Wins in Tucson hard to come by

The last time USC defeated Arizona in Tucson, Wildcats Coach Lute Olson spoke longingly of creating the kind of home-court advantage enjoyed by other Pacific 10 Conference teams that regularly played before raucous, sold-out crowds.

The date was Jan. 17, 1985, and Olson was in his second year at Arizona.

USC Coach Tim Floyd was an assistant under Don Haskins at Texas El Paso.

Olson went on to do OK with the Wildcats. They won a national title in 1997 and have played in front of 14,000-plus fans at the McKale Center for most of Olson’s 24 seasons, though the coach recently lamented that pockets of the student section had been empty for several games this season.

Nevertheless, No. 19 Arizona, 17-7 overall and 8-5 in the Pac-10, heads into tonight’s game against No. 22 USC (18-7, 8-4) in Tucson in an unusual position: looking up at the Trojans in the Pac-10 standings more than halfway through the conference schedule.

But then there’s the Wildcats’ winning streak over USC at home, which stands at 21 games.

“I don’t even think about that because I haven’t been playing here for 21 years,” Trojans senior guard Lodrick Stewart said. “That don’t really even matter. I look at the record as us, 1-0, because we beat them this year.”

USC defeated Arizona, 80-73, on Jan. 18 at the Galen Center during a stretch in which the Wildcats lost five of six games, including a humiliating 92-64 defeat against North Carolina at the McKale Center.

Arizona has since won three consecutive games, including a 77-74 victory over No. 13 Oregon last Saturday.

“That’s the Arizona team that I’ve been seeing the last couple of years,” Trojans junior guard Gabe Pruitt said of the Wildcats’ recent run. “They’ve really begun to jell.”

The Trojans probably need to win two and possibly three more games to secure their first NCAA tournament berth in five years, and a victory over Arizona on the road would go a long way toward that goal.

“We just want to get 20-plus” victories, Stewart said. “We just have to get big wins, knock off the ranked teams that we’re going to be facing coming up in the next couple of weeks.”

*

TONIGHT

at Arizona, 7:30 PST,

FSN Prime Ticket

Site -- McKale Center, Tucson.

Radio -- 710.

Records -- USC 18-7 overall, 8-4 Pacific 10 Conference; Arizona 17-7, 8-5.

Update -- Arizona has outrebounded its last 10 conference opponents and four of the last five by 10 or more. Freshman forward Jordan Hill has played a bigger role recently for the Wildcats, starting five of the last six games and averaging 10.7 points over that stretch.

ben.bolch@latimes.com