*--Updated with Ben Howland quotes.

In the immediate aftermath of USC's ugly but huge 65-55 win over UCLA late Friday at the Pac-10 tournament, Trojan coach Tim Floyd was asked if his team had done enough to play its way into the NCAA tournament.
Floyd reprised the spin cycle he'd employed when asked the exact same question a day earlier -- injuries, quality of the Pac-10, strength of schedule, etc., etc., etc.
And then, finally, he got to the heart of the matter.
"We've got a good basketball team," Floyd said, "but we're going to approach it like we need to win some more games."
That's how USC has played in the first two days of the tournament -- like a team that has to win.
That's why it will have the chance to win one more -- today at 3:15 p.m. against Arizona State -- and get into the tournament without any lobbying or spinning. Or, for that matter, prayer.
It may have been a slog through the mud, but when the final buzzer sounded, as far as USC was concerned, the result was a thing of beauty.
From the Trojan perspective, the night was all about defense.
"Real proud of our overall team effort on the defensive end," said Floyd. "... I thought Marcus Simmons' defense on (Darren) Collison out front was terrific."
Collison finished 1 of 9 from the field and had four points, along with three assists -- and seven turnovers. (He also brushed off a postgame question about an injury: "I'm never going to make excuses. I was perfectly fine to help my teammates out. We had a chance to win the ballgame, that's the most important thing." Ben Howland later said Collison's back was "really affecting him.")
It wasn't just Simmons playing defense.
"We were guarding," said Taj Gibson, who had 13 points and 11 rebounds before fouling out with 1:46 left. "We were getting through screens, we were denying the post, we were taking (away) the second-chance shots by rebounding the ball down. And we just got back. We didn't let Collison drive and kick.
"We were guarding tonight."
Still, that almost wasn't enough. That UCLA shot just 27 percent -- 19 of 70 from the field, a figure straight out of a 6-year-old-and-under league -- almost wasn't enough to assure USC a win. Because as much as there was good defense in this game, there was also a whole lot of bad offense.
"We really struggled to score," said UCLA coach Ben Howland. "Nineteen for 70 from the field I think really says it all for us. .... Some of the shots were really, really rushed. I think we took some shots too early. We didn't handle the pressure well and they did a really good job pressuring, and we need to execute better against pressure."
It would be hard to overstate how ugly this game could be. Let's put it this way: You'd see better basketball at a Clippers intrasquad scrimmage.
This was particularly true in the second half. At the TV time out with 11:10 remaining, the teams had combined for 29 possessions. Eight resulted in scores -- and 12 in turnovers. In one four-and-a-half minute stretch, there were turnovers on nine of 13 possessions, a stretch broken up by one basket (by USC's Daniel Hackett) and three missed shots.
If you think that's inefficient, consider UCLA's second half as a whole: 44 possessions, 10 for 41 shooting, 10 turnovers.
It was not only no surprise that USC led 57-42 with 2:44 to play, it was a wonder the lead wasn't more.
But then the Trojans did their very best to give the game away -- and the Bruins did their very best not to take it.
After that lead reached 15, here's what happened in the next 99 seconds:
Josh Shipp made a rare UCLA basket (57-44). USC turned the ball over, and Shipp and Alfred Aboya missed layups before Malcolm Lee was fouled and mad two free throws (57-46).
USC turned the ball over, and Aboya made one of two free throws (57-47), missed the second, and Jrue Holiday grabbed the rebound. Shipp and Holiday missed 3-pointers before Aboya was fouled and made one of two free throws (57-48), rebounding his own miss and missing a layup; USC's DeMar DeRozan made one of two free throws after getting the rebound, making it 58-48 with 1:40 to play.
UCLA's Jerime Anderson then scored on a layup (58-50). USC turned the ball over, with Aboya getting the steal and a dunk (58-52). USC pushed the lead back to 60-52 with two Dwight Lewis free throws, but Lee scored on a layup (60-54) after which -- stop me if you've heard this one before -- USC turned the ball over.
Holiday made one of two free throws on the ensuing possession (66-55 with 1:05 remaining) after which USC finally restored order with four DeRozan free throws.
Wild. Ugly.
But for USC, it didn't have to be good. It just had to be good enough, and it was.
History is written by the winners, which is why Gibson was able to contend, straight-faced, that USC "just stuck together; nobody panicked." That means that final flurry apparently featured the four calmest turnovers you'll ever see.
Still, USC did play some defense. And it did live to play another day.
Right now, the net result is way bigger than the sum of its flaws.

