Oregon's loss to California on Thursday not only slipped the Ducks back into a first-place tie with Arizona but also considerably tightened up the Pac-12 race with four or five games to go for everybody.
Only one game in the loss column separates first and fifth place in the conference, so there's bound to be some ties heading into the Pac-12 Tournament.
The Wildcats would lose a head-to-head tiebreaker with Oregon or Cal -- and probably any multi-team tiebreakers involving them -- so they may need to win the conference outright if they want the Pac-12 Tournament's top seed.
However, UA has a chance to even out the UCLA series if it can beat the Bruins at Pauley Pavilion on March 2, and a chance to sweep ASU when it hosts the Sun Devils on March 9.
Also, the Ducks still have to play Stanford at home and make the Colorado-Utah trip.
Bob Clark of the Register-Guard takes a look at the schedules of the top teams involved in the race for the conference's top spots. The top four seeds will get first-day byes in the Pac-12 tournament, though Colorado proved last season that having one of those is not necessary to win the thing...
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Still missing point guard Dominic Artis against Cal, the Ducks shot just 26.7 percent.
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Utah players banged on the door of Colorado's locker room before the Buffs finished their halftime talk and then CU took care of the Utes without Josh Scott.
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The Buffs could host both NCAA women's games and NIT Buffs games next month.
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After his team blew another first-half lead, OSU coach Craig Robinson wasn't sure if the Beavers really wanted to beat Stanford.
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