Jan. 28--Steve Alford, the men's basketball coach at UCLA, had just finished his weekly news conference when he popped back toward a group of reporters.
"Hey," he said, excitement rising. "You guys want to talk to Jonah?"
Jonah Bolden, the forward from Australia, was walking by.
"It's Australia National Day today," Alford said.
It was a moment of levity in what Alford described as an increasingly tense Pac-12 Conference season.
UCLA will reach the midpoint of conference play after a game against Washington on Thursday followed by a game against Washington State on Saturday. The Bruins have 11 games remaining and will play each Pac-12 team once.
"There are a lot of leagues, if you looked at that ... there's four or five you feel pretty good about," Alford said.
That's not the case in the balanced Pac-12.
"It's going to be nerve-racking for coaches," Alford said, echoing a statement he has made several times recently. "That's for sure."
The conference race is so tight that each week UCLA players and coaches have wondered aloud whether their season had reached a crucial juncture. That refrain was heard again this week.
UCLA is tied for with Oregon State for ninth in the conference. Yet, the Bruins are only two games back of first-place Oregon and Washington.
