Like the rest of the Pac-10's coaches, UW's Lorenzo Romar spent part of this week at the conference's annual end-of-season coaches meetings.

Some thought going in the big topic might be the officiating after a year that featured a few shaky moments in that regard.

But Romar said the majority of coaches seemed happy enough with the status quo.

"I thought there would be a lot, but there wasn't a whole lot of discussion about it,'' Romar said Friday. "There's been a lot more discussion in past years than there was this time.'' Ultimately, there was nothing recommended by the coaches to the conference about officiating issues.

The recommendations the coaches did make involved the increased restrictions on the April recruiting period and the All-Conference team.

Romar said Pac-10 coaches want the conference to fight to retain the ability to go out and evaluate players at AAU and club-team tournaments on weekends.

"You can go to high schools, but you can't go to events on weekends and coaches wanted to get that back,'' Romar said. "Coaches felt that it is very cost effective --- when you have that many teams at once you can get a lot done.''

The NCAA is attempting to limit the amount of time players are away from school in April.

Romar also said the coaches recommended that the conference change the current All-Conference Team format of a five-man first team, five-man second team and five-man third team to a 10-man first team and a five-man second team.

The current format was new this year, in place of the old 10-man team, intended to recognize more players. But coaches felt there were some players who were relegated to second-team recognition by the fact that the first team was now just five players, notably UW's Jon Brockman.

"Jon should have been a first-team guy, no doubt about it,'' Romar said.

The conference will consider that proposal later.

There was also a little bit of talk about fan behavior after a few notable incidents last year, but Romar said nothing of substance was proposed for action.

WALLACE PROGRESSING: Romar also said that center Artem Wallace, continuing to recover from off-season knee surgery, is doing well. "He's starting to walk and ride a bike so he's making progress,'' Romar said.

Lute Olson's return has far from stabilized matters at Arizona.

Instead, it seems to have only made things more chaotic, as Gary Parrish of Sportsline.com details. Along with the soap opera surrounding Olson's divorce proceedings, matters are just as messy on-court. Parrish says Chase Budinger is almost certain to be gone and that star recruit Brandon Jennings has some serious academic hurdles to leap to become eligible --- losing those two would almost certainly make Arizona a bottom-tier team heading into the season for the first time in 25 years.

And Arizona's coaching staff is also in upheaval as rising star assistant Josh Pastner appears headed to a similar position at Memphis.

Olson earlier jettisoned assistant Miles Simon, one of the stars of the 1997 NCAA title team, with Simon saying later he was given no explanation.

There's some thought that if Pastner goes to Memphis, he may take highly-touted recruit Abdul Gaddy of Bellarmine Prep with him --- Gaddy is rumored to be waffling on his commitment due in part to all the uncertainty in Tucson.

Gaddy is scheduled to take his official visit to Arizona this weekend but Arizona Daily Star columnist Greg Hansen wonders how that will go if there's no assistant there to ferry him around.

--- UCLA, meanwhile, could be the next destination for 6-10, 275-pound center J'Mison Morgan, who has signed with LSU but now wants out of that LOI after the firing of John Brady and hiring of former Stanford coach Trent Johnson. Here's another take on that story. UCLA already is welcoming in a four-man recruiting class considered by many the best in the nation.

I wrote a more detailed wrapup of the APR stuff on the football blog.

On this one, I wanted to pass along this LA Times story detailing USC's situation pointing out that the Trojans have already taken the penalty, though nobody seemed to know it at the time.

Here is our story today on UW's passing grade in the APR.

Someone asked on the football blog whether "all the recent transfers'' will hurt the scores of the UW men's and women's team. As pointed out there, the UW hoops team had only one transfer this academic year --- Adrian Oliver. The others (Phil Nelson, Harvey Perry) occurred during the 2006-07 academic year so they have already been accounted for as far as I can tell.

As the story points out, however, the four transfers this year for the women's team are likely to hurt its score down the road. However, the good news for the women is that it has such a high score at the moment --- 998 --- that it can likely survive the hit without sustaining any penalties as long as the rest of it doesn't drop too much. Remember, this is always a rolling four-year score.

John Morris, Washington's senior associate athletic director for compliance, conducted a conference call with reporters today to discuss today's APR report and clarified a few questions people have raised here today.

One is how the penalties are enforced. Morris said schools that are hit with a loss of scholarships "have to take the penalty at the earliest opportunity within the next two years. If you already have committed scholarships to people for the next year, they don't make you take any of those back. But in the very next year you better not be signing as many people.''

Morris also confirmed that teams are not penalized for players leaving early for the pros as long as they are in good academic standing at the time of their departure. Teams are penalized for athletes who leave for other reasons, however, such as simply transferring to a different school.

