Just when Ben Howland and Mike Krzyzewski thought their teams were heading in the right direction with March a couple weeks away, they're being forced to quickly reconsider that assessment.

In the case of UCLA, Howland's team was coming off four straight victories at home by an average of 22 points, the latest being an 89-63 spanking of Notre Dame in which last season's Big East Player of the Year Luke Harangody was minimized to five points, one rebound and four turnovers.

Duke, on the other hand, was riding high off an overtime victory against Miami in which the Blue Devils rallied from a 16-point deficit in the second half to avoid losing their second straight at home - something that doesn't happen all too often at Cameron Indoor Stadium.

Yet the Bruins and Blue Devils found out last week that there's no reason to get too high on their recent victories, because in a season where there appears to be no clear-cut favorite to win the national championship, the notion that anything is possible is becoming more and more of a reality.

Duke forward Gerald Henderson certainly understands that better now after watching his team hold a 13-point lead in the first half at Boston College Sunday, only to squander it down the stretch and lose a back-and-forth game that will hurt the Blue Devils' seeding in this year's NCAA tournament.

"You can't mess around," the 6-foot-4 junior said after the 80-74 defeat at Conte Forum. "If you have a team down, you have to step on their throats. That's been a problem with us this year - we haven't approached leads like that, so we need to change that."

Obviously Coach K's players didn't learn anything from their come-from-behind win over the Hurricanes a week earlier, while the Blue Devils' defense has seemed to have disappeared in their last two games.

"We're not playing very well on the defensive end of the court," said Krzyzewski, who hasn't seen his players bring the same kind of defensive intensity that led them to wins over Purdue, Xavier and Georgetown during their non-conference slate.

"In the last two ballgames, teams have shot 60 percent against us and scored 101 and 80 points - and this is from a team that has been playing for the whole year really well defensively."

So now with Wake Forest, Florida State and North Carolina among its last six games of the regular season, No. 9 Duke (20-5 overall, 7-4 ACC) needs to win at least two of those matchups and most likely win two games in the ACC Tournament to maintain at least a No. 3 seed in the Big Dance.

No. 20 UCLA, meanwhile, has an even bigger mountain to climb if it hopes to earn a seed that high next month.

Because with two losses in the desert last week, the Bruins are facing this Thursday what Howland has already called "their biggest game of the year" when Washington comes to Pauley Pavilion for a critical Pac-10 contest.

The Huskies whooped up on Howland's team earlier this season with a 86-75 thumping in Seattle, and if Washington could pull off the sweep of the Bruins much like Arizona State did last Thursday night, UCLA (19-6 overall, 8-4 Pac-10) can kiss any hope of still winning a fourth straight Pac-10 title right away.

Especially if the Bruins manage to give the ball away as much as they did against Arizona Saturday, committing 14 turnovers in the first half and finishing the game with 20.

Mix that in with a 50 percent shooting effort from the Wildcats, which led to UCLA's defense giving up a season-worst 49 points in the first half, and you have yourself two straight losses, the first time this season for Howland's ball club.

"It was one of those days where everybody is not on the same page," confessed senior point guard Darren Collison, who finished with a team-high 26 points on 10-of-14 shooting despite the Bruins falling behind by as many as 25 in the second half.

At this point, though, UCLA can't afford too many more of those days now - not if Collison and his teammates have any hope of advancing deep in March.

But after watching Connecticut relinquish its throne as the nation's No. 1 team tonight against No. 4 Pittsburgh in Hartford, nothing seems to be for certain as this college basketball season continues to unfold.

To check out my latest power rankings, click here.

If there's one thing UCLA coach Ben Howland might know better than Final Four appearances, it's injuries.
 
After all, in his first five years in Westwood, Howland's teams have been plagued by injuries in one form or another.
 
Whether it's been ankle sprains, knee tweaks or back spasms, Howland has seen it all.
 
Last season in particular, the Bruins were hit with a plethora of injuries, starting with All-American point guard Darren Collison - who was forced to miss the first six games of the year with a strained MCL in his left knee - and continuing with forwards Luc Richard Mbah a Moute (ankle) and Kevin Love (back).
 
