Alfred Aboya (10 minutes) and Ryan Wright (one minute) played little because he felt they were ill-suited to guard West Virginia’s 6-foot-11 center Kevin Pittsnogle, who leads the Mountaineers in three-point shooting. Instead, long-armed senior Ryan Hollins played a season-high 30 minutes and held Pittsnogle to eight points.

Hollins said he and Pittsnogle became good friends in the summer of 2003 when both played for the USA Junior World Championship team.

“It seemed like we were always paired up,” said Hollins, who had season highs in points (11) and rebounds (eight). “We roomed together and practiced together. He’s a good guy and a great player. I kind of learned about him when nobody else did.”

Pittsnogle and his wife Heather are expecting a son any day and West Virginia had made arrangements to fly the senior home if his wife had gone into labor.

“It wasn’t a distraction at all,” Pittsnogle said. “That wasn’t why I didn’t score a lot. Ryan just played good defense.”

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While Howland held his tongue about the officiating, his on-court attitude made it clear he was not happy about the job the Pac-10 crew did.

Howland twice went to mid-court to confront officials and he was particularly vocal early in the second half when it appeared guard Arron Afflalo had been hacked twice on a driving layup attempt. Howland’s face turned bright red as he ran onto the floor.

“I can’t say anything,” Howland said.

But he did disagree when someone characterized the officiating as loose. “That wasn’t the word I was thinking of,” Howland said.