Citizen Staff Writer

By STEVE RIVERA

srivera@tucsoncitizen.com

LOS ANGELES – No one crowns a champion midway through a season, so UCLA coach Ben Howland is the first to tell you plenty of basketball is left to be played.

The first-place Bruins are 8-2 in the Pac-10 and 18-4 overall.

And don’t count out fourth-place Arizona, despite its recent slide.

“The race is a long way from over,” said Howland, whose Bruins host UA at 2 p.m. today. “(Arizona) has a very good team. Hassan Adams is a great player and a warrior. I voted him first-team all-league player two years ago over (Andre) Iguodala.

“He’s been the heart and soul of Arizona. He’s what they are all about.”

Howland didn’t reveal how he planned to stop Adams, joking to a reporter that if he told him, he’d have to kill him.

UA comes into Pauley Pavilion looking to break a two-game slide and hoping not to get swept in the season series with the Bruins for the first time since 1996-97.

“They’ve got a team that’s in the top 20 in the RPI (No. 16) and will definitely have a chance to make some noise come March,” Howland said.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Sports. Tags for this post: Basketball, California, Los Angeles, page-7C, Steve Rivera. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.