Call it bad luck or just the intense, physical nature of Howland's defense.
 
Either way, losing players at different points in the season hasn't helped his cause in achieving the ultimate goal of raising a 12th national championship banner in the rafters of Pauley Pavilion.
 
So when Josh Shipp, one of UCLA's four seniors this season, jammed his left thumb in a win against Loyola Marymount earlier this month, you could almost imagine Howland saying out loud, "Oh no, not again..."
 
Shipp, of course, was averaging 11.2 points per game - second on the team to Darren Collison's 15.5 - and leading the team in defensive rebounds following the 75-44 victory at home over the Lions.
 
But with the 6-foot-5 senior out indefinitely and the Bruins relying on five freshmen to contribute minutes, points and anything else they can provide on both ends of the floor, Howland was left with little time and few options to fill a major void in the backcourt.
 
In a week's span, though, he's managed to find his replacement and possibly more in Michael Roll.

Michael who you ask?
 
That's right, UCLA fans had almost forgotten about the junior sharpshooter, who sat out nearly all of last season on a medical redshirt due to a ruptured plantar fascia in his left foot.
 
Nevertheless, they'll remember him now after three straight games with double-digit points, including Tuesday night's career-high of 25 behind five threes against a Wyoming team that played defense softer than a Tempur-Pedic bed.
 
"I'm happy for Mike," Howland said after the Bruins' dominating 113-62 win over the Cowboys. "You think what he had to go through last year with his foot injury ... We played a great game."
 
Roll has averaged only 15.3 minutes in UCLA's first nine game of the season, and with the Aliso Viejo, Calif., native looking like a completely different player than when he first arrived at UCLA for the 2005-06 season, his contributions on the offensive end could provide a big boost for a team that desperately needs to improve its perimeter shooting (Shipp was shooting just 20.7 percent from three this season before his injury and the team as a whole is currently only shooting 36.3 percent).
 
"He'll definitely get more minutes the way he's playing now," Howland asserted."He's definitely earning more and more playing time."
 
Said Roll about the possiblity of playing more minutes this season: "That's not under my control. I'm just going to play as hard as I can when I'm in there."
 
Still, even with Roll's emergence of late, UCLA (9-2) has plenty of work to do.
 
The Bruins have yet to win a game against a top 25 team this season, something that Howland's club did on a handful of occasions last season, and with more and more teams employing zone defenses against them, they'll need Roll to continue to swish shots from beyond the arc during conference play if a fourth straight Pac-10 championship remains in the cards.

Wyoming coach Heath Schroyer, for one, certainly thinks that UCLA is capable of accomplishing that feat after seeing his team get blown out by more than 50 points Tuesday.

"They are as good as advertised," he said. "It was the first time [this season] we got punched in the mouth."

Of course, as long as it's the Bruins' opponents taking the blows this season, Howland won't have any issues with that.

To check out my latest power rankings, click here.

Every year in college basketball, we wait week after week for that big day to come.

 

We wait for that day with a full slate of top 25 matchups to learn which teams are for real and which teams still have a lot of work to do before the madness really begins three months from now.

 

Last season, that day - and I remember it quite fondly - came on Jan. 19, when Maryland went into Chapel Hill and handed No. 1 North Carolina its first loss of the season, USC knocked off archrival UCLA in Pauley Pavilion and Texas A&M, ranked No. 10 at the time, fell to Kansas State in the Little Apple.

 

This year, though, college basketball got an early taste of March this past Saturday.

 

No. 2 UConn, for one, got a gutsy, game-tying three from A.J. Price to outlast No. 8 Gonzaga in overtime in the Battle in Seattle, No. 6 Duke demolished No. 7 Xavier in the swamps of New Jersey and No. 11 Syracuse got a rather rare road win in Graceland against No. 23 Memphis after losing a heartbreaker to Cleveland State on a 60-foot buzzer-beater earlier in the week.

 

But what Saturday's action really taught us is that the Big Ten is no slouch - not this year, at least.

 

It started with Michigan upsetting UCLA in the 2K Sports Classic in November and then following that win up with a stunning one in Ann Arbor over a previously undefeated Duke team.

