Men’s race muddied

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, January 31, 2006

With the Pacific-10 Conference season at the halfway point, league coaches say little has been decided in the race for the regular-season championship.

Seven teams are within three games of each other at the top of the standings with nine more games to play. UCLA leads the conference at 7-2, but is just a game ahead of California, Arizona and Stanford. Washington and USC are two games back and Oregon is three back. Only Oregon State (3-6 and losers of four of their past five), Washington State (2-7, losers of six in a row) and Arizona State (1-8) seem out of contention for one of the top spots.

“The Pac-10 race is very, very tight,” UCLA coach Ben Howland said. “There are a lot of teams that could end up winning the Pac-10. …Anybody could beat anybody.”

This week is a huge one for Arizona, which is at USC and UCLA. The Bruins won in Tucson earlier this season and a bad weekend by the Wildcats could knock them out of contention. But after this weekend, Arizona, which is 3-2 on the road, plays five of its last seven at home.

“There’s a lot of things to be decided,” Arizona coach Lute Olson said. “We feel pretty good about our position. …We’ll be in position if we get the job done this week to make things interesting in the second half of the league.”

Cal and Stanford also have difficult weekends, with both schools playing at the Oregon schools.

Among the top contenders, Arizona, Cal and USC each have five of their last nine games at home, perhaps giving them an advantage. Washington has five games on the road, and of those, only one – Arizona – is against a league contender. The Huskies get USC, UCLA, Stanford and California at home.

UCLA will be tested on the road with games at Washington, USC, Stanford and California, while Cal gets Stanford, Arizona, UCLA and USC at home.

Batting a thousand: Stanford coach Trent Johnson said his team had never had a chance to run the dramatic final play it used against Washington on Saturday, though it has practiced it often enough.

The play, called “Home Run,” calls for an inbounds pass to Matt Haryasz, who is to pass to a streaking guard for a jump shot. On Staurday, the Cardinal were down by three points with 2 seconds to go and the play worked perfectly, with Chris Hernandez being fouled by Justin Dentmon at the buzzer. Hernandez made all three free throws to send the game to overtime, where the Cardinal won the game.

“We never had an opportunity to use it,” Johnson said. “We do it in practice. The day before games, we review all our offensive sets and our late-game situations, and we do the best we can. …We were very fortunate, very lucky.”

Low on road back: Washington State coach Dick Bennett said Derrick Low should return to practice soon. Low broke his foot on Jan. 6, the day before the Cougars defeated Washington.

“He can start shooting this week without running or jumping in hopes that by next Monday, when his X-ray is taken, he might be given the green light to begin practicing,” Bennett said. “If that isn’t the case, it would be the following week.”

Benson bouncing back: California should get even bigger soon with the impending return of Rod Benson. The 6-foot-10 senior has been out four weeks with a torn meniscus in his right knee and will be cleared to do some “court work” next week, coach Ben Braun said. It’s still unclear when Benson will return to game action, but it’s expected to be shortly after he returns to practice.