Solomon Hill

When: 6 PST. Where: McKale Center, Tucson. On the air: TV: ESPN2; Radio: 570. Records: UCLA 15-4, 5-1, Wildcats 16-1, 4-1. Update: Arizona was picked to win the Pac-12. UCLA was picked to finish second. Both are chasing Oregon after losing to the Ducks. Because neither gets another crack at Oregon, the two games the Bruins and Wildcats play are crucial. This doesn't set up well for UCLA, which had trouble with Oregon's inside game. The Bruins were outrebounded, 40-31, by the Ducks, who were second among Pac-12 teams in rebound margin; Arizona is No. 1. The Wildcats do not have a player averaging more than six rebounds a game, but collectively they can control the inside.

SAN FRANCISCO -- By the slimmest of margins, Arizona's men's basketball team was picked ahead of UCLA to win the 2012-13 Pac-12 Conference, according to a poll of media members that was announced Thursday. The Wildcats, with 15 first-place votes and 403 total points,  narrowly edged UCLA, which received 16 first-place votes and 402 points. California was picked to finish third; USC , coming off a 6-26 season, was picked to finish ninth in league play.  The Times does not vote in polls or for awards.

Arizona's Solomon Hill appeared to be the only one who showed up ready to play Thursday, as he helped the Wildcats carve out a 29-23 halftime over UCLA lead in the quarterfinals of the Pacific Life Pac-12 tournament at Staples Center. While others stumbled through the half, Hill, who played at Los Angeles Fairfax High School, was sharp. He had 14 points in the half. He made five of seven shots and was three for four on three-pointers. Hill's three-pointer gave the Wildcats a 4-2 lead.

The majority of fans who left the Galen Center on Sunday were upbeat. But USC fans, who were heavily outnumbered in the Trojans' own arena, left beaten down, like their team, again. The Trojans suffered their fifth consecutive loss, 57-46, in front of an Arizona-thick crowd of 5,112 whose common chant of "U of A! U of A" thundered through the arena. "They didn't really feel much pressure throughout the game," USC Coach Kevin O'Neill said of Arizona. Not with a lead that fattened to 20 points in the first half and never winnowed to fewer than 10 in the second.

The West Regional championship game Saturday between Arizona and Connecticut at Honda Center will have more than a little New York attitude and swagger. Arizona's Lamont "MoMo" Jones and Connecticut's Kemba Walker , opposing point guards, grew up friends and spent two years as teammates at New York Rice High. "In practice we would go at it," Jones said. "He would score, then I would score. Elbows would be flying. Trash would be talked. " Bill Plaschke: Kemba Walker is the star of the tournament Now they will try to knock each other out of the NCAA tournament.

No. 5 Arizona (30-7) vs. No. 3 Connecticut (29-9), Honda Center, Anaheim, 4:05 p.m., Channel 2. How they match up: Arizona; Ht; Wt; Stats; P; Connecticut; Ht; Wt; Stats Derrick Williams; 6-8; 241; 19.5 ppg; F; Roscoe Smith; 6-8; 205; 6.5 ppg Jesse Perry; 6-7; 210; 6.4 ppg; F/C; Alex Oriakhi; 6-9; 240; 8.7 rpg Solomon Hill; 6-6; 226; 4.6 rpg; F; Tyler Olander; 6-9; 225; 1.9 rpg Kyle Fogg; 6-3; 180; 8.1 ppg; G; Kemba Walker;...

Derrick Williams grabbed the front of his jersey at chest level and pushed out the name on the front for everyone to see. Arizona was no longer just a nice little regional story from an afterthought of a conference. Not after the second-half smackdown the fifth-seeded Wildcats administered Thursday night at Honda Center during a 93-77 drubbing of top-seeded Duke in an NCAA West Regional semifinal. Arizona outscored the defending national champions by 22 points over the final 20 minutes, getting contributions from almost its entire roster following a first-half breakthrough by Williams in which the sophomore forward scored 25 of his career-high 32 points.

USC and Arizona have history together, several chapters' worth. Trojans Coach Kevin O'Neill was Arizona's head coach in 2007-08 ? his last job before he was hired at USC in 2009 ? and he was also an assistant here from 1986 '89. His son, Sean, a graduate assistant for USC, attended Arizona, as did Ryan Hennick, USC's director of basketball operations, and Adam Cohen, USC's video coordinator/director of scouting. But there's another chapter of USC-Arizona history that will be revisited Saturday night at the McKale Center, and it's one that hurts USC's staff more and more.