 

And while the Wolverines were celebrating their big win over the Blue Devils that day, Ohio State was enjoying its own upset over a Notre Dame team that boasts one of the best bigs in the country in Luke Harangody and is expected to contend for a Big East championship with UConn, Pittsburgh and Louisville later this season.

 

Then over this past weekend, the conference continued to make its voice heard around the nation with Michigan State and Minnesota pulling off impressive upsets over two potential Final Four candidates and Purdue securing a convincing win over No. 22 Davidson in Indianapolis at the Wooden Tradition.

 

It was a day that the conference can certainly use as bargaining power for the NCAA tournament committee, which should grant a minimum of five Big Ten teams - and quite possibly six - with other multiple-bid conferences like the Pac-10, Atlantic 10 and SEC all down from a year ago.

 

Of course, the Big Ten isn't the Big East (heck, nobody is this year), but after watching the Spartans hang with Texas for 40 minutes in Houston and then win in the final seconds while Minnesota shocked No. 9 Louisville in Phoenix to remain undefeated at 10-0, the conference deserves its fair share of respect.

 

After all, coming off a pathetic showing in Detroit against top-ranked North Carolina, the Spartans badly needed to show that they were every bit as good as their preseason ranking (No. 6) indicated.

 

The same went for the Boilermakers, who after starting the season ranked No. 11, suffered two consecutive setbacks to Oklahoma and Duke in a matter of four days and had yet to beat a top 25 team this season.

 

That changed Saturday when Matt Painter's team did a magnificent job against the nation's leading scorer, Stephen Curry, holding the junior sharpshooter to just 13 points on a miserable 5-for-26 shooting (2-for-12 from three) performance.

 

Purdue, meanwhile, shot a remarkable 61.1 percent from long range and won the rebounding battle against a well-coached, disciplined team that stunned Gonzaga, Georgetown and Wisconsin to reach the Elite Eight last year and has already scored wins over BCS powers West Virginia and N.C. State this season.

 

"I thought this was a great team victory for us," Painter said afterward. "Our guys did a very good job defensively, not just the three guys that guarded Stephen Curry. I thought everybody was ready to play."

 

Better yet, Minnesota, which hadn't even faced a ranked team coming into its contest against Rick Pitino's Cardinals, needed a quality win more than either Michigan State or Purdue.

 

Yet the Golden Gophers, who don't boast the most talented roster in just Tubby Smith's second season at the helm, managed to hold Louisville to only 37.7 percent shooting from the field and a lowly 23.5 percent from three.

 

"This game really means a lot to us, but it's just one game," offered Al Nolen, who led Minnesota with 18 points in addition to five rebounds and five assists. "We've still got to move forward to the next game."

 

And if Michigan State, Purdue and the rest of the Big Ten follows Nolen's message over the next few months, there's no telling how much more noise this conference can make in a season's time.

To check out my latest power rankings, click here.

How much do you think Ben Howland is missing Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook right now?

How much do you think John Calipari is missing Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts right now?

The answer is the same to both questions: A lot.

How about a whole heck of a lot?

Sure, the preseason polls had the Bruins ranked No. 4 and the Tigers ranked No. 13 to start the year, but both Howland and Calipari know that that their respective rankings are merely based more on the potential of their teams than the way they are playing at the moment.

The Bruins, for one, looked totally confused in their loss last Thursday night in the semifinals of the 2K Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden, letting Michigan coach John Beilein's 1-3-1 zone eat them alive in the second half after staging a 29-23 halftime lead.

With little inside scoring to lean on (a total of 15 points from Josh Shipp, James Keefe and Alfred Aboya), UCLA struggled in the final 20 minutes against the Wolverines, shooting just 33.3 percent (8-for-24) from the field and 25 percent (2-for-8) from three.

Michigan, on the other hand, burned through the net in that same time, shooting 61 percent (13-for-21) from the floor and 50 percent (4-for-8) from long range to spark what some might point to later on this season as the program-changing win that Beilein needed to turn things around in Ann Arbor.

"It was a great win for our team," Beilein said after his team finally beat a ranked opponent for the first time in 13 tries. "Early season wins are terrific, but you have to put them in perspective."

