California Teams

Ben Braun is right about one thing: You don't know if his Cal basketball team already has reserved itself a spot in the NCAA tournament, and neither does he.
One side of the room argues the Golden Bears have done enough already to have their ticket punched, with eight wins in their past 11 games, a road win over Pac-10 champion UCLA, a recent overtime loss to those same Bruins, plus at least once victory over each conference school, adding up to 18 overall wins and a third-place finish.
There's another crowd that points out the Bears have just the one "good" road victory all season, suffered embarrassing home losses to No.9 seed Oregon State and No.8 seed Arizona State, and are floating around in computer limbo with an unimpressive RPI rating of No.59.
So as the Bears (18-9, 12-6) prepare to face USC (17-12, 8-10) today in their quarterfinal-round Pac-10 tournament game at Staples Center, Braun won'texpend a lot of sweat trying to figure out what is unknowable until Sunday's NCAA selections.
"We don't know," he said. "We have to go out and play the game."
Among today's four quarterfinal games, it's safe to say no team has more to gain — or lose — by a single outcome than the Bears.
Sure, any team that runs the table secures the league's automatic NCAA bid. Short of that, Cal has more at stake than anyone else, because no other Pac-10 team is teetering on the fence.
UCLA, Washington and Arizona are in — no one's arguing the point. The other six are out — barring the automatic bid — and no one's debating that, either.
Cal sophomore center DeVon Hardin of Newark, who had 10 points and 11 rebounds Saturday in the 71-60 win over the Trojans, said the Bears aren't taking anything for granted.
"It's a new game, a new day," said Hardin, named to the all-Pac-10 honorable mention list this week. "They're the same team, but they're going to take a different approach, I'm sure."
Beyond that, Hardin said he's not trying to figure out where the Bears fit into the NCAA picture. "I leave that up to the coaches to stress about," he said.
The source of stress to USC coach Tim Floyd is the question of how to defuse Cal's size advantage. The 6-foot-11 Hardin and 6-8 Leon Powe combined for 32 points and 22 rebounds Saturday, and the Bears outscored the Trojans 32-12 in the paint.
"It's not something we're going to be able to cure between today and game time," Floyd said early in the week. His lineup includes one big man and four perimeter players.
If he goes with a second post player, Floyd said the tradeoff is the loss of a scorer. The status quo means trapping on defense, which weakens the Trojans' ability to keep Cal away from the offensive boards.
"It's a team we struggle matching up with," Floyd said.
From Cal's point of view, the matchups last Saturday required Hardin to defend USC's quick 6-6 sophomore wing Nick Young.
"That was fun," Hardin said. "He's an excellent player — a future NBA player. He has a spin move that's hard to guard."
Hardin did a nice job, holding Young to 12 points — five below his average — on 4-for-13 shooting.
Powe said he volunteered for the assignment last weekend, but the coaching staff didn't want to risk him getting into early foul trouble. Would the Bears switch things up today?
"At Washington, I chased a couple fools around," Powe said of his past forays out to the perimeter. "But DeVon did pretty good."