Pacific 10 Conference

The Rose Bowl introduced the Big Ten to the Pacific 10 at a cocktail party in 1947 and it was love at first sight. It has been a wonderful relationship, except now, after all these years, the marriage is strained. The shared experience is usually terrific right up until opening kickoff. The battle of the bands, for instance, has always been competitive. There's no way you can claim USC's tuba player is better than Penn State's.

Oregon State's basketball coach said Tuesday he won't be available to answer questions on next Tuesday's Pacific 10 coaches' call. Reaction: This team went 0-18 in conference last season, finally scrounged up a win this month, and now this first-year coach is big-timing the media? This had better be really important. "I'll probably be standing somewhere outside," Craig Robinson joked. Robinson will go from hosting Washington on Saturday to toasting Washington on Tuesday.

Lorenzo Romar is pleasantly perched, middle row, in UCLA's 1995 national championship team picture. Seated to Romar's immediate right is Bruins head coach Jim Harrick, flanked by assistants Mark Gottfried and Steve Lavin. Romar, Gottfried and Lavin would all break off Harrick's branch and become Division I head coaches. Today, Romar is the only seated coach of the four in that photo who is still standing. "Just trying to hang on, man," Romar said Tuesday.

Jon Brockman scored 20 points, Isaiah Thomas sparked a decisive second-half spurt with nine points and 13th-ranked Washington defeated Stanford, 85-73, in the Pacific-10 tournament quarterfinals Thursday at Staples Center. Washington (25-7), which has won six in a row, will play 23rd-ranked Arizona State (23-8) in today's semifinals. The Huskies swept the regular-season series, winning the second game by three points in overtime. "Another tough opponent," Huskies Coach Lorenzo Romar said.

In each of her 14 previous seasons as a college player and coach, Nikki Caldwell participated in the NCAA women's basketball tournament. The former Tennessee guard played in the tournament four times and coached 10 times as an assistant at Virginia and her alma mater. But now in her first season as UCLA's head coach, she's facing long odds to keep that streak alive. Her Bruins must win the Pacific 10 Conference tournament to advance to the 64-team NCAA party.

Three weeks could not dull the sting. Three weeks had gone by and still UCLA players talked about losing at home to Washington State, a stumble that cost them a share of the Pacific 10 Conference title. "We owe them," forward Nikola Dragovic said. Consider the bill settled. Given a shot at redemption, the 15th-ranked Bruins made good on the opportunity by defeating Washington State, 64-53, in a quarterfinal game of the Pac-10 tournament at Staples Center on Thursday night.

One and not done. That means more to USC than just the hope freshman forward DeMar DeRozan will send a stay-in-school message when the season is over. For now, getting to the NCAA tournament is the only thing on the Trojans' to-do list after a 79-75 victory over California in the Pacific 10 Conference tournament Thursday. There were times when USC's NCAA hopes seemed ready to vanish into the Staples Center rafters.

Two thousand miles away, the NCAA selection committee is watching. The powers that be in college basketball have convened in Indianapolis to contemplate, discuss and otherwise haggle over putting March Madness in order, bracket-wise. And USC is giving them a little more to ponder. With a 65-55 upset victory over 15th-ranked UCLA in the semifinals of the Pac-10 tournament late Friday night, the Trojans put themselves squarely on the bubble, one step closer to sneaking into the NCAA tournament.

Several members of USC's men's basketball team sat behind the bench at the Galen Center, their improbable run to a conference tournament title and an NCAA berth a source of inspiration. The USC women's team had designs on a similar scenario. But Stanford would have none of it. The second-ranked Cardinal let USC hang around for part of the first half Sunday, then imposed its size and its will on the Trojans en route to an 89-64 victory in the Pacific 10 Conference tournament championship game.

USC football was anointed and exalted and ceremoniously slobbered on Thursday at another Pacific 10 Conference media day during which the Trojan Horses were picked to win the league in a Secretariat-type runaway. It marked the seventh (yawn) consecutive media day USC has been christened (boring) to win the Pac-10 title. What happened to going out on a limb?