A fairly abbreviated postgame session for the late game, but then, it was a fairly abbreviated contest, at least in terms of how long it remained competitive: UCLA hammered Washington State with a 21-0 run in the first half to go up 25-5 and went on to win 64-53. The Cougars posed minimal resistance, but got close enough at the end that Ben Howland brought his starters back for the last 1:45. (He got a bit frosty when someone asked him about it, too.)
The two stories were that run, and UCLA's defensive effort. Naturally, Howland wanted to talk about the defense, which held Washington State to 30 percent shooting, just 20.6 percent (7 of 34) in the first half. The Cougars' trio of starting guards combined to go 5 for 29.
"I thought our guys really really came out and did a tremendous job," said Howland. "... That's definitely one of our best defensive games in quite a while, and that's what it takes to win in postseason play.
"I was really, really pleased particularly with Jrue Holiday's defense on Klay Thompson (who was 2 for 11 and had five points) and Darren (Collison)'s defense on (Taylor) Rochestie (1 for 11, 8 points)."
So why was this defensive effort so good?
"Just the mental preparation," said Howland. "I though Jrue Holiday's sense of urgency defensive was so good tonight. ... We doubled the post early, did it most of the first half. They did miss a couple of open shots, so we were fortunate there."
It was left to Collison to discuss the big start.
"I thought the team felt great today," he said. "I don't know if it was the later game or not, but I thought everybody was really in it, really enthusiastic before the game -- unlike the second time we played Washington State, our intensity was at a high level.
"We've said all along that when our intensity is at a high level, it's going to be tough to beat us."
That's a wrap for Thursday. Friday's semifinals are Arizona State-Washington at 6 p.m. and USC-UCLA at 8:30 p.m.

Attendance is clearly off at this year's Pac-10 tournament (despite some of the rather generous numbers we've seen on the box scores) and here's the utlimate proof: Staples Center PR maven Michael Roth just stopped at our section of press row to announce a special deal for Friday, if UCLA holds on to beat Washington State (at this writing, the Bruins are up by 17 with 8:33 left).
USC or UCLA students with a valid ID will be able to buy tickets for tomorrow's semifinals -- including, it appears, a USC-UCLA meeting in the 8:30 game -- for just $10.
Maybe that will fill some of the vast empty spaces in the upper sections -- though I believe Roth said the deal would be good for the available seats in every level.

So here's a knotty sportswriting etiquette problem ...
Made it back to my courtside seat about a minute into the UCLA-Washington State game, having posted that previous entry on USC's win over Cal, and found my seat occupied ... by USC coach Tim Floyd.
What, exactly, are you supposed to do at a moment like that? Kick him out?
Floyd apologized, saying he didn't know where he was supposed to sit to watch the game (but he didn't make any effort to move). So I grabbed the next seat over -- and the person who was supposed to be in that one grabbed another seat, etc.
After about 10 minutes, the USC coach departed, and we all slid back into our assigned seats with relief.

Briefly, since UCLA is about to tip off:
Doing its part to set up an all-local semifinal, USC hammered Cal on the boards -- with a 53-27 rebounding edge -- and held on to beat the Bears 79-75 after leading by 18 in the first half and 16 in the second.
"Rebounding was a big deal tonight," said coach Tim Floyd. "We get a point guard, (Daniel) Hackett, who goes back and gets nine boards. Taj (Gibson) gets 16, (DeMar) DeRozan gets 11 ... That was the big differential."
Gibson also had 21 points, DeRozan had 17 and Hackett had 15, but a couple of other players had huge impacts -- guard Marcus Simmons with his defense, and forward Leonard Washington, who made a big second-half contribution off the bench: eight minutes, six points, five rebounds.
"The way Leonard Washington came in and got big rebounds," said Gibson, "the way Marcus Simmons came in and played great defense on (Jerome) Randle the whole game, it was a full team effort."
Floyd said Simmons "was effective. I thought he got us going defensively in the first half, because point guards initiate defense, and he was at (Randle) at the 10-second line, and I thought everybody really responded. ... Randle got it going a little bit in the second half -- he's a terrific ballplayer -- but (Simmons) filled a role for us tonight."
Randle had seven points in the first half and finished with 18.

