in terms of a tourney berth, that is.

1. it would give us a very good chance to have 18 wins before the Pac-10 Tourney. A win gives us 15 wins with three regular season games at Pauley (in which we will be favored) plus a road game in South Bend.

2. beating Stanford would give us a quality road win. Despite our excellent road record in the Pac-10 (5-3), none of our wins have come against opponents ranked as highly as Stanford. No impressive wins away from Pauley could hurt us with the selection committee.

3. a win would put us on at least equal level with Stanford. not that it will necessarily come down to us and them for a tourney berth, but if we lose, we will almost certainly finish behind them in the conference and be 0-2 against them head-to-head. In that situation, it would strike me as being very difficult for us to make the tourney without Stanford making it as well. CBS Sportsline, in an article about the top ten games of this weekend, suggests this game is an NCAA elimination game (i wouldn't go that far).

Regardless, a win on Sunday would be another huge step in the turnaround of the program. Here is the UCLA preview.