Howland, meanwhile, knows this isn't nearly the same kind of team that he had last year, and to be honest, it probably won't be by the time the calendar turns March, either.

After all, you don't just replace two NBA lottery picks and a second rounder in a matter of months.

"It's early and we're a very young team," Howland said regarding the loss to Michigan.

But Howland's teams seem to overachieve more often than they underachieve, in part due to his tough, physical man-to-man defense, and while the Bruins didn't happen to raise a 12th national championship banner in Pauley Pavilion last year after suffering a third straight defeat in the Final Four, UCLA is still the favorite to win a much weaker Pac-10 this season.

Those sorts of expectations are realistic for a team that boasts arguably the nation's top point guard (Darren Collison) and top freshman (Jrue Holiday), but it won't be easy even so.

Likewise, it won't be easy out in Graceland, as the expectations are plenty high and plenty realistic for Memphis, too.

Yet after last year's heartbreaking loss to Kansas in the national championship game, the Tigers are nowhere near the same kind of team that they were a year ago.

That's no secret to Calipari, of course.

"This year's team is so different from last year's team and the year before," he said following Memphis' loss to Xavier Sunday in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off championship game. "Hopefully, we get better as the season goes on. I want guys to make plays and play to win."

Nevertheless, Memphis is expected by most to plow through Conference USA - still thought to be one of the worst conferences, along with the WAC and SWAC, in college basketball - with one of the nation's top frontcourts (Shawn Taggart, Robert Dozier and Pierre Henderson-Niles) and another potential one-and-done freshman (Tyreke Evans).

Unfortunately for UCLA and Memphis fans, though, believing that either team can return to the Final Four this season might be wishful thinking.

Because even with all the freshmen talent that has come into the college game the past two seasons and into Howland's and Calipari's programs, Kansas made it clear last year that a team filled with experienced sophomores, juniors and seniors is really the best prepared to cut down the nets when that clock hits 0:00 in early April.

To check out my latest power rankings, click here.

Since I'm skipping town for the weekend and won't be sitting in front of a computer for 12-plus hours a day, I thought I'd leave something for you all to chew on over the next few days before I hit the road and lose track of what's happening in and around college football.

Yes people, we're only two weeks away from the start of the season, and yes, I can sense your excitement (well, not really).

Although to be quite honest with you, I'm not even that excited.

Sure, there's some great games to look forward to - obviously Ohio State's trip to the L.A. Coliseum to face USC on Sept. 13 stands out the most - but it also means there's a lot more work for me to do, too.

Oh well, it's only sports, right? It can't be that bad, right?

Speaking of USC, though, isn't it amazing how the second biggest city in America can survive with no NFL team?

That's because Pete Carroll's Trojans have taken over the town and turned pro football into an unnecessary venture for the city of Los Angeles.

But lately injuries have taken over USC, injuries that include junior quarterback Mark Sanchez's dislocated kneecap and better yet, the infamous "Jock Itch Outbreak."

That's right, USC's recent rash of injuries can be attributed in large part, well, to a rash.

And according to a report by the Los Angeles Times, 25 percent of USC's players have been diagnosed with tinea cruris, the medical name for that ever-uncomfortable feeling in that ever-itchy area.

Just picture that scene at practice.

After all, there's nothing like having 20 football players constantly rubbing their crotches while trying to participate in camp drills.

For sophomore tailback Joe McKnight and wide receiver Travon Patterson, the irritation was so bad, in fact, that they couldn't even practice Wednesday.

"It burns," Patterson explained.

Ah, that burning sensation ... how euphoric. Or not.

In speaking with the Times earlier this week, Carroll did say that he had never witnessed such an outbreak before in all his years of coaching and believed that the team's new compression shorts underneath their football pants might be the culprit in creating the itchy mess.

"We've had to adjust to some new equipment that we're wearing that didn't work out right," he said. "It's funny how that happened."

Except it's not that funny to his players, especially when the irritation makes it hard just to even take two steps forward.

"Sometimes they can't walk," junior tailback Stafon Johnson said. "I don't know what it is, but I'm staying away from it."

I'll tell you one thing - you certainly won't see me getting anywhere near the USC locker room this season.