Bruins and Cougars embracing the moment

In our overly hyped sports world, some of the really good moments get lost in the noise. Today, there’s one that shouldn’t.

Washington State is at UCLA in college basketball. If you haven’t been paying attention, start now. Game time is 11:30 a.m., and it is truly a battle between a rock and an immovable object.

And those are just the coaches.

Ben Howland’s Bruins are 15-1, on everybody’s radar to make a third consecutive move into the sport’s promised land, the Final Four, and are ranked fifth nationally.

Tony Bennett’s Cougars are on nobody’s Final Four radar because they are Washington State, because they live and compete in Pullman and because they have a history of having no history. Still, they are 14-0, finished second in the Pacific 10 Conference to the Bruins last season and -- get this -- are ranked a notch higher than UCLA in the national polls.

Somewhere, some oddsmaker has Washington State favored to win and memorabilia collectors are hoarding the tout sheet.

“Look here, Gus! Holy Cow! This guy has Washington State favored over UCLA. In basketball!”

After handling Washington nicely Thursday night, despite more injuries piling up, Howland keynoted Sensational Saturday:

“Playing Washington State is like getting a root canal without any painkiller.”

After thinning out O.J. Mayo and handling his USC Trojans just as nicely Thursday night, Bennett gave his view of Saturday Morning Live:

“They are defensive-minded, tough, physical. Everything we want to be.”

If you are looking for 110-108, forget it. That happens and these guys will hold a joint news conference afterward and resign. They will get to 65-63 differently, but they’ll get somewhere near there.

The Bruins will do it with relentless defense, sound positioning on the boards and a fire in their gut. The Cougars will do it with quietly efficient team defense, methodical passing on offense until somebody is open seven feet from the basket rather than eight, and a fire in their gut.

Howland says that the athletic director who hired Bennett’s father, Dick -- with a wink and a nod that son Tony would take over eventually, which he did last season -- “should get a huge raise.”

“That took them from the bottom 10 to where they are now, the top five,” Howland said.

No word on whether Jim Sterk will be paying Howland a percentage of his new salary. Howland was hired only a few days after Sterk hired Dick Bennett in the spring of 2003, and UCLA Athletic Director Dan Guerrero could certainly use that for salary leverage himself.

Tony Bennett says he loves to talk basketball with Howland, and that his dad and Howland are partly responsible for toughening up the Pac-10.

“I think the conference does better now in the NCAA tournament because of them,” Bennett said.

Howland will put several big-name players on the court today, including 6-foot-10 freshman Kevin Love of Lake Oswego, Ore., who was recruited by the elites of college basketball.

His dad, former NBA player Stan Love, said Thursday night during the UCLA-Washington game that Duke and North Carolina were among those in the mix, “but it was always quietly UCLA.”

Bennett, asked if Washington State had ever been in the running to get Love, giggled.

Bennett will counter Love with a gathering of hand-me-downs who have been molded into a selfless unit. Petros Papadakis, local radio personality, who can be heard from here to Hawaii, with or without a microphone, watched the Cougars beat the Trojans and, as he frequently does, pegged Washington State perfectly afterward.

“They are five fingers on a hand,” he said.

Kyle Weaver is probably the star and probably will play in the NBA. But the team’s top scorer is jump-shooting guard Derrick Low, and probably the team’s most important player against the Bruins is a 6-11 junior from Australia, Aron Baynes, who will match up with Love.

“A lot of things will happen,” Bennett said, “but it is likely to come down to that matchup.”

It should be a great day in Westwood.

By Friday afternoon, there were already more than 100 students camped outside Pauley Pavilion in a ticket line. They will join their brethren with the blue shirts that read: “Champions Made Here.”

That could be very prophetic, either way.

Stan Love, along with wife Karen, son Collin and daughter Emily, will be there to cheer, and Stan may even wear his jacket that says on the back: “Feed the Animal.”

On the court, the animal will be trying to get position on Baynes so the Bruins can do exactly that.

In central Wisconsin, in his dream retirement home on a lake in the thriving metropolis of Nekoosa, only five minutes from his favorite golf course currently featuring frozen fairways, Dick Bennett will be pacing. His babies have now grown into juniors and seniors and his son has become the father.

Still, there has never been anybody quite as intense as Dick Bennett about his basketball, his team and his son. Last season, when he was still in Pullman and watching from the stands, he got into an argument with another fan and was so mortified by his behavior that he suspended himself for a game.

“Dick Bennett set the table for their program,” Howland said.

As their teams warm up, Howland and Tony Bennett -- each already with national coach-of-the-year honors in past seasons -- will probably catch each other’s eye. There will be respectful nods.

Neither will want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment. Both will know it.

It will be game on.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.

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NO. 5 UCLA (15-1) VS.

NO. 4 WASHINGTON (14-0)

Today at Pauley Pavilion

11:30 a.m., Prime Ticket