A few quotes from press conferences following Washington's 85-73 win over Stanford:

The fatigue factor -- with Stanford playing for the second time in 18 hours -- was a big topic of conversation:
Washington coach Lorenzo Romar: Hopefully you work hard enough that you earn the first night off and get to play someone who just played. That is kind of your reward for doing a good job in the conference. ...
"It seemed like toward the end there were a couple of air balls that came up short and maybe that (fatigue) was the case. I thought earlier in the game as we were going up and down that maybe that would be in our favor, and it was."
Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins: I thought it was a quick turnaround for us, but that is our responsibility. That is the seed we deserved. ... Our guys responded the best they could. We tried to get rest last night. We played a fast, athletic team today. Of course I think the wear and tear of that type of game can take its toll on you.
Stanford guard Anthony Goods, discounting fatigue: It just came down to shot selection. If they were shooting shots that we were shooting, they would have come up short, too. I thought we resorted to the 3 a little too early. it took its toll on us. They were able to come down and drive to the basket, get fouled and hit their free throws."

Conserving itself for Friday's game with Arizona State, Washington played no one for more than 32 minutes.
"If we could afford to do that, then that is what we were going to do,' said Romar. "We tried to substitute with that in mind. We do have a pretty deep bench and we can go to our bench and give guys breathers."

Arizona probably needed a win or two at the Pac-10 tournament to secure a place in the NCAA tournament. Coming in at 19-12, the Wildcats were listed as one of the "last four in" the field in ESPN's Bracketology projection, which means they're extremely vulnerable to the whims of the selection committee -- and to tournament upsets that allow other teams to sneak in while knocking projected champions into at-large status.
So after losing 68-56 to Arizona State in a quarterfinal, the NCAA tourney was the primary topic of postgame discussion for the Wildcats ...
Head coach Russell Pennell: "It is just out of our hands. We'll be just like everyone else sitting there watching on Sunday. We hope for the best. Righ tnow, you can take a piece of paper and a pen and drive yourself crazy if you want.
"It just boils down to, at the end of the day, is our body of work good enough?"
Guard Nic Wise: "We're going to try to do everything to take your mind off it. We're disappointed, but I know we are going to go back and look at film and see what we did wrong. (NCAA) tournament or the NIt, no matter what, we are still going to be playing."
Forward Chase Budinger: "Last year we were kind of in the same situation. Sitting there on Sunday last year, seeing our team come up at the very end, was very stressful. It does kind of feel the same as last year."

And a few comments from Arizona State, which advances to play today at 6 p.m.:
Forward Jeff Pendergraph: "It feels good to be able to get back on the bus and go back to the hotel to rest, not to go home. To know that you have another game coming up against another good opponent is good. To send somebody else home for a change is a nice feeling."
Arizona State had not won a Pac-10 tournament game since 1990, going 0-6 since the tournament was revived in 2002.
Guard James Harden, on sweeping three games from Arizona this year and winning five straight overall: "For me it feels great, never losing to U of A in my career so far. They had the upside for most of the years so it just feels great and it is special to be a part of that. They are a great team and a pwoerhouse and we are working to make this team a powerhouse as well."
Coach Herb Sendek, on keys to the game: "As much as our shooting percentage (25 of 48, 52 percent, compared to Arizona's 22 of 62, 35.5 percent), I thought key for us was not turning the ball over. Playing against their extended defenses and presses and only having six turnovers I thought was really important, because of you turn the ball over, not only does it open the door for them but it really feels their transition game and makes shots that are almost impossible to defend."

