WSU path at Pac-10 intriguing

PULLMAN – This history-making season for Washington State could get a lot more interesting in the coming days.

By claiming second place in the Pac-10, the 13th-ranked Cougars will await the winner of Washington-Arizona State in the conference tournament quarterfinals.

And if WSU should get past that first game, it could get a rematch with No. 3-seed USC, who will play Stanford for a berth in the semifinals.

“It’s going to be a tough tournament no matter who you play. We look forward to the challenge,” the Cougars’ Daven Harmeling said after Saturday’s victory over USC. “The two seed should have an easy route, but there’s no way it is because you’ve got to go through Washington or Arizona State. The conference is just so tough top-to-bottom. It’s going to be a dogfight, like it was in the second half of this game.”

WSU is 7-1 against teams in its half of the bracket, the lone loss coming to Stanford in January. But either quarterfinal opponent poses significant challenges.

Washington beat Pac-10 champion UCLA on Saturday and played WSU down to the final possessions in Seattle on Valentine’s Day. The Cougars have won four straight against their archrival, but any chance the Huskies have of making the NCAA tournament depend on winning the league tournament, so they would have much at stake.

And Arizona State, losers of 17 out of 18 conference games, gave the Cougars fits in their last game. WSU won 48-47, but scored just 12 second-half points and watched as a potential game-winning 3-pointer rattled in and out at the final buzzer.

“When you come into the Pac-10 tournament, the season starts all over,” Taylor Rochestie said. “Any team on any night is just as competitive as everybody else. It’s important for us to go there and make a statement just for ourselves.”

After Saturday’s game, though, the most intriguing potential game might be the semifinal against the Trojans.

“I think we’ll see them again,” USC’s Lodrick Stewart said.