Swimming Lessons, Anyone?

As Cougars sink to new depths, don’t look for Stanford to throw out any life preservers, Carter Strickland says.

Paul Graham is used to challenges.

After all, he once taught high school swimming despite not knowing how to swim.

But now as the coach of Washington State, he has found himself drowning under the weight of all the losses. The Cougars have dropped 14 straight. Thirteen of those have been in the Pac-10. WSU has never started that poorly in the Pac-10. The Cougars were 0-13 before beating Washington in 1975, but that was in the days of the Pac-8.

And here comes Stanford. The No. 1 men’s basketball team in the country. The anvil that could sink the Cougars to new depths.

“They’re the best team I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” said Oregon State coach Eddie Payne after his team was ripped by the Cardinal. And Payne was around for the Arizona national champions in 1997.

“I was asked who was poised to make a huge run (in the tournament),” said Arizona coach Lute Olson. “I said Stanford, due to their experience and depth.”

“They are as good as anybody,” said Graham when asked where they rank against teams he has seen in his 20-plus years of coaching. “They have a great chance to win the national title.”

Washington State, on the other hand, is just trying to break into the top 200. The Cougars are currently 202nd in the RPI.

“For a team like ours that is having a tough time trying to find some wins, it is not going to be easy,” Graham said.

Especially considering that less than three hours after making that statement, Graham watched his third-leading scorer, Jan-Michael Thomas, suffer a season-ending injury to his right knee. A MRI exam revealed torn anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments. He’ll undergo reconstructive surgery next month.

Now the Cougars will start a walk-on point guard, Cedric Clark, against a team that is poised to set the NCAA record in field-goal percentage defense. Stanford is holding teams to 33.8 percent. Marquette set the record of 35.8 percent in 1994.

The Cardinal is also fifth in Division I in scoring defense, 57.2 points allowed per game, first in scoring margin (20.8 points per game), has won 10 straight and just beat Cal by 51 points.

All this leads to the obvious question: Has Graham ever been this big an underdog and pulled off the upset?

“No,” he said.

Desert duel

What was supposed to be an exchange of handshakes became one of blows Saturday. Following Arizona State’s 93-81 win over USC, the Sun Devils’ Awvee Storey and Tanner Shell and Jeff Trepagnier of the Trojans got into a scuffle. The Pac-10 quickly slapped probations on the three players. But the coaches, ASU’s Rob Evans and USC’s Henry Bibby, have continued to spar verbally.

Evans accused Bibby of hogging the practice gym and making ASU wait 45 minutes the day prior to the game. And the ASU players alleged that the USC players wrote insults and obscenities on the balls that were used for the Sun Devils shoot-around.

“The whole weekend was meant to create some turmoil and try to take our focus away,” Evans told the Arizona Republic.

“We won the basketball game. We had no reason to create an altercation,” he continued. “It would be stupid for us to start something.”

Sun Devils players echoed those comments, adding that USC was upset because the loss was their fifth in a row and almost certainly puts them in the NIT, not the NCAA Tournament.

Bibby shot back: “We’re not looking to fight. Their guys were taking shots at us all night.”

Two days later, Bibby told the L.A. Daily News the Sun Devils “low-bridged us and threw elbows … and they’re a very undisciplined team.”

The game featured 58 fouls, including a season-high 32 on ASU.

As for the obscenities written on the ASU basketballs? “To say we did that is an outright lie,” Bibby said. “We saw several balls on the practice rack that were marked up. We tried to clean them off. Nobody at this school - and I’ll bet my salary on it - wrote on those balls.”

Bibby was fired as an ASU assistant in 1985 after an NCAA investigation found a series of violations committed by the coaching staff.

Latest on UCLA

After Arizona handed UCLA its sixth loss in seven games and severely damaged any Bruins hopes of going to the NCAA Tournament, Wildcats forward Michael Wright said “Some of them didn’t seem to care.”

Apparently that’s the same attitude the Bruins take into practice. The L.A. Daily News reported that during the Friday practice prior to the Arizona game, the Bruins finished their practice with tricks on gymnastics apparatus stored in the corner of the gym.

“Jerome Moiso and Ray Young tumbled. Ryan Bailey tried vaulting - he’s no Mary Lou Retton - and Dan Gadzuric howled,” the paper said.

Moiso was then asked for his assessment of practice. “No comment,” the center said.

Moiso’s play during the desert swing was hardly worth comment either. He totaled nine points and five rebounds during the two games.

The Bruins were outscored 203-159 by Arizona and ASU. That’s the most points ever allowed by UCLA in back-to-back games. UCLA is also just two losses away from its first losing conference record in more than 50 years.

And it is doubtful that they will be invited to the NCAA. According to Earl Watson, they may not even go to the NIT if invited.

“I wouldn’t play,” the point guard said. “No one would play. That’s not our goal.”

All that apathy and losing has created a groundswell of support for the firing of Bruins coach Steve Lavin.

The Orange County Register reported that one fan was even starting a Web site called firelavin.com. The site is not online yet.

A buyout of Lavin’s rollover contract that extends through 2005 would cost UCLA $1.19 million.

Player of the week

Arizona State’s Eddie House has been named Pac-10 player of the week for the fourth time this season. The senior averaged 34 points and five rebounds in a sweep of the L.A. schools.

House, along with Arizona center Loren Woods and Stanford forward Mark Madsen, is the leading contender for Pac-10 player of the year honors.

A back injury likely will keep Woods out of Arizona’s game against Arizona State on Saturday and the 7-foot center could be out longer.

How much longer is a mystery.

The athletic department issued a statement Wednesday that Woods has “back problems and is currently receiving further consultation and treatment from UA team physicians.”