Nothing’s for Certain as Play Gets Underway

Lorenzo Romar is the coach of a Washington team that is the hottest in the Pacific 10 Conference, winner of eight consecutive basketball games and owner of a regular-season sweep of champion UCLA.

Of course, the Huskies also were swept by last-place Washington State.

Ben Braun is the coach of a California team that was the only Pac-10 team to beat each conference opponent at least once this season....

And suffered losses to eighth-place Arizona State and ninth-place Oregon State.

Ben Howland is the coach of a UCLA team that weathered a slew of injuries to win its first conference title in nine years....

And couldn’t beat a sixth-place USC team missing its second-leading scorer.

In a nod to such zaniness, conference coaches acknowledged Tuesday that there was no such thing as a certain victory in the Pac-10 tournament, which opens tonight at Staples Center with first-round games involving the conference’s bottom four teams.

“This time of year we’re not hoping for anybody, we’re just hoping to win our next game,” said Howland, whose Bruins are seeded No. 1 in the tournament for the first time since the inaugural one in 1987.

UCLA will play the winner of this evening’s game between Arizona State and Oregon State in a quarterfinal Thursday afternoon. The Bruins swept both teams during the regular season but remember all too well that they needed Jordan Farmar’s layup in the final seconds to pull out a victory over the Sun Devils in early January.

“Even though some people have separated themselves at the top, this is still a very dangerous conference,” Arizona State Coach Rob Evans said. “Anyone can beat anyone.”

Consider Oregon State. The Beavers defeated California and Arizona early in the Pac-10 season, went on to lose nine of 10 games following an injury to guard Lamar Hurd, then closed the regular season with a victory over an inconsistent Oregon team that appeared finally to be hitting its stride.

Things also didn’t go as planned for Arizona, the preseason conference favorite that lost more games -- and bodies -- than anyone envisioned. The Wildcats first lost guard Chris Rodgers to insubordination, then guard Jawann McClellan to academic issues and injury, and now guard Hassan Adams to a suspension after his recent arrest on suspicion of drunk driving.

Adams, who is out for the conference tournament but will be allowed to participate in the NCAA tournament, will be replaced in the Wildcat lineup by ... Rodgers, who last month was reinstated by Coach Lute Olson.

“We feel very confident going in,” said Olson, whose team plays Stanford in a quarterfinal Thursday afternoon. “It’s not easy when you lose your leading scorer, but I think our defense right now is very, very good, and if you play defense, you’ve got a chance against anyone.”

Arizona is among four Pac-10 teams -- UCLA, Washington and California are the others -- vying to improve their NCAA tournament seeding with a strong conference tournament run. Everyone else, with the possible exception of Stanford, needs to win the tournament to receive an NCAA tournament berth.

“I think for us, if you’re talking NCAA, I’d be shocked if we could get consideration if we didn’t win all three [games],” said Stanford Coach Trent Johnson, whose team’s NCAA chances were hurt by early-season losses to UC Irvine and UC Davis. “I think we have to win all three.”

Johnson declined to comment when asked whether reports that his team would decline a berth in the National Invitation Tournament were true, saying that if the Cardinal didn’t perform better than it did during a 21-point loss to UCLA in its regular-season finale, it might not deserve to play beyond this week.

Not everyone in the Pac-10 would consider the NIT a letdown; USC might need a victory Thursday against a Cal team that swept it during the regular season just to be invited. Of course, several Trojans have loftier goals in mind.

“That wasn’t my goal, to go to the NIT,” USC guard Lodrick Stewart said. “My goal was to go to the NCAA tournament. We’ve just got to win three games. I know it seems like a mission impossible, but anything’s possible.”

Especially in this conference.