By Ferd Lewis
Advertiser Columnist

Well, it is just like we'd thought it would be coming down the stretch run of the Western Athletic Conference men's basketball season.

Here are the University of Hawai'i and Nevada tonight, one of them still in the thick of the Western Athletic Conference regular-season title run and the other trying desperately to end up with a respectable seeding for the conference tournament.

Of course, the hope, indeed the early-on expectation, was that it would be the Rainbow Warriors in the running for a second consecutive regular-season title.

The widely held belief was that by this point in the season it would be the Rainbows, who were chosen either first or second in most of the preseason polls and magazines, who would be picking up their annual pre-tournament momentum.

Instead, the Rainbows step into the Stan Sheriff Center in seventh place and the Wolfpack, a middle-of-the-field preseason choice, shows up 1 1/2 games back of front-running Fresno State with five games remaining.

In a curiously topsy-turvy WAC, the Rainbows are trying to end a three-game losing streak, their longest in 23 months, while the Wolfpack is hitting its stride with wins in six of its last seven games.

You'd like to think that, for a team that had an air of invincibility at home through 24 consecutive games, this game wouldn't have assumed the win-or-else urgency that it has suddenly taken on. But after the stunning loss to San Jose State Saturday, it has.

Certainly after the road struggles of the past month it has been apparent that the only way UH is going to the NCAA Tournament a record third consecutive year is if it wins the conference tournament next month. But the danger now is that if UH finishes seventh or lower in the regular season, a heretofore unimaginable scenario, it won't have a prayer of winning the tournament.

The bottom four teams in the 10-team conference standings at the end of the regular season are obligated to play an additional game. And because of the four-games-in-five-days grind, nobody has won a WAC Tournament coming from the play-in rounds.

That's the biggest concern facing the Rainbows, but it isn't the only one. Failing an NCAA berth, UH has often been able to fall back on the consolation prize that is the National Invitation Tournament. But even with a field expanded to 40 teams this year that may be a reach unless UH picks up the pace.

After tonight, UH has five remaining regular-season games. But for the Rainbows, and who could have imagined this just a couple months ago, what happens tonight could loom the most important of all.