JAmes S. Wood / arizona daily star 2008

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When all this Pac-10 madness was just beginning, before ASU kept Stanford coach Trent Johnson from a good night's sleep and made Kevin O'Neill wonder how his Arizona Wildcats would win another game, the Cardinal held out a hand to the UA.

Actually, a pair of shoes.

Stanford offered UA guard Jerryd Bayless a replacement pair of sneakers last month at Maples Pavilion, during the first game of a season series that concludes today in Tucson. Bayless had been uncomfortable in a pair of new shoes, finishing the game with 3-of-12 shooting, later admitting he cost his team the game by making an issue of it.

Stanford's offer was a friendly but decidedly unstrategic gesture that could have cost the Cardinal its 56-52 victory had Bayless gotten back on track.

At least that was the way O'Neill viewed it.

"If I was Stanford I would not have given him shoes," O'Neill said. "No way I would give him shoes. The guy was playing awful."

Maybe Stanford was just too nice. Maybe the Cardinal didn't realize the impact the UA freshman guard can have when he's on, scoring 72 points over the past two games. Or maybe they didn't fully grasp what was going on during the game, the way the emotional Bayless spread his discomfort through the entire team.

"I guess his tape was too tight and his foot went numb," O'Neill said. "So he thought the shoe was broken. He's a young guy and he got us all going. He was asking guys on the bench, 'Give me your shoes! Give me your shoes!' Next thing you know, the whole thing turned into a fiasco."

That was only the third Pac-10 game the Wildcats had played. Since then, Arizona rattled off four straight wins before dropping two of its last three. The Wildcats have also lost starters Nic Wise and Bret Brielmaier to injuries that O'Neill suspects will hold them out probably until the Pac-10 tournament. They also played such porous defense against UCLA and ASU earlier this month that O'Neill has actually tinkered around slightly with his beloved man-to-man defense in practice.

"We had two of the worst man-to-man performances since the creation of the Northern Hemisphere," O'Neill said.

After the second of those two beauties, the UA's 59-54 loss to ASU on Sunday, O'Neill was so bummed out that he told his own team publicist, Richard Paige, that he didn't think the Wildcats could win another game.

"That's how you feel as a head coach," O'Neill said. "You feel the worst-case scenario. You look at the schedule and say, 'Oh, God, we can't beat anybody.' "

But by Thursday, O'Neill was given a reprieve. The Wildcats beat California 83-73, while O'Neill really only had to make foul-prone center Jordan Hill adopt some zone principles, since the Wildcats managed to keep California to 42 percent shooting.

Just after the UA's game, though, it was Stanford that fell into the ditch. The Cardinal had won seven straight games to tie UCLA for the league lead and jump into the national top 10 at No. 7, but was knocked off by ASU.

The Cardinal then boarded a gloomy bus that pulled into their Tucson hotel at 1:20 a.m., and Johnson stayed awake the rest of the night in what is hardly an unusual circumstance for a high-level coach.

But by Friday, even in a sleep-deprived haze following the Cardinal's morning practice at McKale, Johnson managed to put it all in perspective.

Stanford is still 20-4 overall and 9-3 in a league that's so competitive home teams win barely half of the time. A league that Johnson and several other coaches insist has nine teams good enough to win NCAA tournament games.

The Cardinal beat rival Cal on its home court. Survived the four-point win over Arizona despite "helping" Bayless. And beat ninth-ranked Washington State in overtime at Pullman.

So when it was suggested that the Cardinal has survived the season more than anything, Johnson grasped the term.

"That's the word I like right now," Johnson said. "Survival. We have survived."

So far. After today, there are still three more weeks to go in the Pac-10 regular season.