Mike Dunlap has kept a fairly low profile in the media since he turned down the Arizona head coaching job this season, low enough that one Tucson columnist called him the "Mysterious Mr. X." In large part, this was a matter of deferring to Russ Pennell's role as the public voice of the team, giving his standing as interim head coach.
And so Dunlap had given one interview to his hometown paper in Fairbanks, Alaska, and was quoted in one late-season story in the Arizona Daily Star confirming that there was no chance he'd return to Arizona next season.
So I figured our little sit-down -- which came Wednesday night at Staples Center -- was significant enough to post some of the material that didn't make it into Friday's column, starting with our discussion of his two years in the NBA, as an assistant coach of the Denver Nuggets.
Here's the transcript of that portion of the conversation:

Question: We haven't really talked since you left the Nuggets. How do you look back on the NBA experience, and how does that fit into this enhancing the resume and moving on?
Answer: That's a good question.
One is that it enhances the resume, because technically it teaches you how to handle the pick and roll game, which is a trend that has hit college and now high school. So I tried to get ahead of the trend, saying, hey, I don't know a lot about that, so I wanted to go up there and go to graduate school.
"And I was very clear with the Nuggets that I would transition out of there in three years. Well, I did it in two, because one is I had what I needed on an information basis, and second is I had an opportunity to go to one of the top programs in America, learn under another guy that's an icon, and so I was fortunate to make the transition out of there.
I enjoyed it immensely from the learning aspect. I knew the day that I got in there that there were some compromises that needed to be made, and I made them quickly, and never had an altercation with a player or any situation that was anything more than a little bit uncomfortable. You learn quickly how to handle yourself up there.
And also it's your network. When a college player is working with you, you know you've been to the other side of the fence, and so your credibility with your college and your high school players and parents, and AAU guys, goes up twofold. When you throw that out, I don't care if it's with Houston or the Nuggets, and you have that moniker, it's for a lifetime.
And that was part of rounding out my resume, which I continue to do. Internationally, Division III, II, I, NBA, that's what I wanted to do, because No. 1, first and foremost, was the learning. I wanted to learn, and I'll continue to be a life learner, because I want to be a better coach.

Question: Did you find that the kids did respond to you differently because of the NBA experience?
Answer: Yeah, I mean, you have to make an adjustment. You have to prove yourself every day in the NBA. That's a little bit different. Because they're cynical, they've had eight to nine coaches, some of them, so you can ask somebody to do something, but they're going to test you every day, to see if your knowledge base is what it is, and also, will you be there the next day and the next day, or are you a gladhander. And do you want work with Melo [Carmelo Anthony] because of the aura around him? Or do you want to work with him because you can help him?
So that's just initiation from innocence to experience. You have to kind of fight through those gates, and once you get through those gates and Melo or AI [Allen Iverson] or Kenyon Martin sees that you're for real, they'll tell everybody else, hey, this guy's knowledgeable and he can really help you. Because they have a lot of pride up there, they really do want to win, and if you don't make your mistakes during the game, they'll listen to you. And I think by the time I was done, I had that stamp on me that I was legit. And so that was a wonderful test for me.

Question: But it always seemed to me like college was the environment for you.
Answer: Yeah, because you get to teach more. The fact of the matter, it's more in my DNA to be in the college game. All that being said, I could easily transition back to the NBA and enjoy it, because I know how to get to places where I enjoy things. I'm a person that doesn't position myself in positions of political confrontation or ambition, to preen and do the things that perhaps would have gotten me a higher job that what I'm at. But I've been one of the happiest guys around and I've had tremendous autonomy and freedom because I've taken a certain tact.

A few other Dunlap comments of note:
On being a "lame-duck" coaching staff: "Well, that's a perception. I don't agree with lame-duck at all, because a lame duck is only that if accept that jacket. And we've disproved that already. We've disproved it on the front end, in the middle, and on the back end. We've had their undivided attention because we've never treated it like that.
"Where you're empowered in your last year of anything, whether it's the president or the last year of coaching, is that you have tremendous leverage individually because you can disciple and do the things and be very cavalier if you so choose, about how you look a person in the eye, and your expectations academically. We've suspended players on discipline issues, et cetera. My thing is we've just strategically, like a corporation would do, say OK, what are our strengths as coaches, and what can we get out of this group.
"So we went about strategically our theme and what we wanted and we've received it. Whatever we get tomorrow or the next day, there are no regrets whatsoever."

