>The Utes came away from yesterday's 57-53 loss to Washington feeling pretty good about themselves. As I wrote in The Tribune, the blowout losses seemed far removed as the Utes battled and played, perhaps, their best defensive game of the season.

The Utes travel to Stanford on Thursday and play at Cal on Saturday. Oh, Stanford - more on the Cardinal in a minute.

Here's Percy Allen's game story from the Seattle Times and more from the Washington perspective, while the Tacoma News-Tribune's account is here.

It was a relatively light day in the Pac-12, four games, with two more to be played today. It's likely, though, that the game of the year took place Saturday night in Gill Coliseum (or, as we Oregonians called it in the 90's, Payton's Place).

Stanford held on for an absurd 103-101 win over Oregon State. Why absurd? It took four overtimes for the Cardinal to separate from the Beavers, as is detailed by The Oregonian's John Hunt in a fine piece of deadline writing.

The Beavers' Roberto Nelson missed a shot at the buzzer that would have won the game, but it was the Cardinal who prevailed in what was the longest game in either school's history.

The other games...

Colorado 71, Washington State 60 • Carlon Brown scored 28 points to lead the Buffaloes, who remain the only undefeated team in the Pac-12. Remember when these guys were picked to finish ahead only of the Utes? Here's a good take on how they've done it.

UCLA 75, Arizona State 58 • Josh Smith returned from a concussion to lead UCLA with 18 points in 21 minutes. Arizona State made the trip Southern California with just six scholarship players. It was good enough to beat USC on Thursday, but not the Bruins.

Tonight Arizona plays at USC at 3:30 p.m. MT, and it's Cal and Oregon at 5:30 p.m.

— Bill Oram