Kevin O'Neill "Tremendously disappointing"

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This was the easy plan for Kevin O'Neill to cope with the Arizona Wildcats' 67-66 loss to Stanford on Saturday:

1. Take heart in what he called a "no quit" effort from the Wildcats, an effort that could help Arizona succeed this week on another crucial trip to Washington and Washington State.

2. Remember that the UA was again without two starters, and is 2-5 when either Jerryd Bayless or Nic Wise is missing.

3. Fire off a game tape to the Pac-10 offices, noting how — in some players' minds — a late call against Kirk Walters' defense and a non-call on Chase Budinger's final shot made an impact.

But the UA interim head coach did none of that. He noted that officiating calls are "part of the game" and declined to comment further.

Instead, he mostly just took a deep sigh and tried to look ahead.

Saturday's "loss bothers me more than any loss we've had all year," O'Neill said Sunday. "I loved their effort, but it was tremendously disappointing for our players to work that hard and not be able to get a win."

He knew that beating seventh-ranked Stanford would have all but cemented the Wildcats' NCAA tournament chances and possibly even given them a chance to earn a preferential seed and location with another big win or two in the final month of the season.

Instead, the Wildcats are left with the task of splitting their final six games if they want to break even in Pac-10 play, realizing that an 8-10 conference mark could put them on the NCAA tournament bubble no matter how strong their RPI.

Arizona will have to do it, too, with four of those final six games on the road and one of the two home games coming against first-place UCLA.

The only game that the Wildcats will be definitely expected to win will be on March 6 at Oregon State, but even the troubled Beavers gave Arizona a decent effort in the UA's 76-63 win on Jan. 3.

"Everybody's good," O'Neill said of the UA's opponents. "We're 6-6 and we need to win two or three games down the stretch here and see what happens in the Pac-10 tournament. We'll take it a game at a time. That's all we can do."

O'Neill is not expecting either Wise (knee) or forward Bret Brielmaier (shoulder) to be back before the end of the regular season, though there is a chance they could play on the Oregon trip.

So, again, it looks like Bayless and Budinger get all the shots they can take, Jawann McClellan gets all the minutes he can stand, Jordan Hill gets to stay until his fifth foul is called and everybody else gets to plug holes.

On Saturday, the formula nearly worked. Bayless carried the Wildcats on his back again, surpassing the 30-point mark for the third straight game, while Budinger came back to life in the second half.

Budinger returned from two off games and a quiet first 32 minutes Saturday to hit some big shots down the stretch, finishing with 23 points.

"Hopefully I got my rhythm back in this game," said Budinger, who was a combined 5 of 23 from the field in two previous games. "I knew I needed to step up. Jerryd really needed some help out there."

In small ways, the UA bench helped Bayless out, too. Jamelle Horne started at power forward for the second straight game, and with Hill managing to collect five fouls within 12 minutes in the second half, Fendi Onobun and Kirk Walters both easily surpassed their average minutes played.

"Chase struggled in the first half but came back in the second," Bayless said. "Jawann hit that big (three-point) shot from the corner. Fendi and Kirk played some big minutes off the bench."

It was enough that Bayless, at least, felt better. A week after saying the Wildcats needed to get on the same page and play better team defense following a 59-54 loss to ASU, he held some optimism heading into the UA's final six games.

"We've just got to figure out a way to win," Bayless said. "We've got to figure a way to do that. The effort was there. We fought the whole game. I think everybody saw that."