On his role on the coaching staff, and Lute Olson's reasons for bringing him in before Olson retired in October: "I'm the disciplinarian, I'm the one who's in charge of academics and I'm the one who strategically took the defensive side of the ball. And those things were what Coach Olson wanted. He wanted a disciplinarian. It wasn't his cup of tea at his age. He wanted someone who was going to get the best out of them defensively, which they weren't getting, quite frankly. And third, he needed development of young players. And those are things that are right up my alley. So I didn't try to get beyond my role declaration once I wasn't going to be the head coach when he stepped down.
"Coach Olson's made it very clear that he feels the University of Arizona's made a mistake, but that being done, we didn't spend any time talking about the past. And I made it a mission of mine to make sure that I communicated with the athletic director weekly -- go into his office and let him know that I was a big boy, I could handle what they did in that capacity. Because I understood it was bigger than me. It was the program. And also I have an obligation to Coach Olson to behave appropriately because he hired me and entrusted me, regardless of whether I got what I wanted or not. And I think that mission has been accomplished."

And two more thoughts on where he's headed:
-- "The future's bright. It'll go on and I'll have opportunities that are very positive.
"So even though the old saying goes delayed gratification doesn't necessarily mean gratification denied, and I won't be denied. I'll get what I want eventually."
-- "It'll either be in the NBA, as an associate head coach in the college game, or I'll get my own program. And ultimately, I want my own program. ... I'll fit myself into one of the three categories, and those opportunities will come. But I can't also just kind of sit around. I've got to be aggressive about going out and getting my next job within the next three weeks."

LOS ANGELES -- Well, what do you know? The first day of the Pac-10 tournament has a reason to exist after all.
That's assuming you think there's a need for the tournament at all -- which, personally I'm not, thinking there was nothing wrong with making 18 regular-season games determine a bit more than seeding in a four-day free for all.
But, since the tournament probably isn't going any place, the best we can hope is to find a reasonable format, or at least a reason for the current format.
Stanford, by beating Oregon State 62-54 in Wednesday's tournament opener, provided at least a sliver of justification.
A quick history lesson: When the tournament was resurrected back in 2002 -- after a 12-year break which no one really seemed to mind -- one of its saving graces was that it was an eight-team event, meaning that a team had to exhibit at least a minimum degree of competence to make it to Staples Center.
At the time, presidents of the conference schools wanted to minimize time away from school. The bonus was that they minimized the number of bad teams cluttering up the tournament.
In the four years of the eight-team tournament, the best record for a team among the disinvited belonged to Cal's 2005 squad, 6-12 in conference and 13-16 overall. Really, if you can only win a third of your conference games and are under .500 overall, do you deserve to have even the remotest chance of getting into the NCAA field?
But in 2006, the tournament was expanded to include all 10 teams, adding a fourth, play-in day in which the bottom four teams competed for the right to get swatted by the top two. Either collegiate attendance became less important or a four-day, 10-team tournament became more lucrative; we'll leave the answer to your imagination.
The upshot was that the last two years, the tournament's first day has been graced (or disgraced) in 2007 by an Arizona State team that was 8-22, 2-16 in the conference and last year by an Oregon State team that was 6-25, 0-18.
Not surprisingly, both those teams made one-and-done visits to Staples. In fact, in the first three years of the 10-team format, the No. 9 and No. 10 seeds were a perfect 0-6, making you wonder anew who thought their inclusion was a good idea, and why.
Well, on Wednesday, that all changed. Ninth-seeded Stanford became the first of the bottom-dwellers to advance to the second day. Of course, this "accomplishment" does come with something of an asterisk, since Stanford came in at 17-12 (6-12 in the Pac-10) while the Meager Beavers were 13-16 (7-11).
Still, for the first time, first-day form didn't hold. You can decide for yourself whether that makes the day (and format) worthwhile.