Cougars’ trap can’t hold them

The best thing that happened to UCLA’s undisputed Pacific 10 Conference basketball champions here Thursday night was halftime.

They were in the middle of an emotional frenzy. Somebody else’s. Washington State’s, to be exact. They were prime steak in a Cougar cage.

This was the biggest basketball game to come to these parts, maybe since the two-handed set shot. Among the sparse scattering of banners hanging from the ceiling -- commemorating NCAA and even NIT appearances -- is Washington State’s 25-1 team. In 1917. That is its only national title, and it was awarded after the fact, by the Helms Athletic Hall of L.A., which was once owned by a bakery.

But when you are Washington State basketball, you take what you can get, and your followers get absolutely crazy when you have a team that was the school’s first to break into the national top 10. That was a week or so ago, and even with a slide in the polls down to No. 13 going into this game, this team has the eastern part of the state of Washington all a dither. It will be in the NCAA tournament, that’s a certainty -- and a rarity.

Also, Washington State actually had a shot at a share of the Pac-10 title. All the Cougars had to do was beat UCLA and USC here Saturday, and have the Bruins go to Washington and lose.

Thursday night in Pullman was not only a huge deal, but a great chance for Washington State. The fact that it was against UCLA, which loses to the Cougars every decade or so and won here last year, 50-30, made things even more juicy.

So Washington State loaded up, stacked the decks. If there were emotional steroids, they’d have passed them out at the door.

The students were in their seats two hours before the game. Almost all wore red, most wore T-shirts that said “Believe.” After what has happened here this season, their team now 23-6, a better shirt would have been: “Can You Believe This?”

Much of what has happened here has revolved around the success of first-year Coach Tony Bennett, who doesn’t sing and hasn’t left his heart in San Francisco, but can coach like crazy. A large percentage of the people who vote on these things talk as if Bennett is their pick for national coach of the year.

He is 37, and a former college player who still holds the NCAA record in three-point shooting percentage with .497 at Wisconsin Green Bay. He has replaced his father, Dick, one of the top coaches in the history of the game, who retired to make way for his son after building a doormat program here into some measure of respectability. In doing so, Dick Bennett, in three short seasons, became a beloved Cougar.

And so, why not pour a little more gasoline on the fans’ fire with a pregame ceremony in which Washington State made Dick and his wife, Ann, honorary alums?

By the time the Bruins got onto the court, Washington State’s players were two feet off the ground and Coach Ben Howland, attempting to keep raising the level of his already lofty program at UCLA with a second straight undisputed conference title, found himself and his team in an ambush. There is home-court advantage, and there is a level more. Washington State had that level more going for it.

When it was over, Tony Bennett called it a “tournament quality” game, and he was right.

When a three-point shot with 32 seconds left in the half by Washington State’s Robbie Cowgill settled into the bottom of the net for a 23-22 lead; and when UCLA’s set play to take the clock down to the end of the half for a last shot failed and Cowgill got the rebound at the buzzer, most of the 11,618 in Beasley Coliseum were convinced their T-shirts had it right. They were screaming and stomping.

And believing.

Had the Bruins been under lesser guidance than that of Howland -- that’s certainly been the case many times over the years between John Wooden and now -- the Bruins would now be talking bravely of going to Washington on Saturday and winning the title there.

Instead, with Cougar emotions turned down at halftime, UCLA went on a 9-0 run, took advantage of some uncharacteristically sloppy defense by the Cougars in close and hung together when Washington State got its second wind of adrenaline and cut the lead to four late in the game.

Winning here was not easy. Winning here was a real test, a springboard to even better things ahead at tournament time. Nobody knew that better than Howland.

“If you told me these guys [Washington State] would end up in the Final Four, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised,” he said.

A more likely scenario is that the Bruins get back there. Howland has said all along that last year’s loss to Florida in the final was not one of those OK, nice tries. Like USC in football, UCLA basketball doesn’t think Avis.

“The thing I really like about this team,” Howland said afterward, “is how tough it is mentally.”

Good thing, because the Bruins needed to be Thursday night.

Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.