Harden fits in elite group

The four best freshmen in the Pacific 10 Conference will be in Los Angeles this week, all of them among the best in the country.

The title of least-talked-about goes to James Harden of Arizona State -- the only one from the Los Angeles area.

It's a Kevin Love-O.J. Mayo world sometimes, and Jerryd Bayless plays for an elite program at Arizona.

Harden took a different road after winning two state titles at Lakewood Artesia High, following one of his high school coaches and an ex-teammate to Arizona State.

"People were shocked," said Harden, the first McDonald's All-American to sign with Arizona State out of high school since 1984. "They were like, 'Why are you going to go there?' I still get questions, people asking me why I decided to go here."

He could answer them for a while with a ranking. After an upset of Xavier and a win over Arizona, the Sun Devils -- after finishing 8-22 last season, Coach Herb Sendek's first -- were ranked in the top 25, only to fall out after three consecutive losses coming into Thursday's game at UCLA and Saturday's visit to USC.

There is room for debate over which freshman is the most valuable to his team or who will be the best NBA player. But with each of them leading their team in scoring and all of them among the Pac-10's top eight scorers, there's no debating their importance in the league.

"I don't see any value in trying to compare those young men's excellence any more than I'd be able to answer a similar question about my three daughters," Sendek said. "They're all terrific players."

There have been nights when Harden, the Sun Devils' leading scorer at 18.8 points per game -- as well as their second-leading rebounder and assist man and the Pac-10 leader in steals -- listened in vain to hear his name mentioned in discussions about the nation's top freshmen.

"I did a couple of times. It didn't get called," said the 6-foot-4 Harden, whose most impressive statistic might be his shooting percentage -- he is making 54.6% of his shots as a guard.

Then came the Arizona victory, when he scored 22 of his 26 points in the second half and overtime. He heard his name that night.

"Yeah, I got a little smile," Harden said.

He has plenty of fans among Pac-10 coaches -- and in one former Pac-10 coach you might not expect, Jim Harrick, who coached Harden on the Pump 'N' Run Elite summer travel team in 2006.