Oregon State is on difficult path

UCLA center Kevin Love considered the question seriously.

Is it more difficult for a team to go triumphantly through a college basketball conference season unbeaten or to stumble through all 10 or 12 or 14 or, in the case of the Pacific 10 Conference, 18 games and never steal a victory?

“It’s kind of like school,” Love said. “One of the hardest things to do is to get an A-plus, but you have to try really hard to fail in classes as well. I could show up to class a couple of times, do a paper and get a C or D. Not that I’d ever do that.”

The discussion arose because conference-leading and sixth-ranked UCLA (22-3, 10-2) plays host to 10th-place Oregon State (6-19, 0-13) tonight at Pauley Pavilion.

Oregon State won’t be receiving an A-plus this season, but the Beavers are threatening to get that F.

With Oregon State facing road games at UCLA and USC then a regular season-ending three-game homestand against teams hovering on the NCAA tournament bubble – Oregon, Arizona and Arizona State – it seems more likely they will become the first team since USC to go winless in a version of the Pacific Coast Conference.

According to NCAA records, USC finished Pac-8 Conference play 0-14 in 1975-76. USC records show the Trojans with one win because Oregon State forfeited a 78-61 victory over the Trojans for using an ineligible player.

Jim Hefner, USC basketball radio analyst and an assistant coach to Bob Boyd on that 1975-76 team, said there is a rhythm that losing brings and an attitude that’s hard to overcome. “Invariably the bad team is looking over its shoulder thinking, ‘What’s going to happen next? Missed free throw? Turn the ball over?’ You’re just always looking over your shoulder waiting for the bad things.”

Starting with records kept in 1904, about 195 teams in NCAA Division I history have gone unbeaten through a conference season that included at least six games, and 211 have gone winless in conference play.

This year, besides Oregon State, Rice (0-12 in Conference USA), Northwestern (0-13 in the Big Ten), North Florida (0-12 in the Atlantic Sun) and Colorado State (0-11 in the Mountain West) haven’t won conference games.

Oregon State sports information director Michael Collins is familiar with bottom-dwelling losers. “I was a student and working with the men’s basketball team at Drake in 1996-97 when we went 0-18 in the Missouri Valley Conference,” Collins wrote in an e-mail. “That team pulled off the feat again the next year. I will say this, it’s easier to go winless in a conference than go undefeated in one.”

Omari Johnson, an Oregon State freshman who came from a winning high school program at Los Angeles Dorsey High, said while that he has learned lessons about dutifully attending practice and working hard when there is little tangible reward, he feels an ache to win at least one game in the conference this season.

“I know this will make me a stronger person,” Johnson said. “But I think I’d be stronger if we won a game.”

The embarrassment of losing seemed to finally get to the Beavers last weekend when senior Marcel Jones (Santa Ana Mater Dei) and freshman Sean Carter were involved in verbal taunting against the Washington team at practice and with a cellphone voice message to a Washington player suggesting the Huskies meet the Beavers in a hotel parking lot before the game, which was won by Washington.

“There are frustrations for sure,” Johnson said. “It’s coming down to we just don’t want to go 0-18.”

As for Love, he remembers the Bruins led Oregon State, 43-39, at halftime of their 86-62 win over the Beavers in Corvallis last month. “If we have a team we think we should beat by 20 and we only beat them by five, six, seven points,” Love said, “that would be something we would run for in practice.”

TONIGHT

Oregon State, 7:30, FSN West

Radio – 570.

Site – Pauley Pavilion.

Records – UCLA 22-3, 10-2; Oregon State 6-19, 0-13.

Update – The Bruins have a six-game winning streak over the Beavers and are 45-7 against Oregon State at Pauley Pavilion. Sophomore swingman Seth Tarver of Oregon Stateleads the team in scoring with 11.1 points a game.

diane.pucin@latimes.com