Morris said he was pleased with Washington's overall performance with none of its sports being penalized and the major sports such as football and men's basketball each "trending upward'' in recent seasons.

UW's football team had an APR of 885 in 2005 but this year is at 948 while the men's basketball team has gone from 871 to 943.

"All in all, we feel pretty good about it,'' Morris said.

MORE ON USC: Here's a good explainer of USC's situation from the LA Times. This clarifies that USC has already taken its penalty, something of which I wasn't aware.

The NCAA this morning released the official APR (Academic Progress Rate) numbers for the 2006-07 season and the Washington men's basketball team recorded a score of 943, safely above the Division-I average and any risk of incurring penalties.

Here's Washington's full report.

The only Pac-10 men's basketball program hit with a penalty is USC, which will be limited to 11 scholarships next year due to an APR of 863. (Here's the page explaining USC's penalty). (Should make clear the NCAA limit is 13 scholarships, so this would mean USC will have two fewer scholarships next season).

Here's a list of the Pac-10 APR scores in order:

Oregon 975
UCLA 968
Stanford 954
Washington 943
Cal 942
Oregon State 935
Arizona 933
Washington State 905
Arizona State 905
USC 863

A score of 925 is the NCAA's goal, which is says equates to a graduation rate of 60 percent. Anything below 925 can be subject to penalties, which are also based on whether students are in good academic standing when they leave (a particular issue in men's basketball with so many departing early for the pros).

Of other in-state schools, Gonzaga recorded a 965 and Eastern Washington 898 but without being penalized.

The Division-I average for men's basketball is 928.

Here's a good explainer of the latest APR numbers from the NCAA.

A reader passed along a good suggestion --- that now that Isaiah Thomas has passed his ACT and appears all but certain to become a Husky, it may be a good time to again look at him as a player.

So I'll provide a few links to stories we've written on him through the years that should help with your understanding of what Thomas may contribute to the Huskies:

--- Here's a good feature on Thomas written before the 2006 State Tournament, which turned out to be his last high school action in this state. At 5-9, Thomas has long drawn comparisons to Nate Robinson, and definitely will continue to now that he will follow in his footsteps in also becoming a Husky.

--- Here's a blog item on Thomas from last fall in which he discusses his relationship with current UW point guard Venoy Overton, among other things.

--- Here's the story from the day after Thomas committed to UW in 2006.

--- Here's the story from last fall when Thomas signed with UW including quotes from UW coach Lorenzo Romar on the entire class.

--- And finally, here's a story on Thomas shortly after he arrived at South Kent School, detailing the growing popularity of prep schools.

UW's 2008-09 schedule remains unfinished as the Huskies look to secure two more games.

However, what has come into focus is UW's opposition in the pre-season CBE Classic. UW is one of 16 teams set for the tournament, and one of four that will serve as a regional host for the first two rounds.

The others, I've learned, are Kansas, Syracuse and Florida.

And the Huskies and Jayhawks are set to be on the same side of the bracket meaning that if UW wins its two home games and advances to the semifinals it would face Kansas, the defending NCAA champs. The semifinals and finals will be held in Kansas City and tournament organizers are probably hoping for a Kansas-Florida final to pit the two teams that have won the last three NCAA titles, something the Huskies will try to spoil.

Kansas figures to drop a bit next season (here's one early rating from Jeff Goodman seeding the Jayhawks at No. 20) but obviously in any incarnation will be a stiff test for a new-look Husky team.

UW would then get either Florida or Syracuse in the its next game giving the Huskies two contests against top-flight competition by the end of November. The Huskies will also host Oklahoma State and are looking for one more game against a BCS-type school to play on the road.

As for advancing to the semis, this tournament has historically been set up to make it pretty easy for the four host schools.

Here's a look at the history of the CBE Classic and you can see, for instance, that UCLA last year played CS-San Bernardino and Youngstown State in the first two rounds to advance to the semis. UW will likely get opponents of similar ilk for its two home games.

Since the CBE Classic began in 2001, the only team that hosted a regional that didn't advance to the semis was Stanford in 2006 when it was beaten by Air Force.

Husky fans can now begin making firm plans for the beginning of the Isaiah Thomas era next season as the guard from South Kent Prep School by way of Curtis High in Tacoma found out Friday he has gotten a qualifying score on the ACT.

That means as long as he finishes up his classes well and graduates as scheduled on June 1 he will be fully qualified to play for the Huskies next fall.

"It's a big relief to get it off my shoulders,'' Thomas said.

Thomas said he found out Friday when he checked on-line. He had been planning to take the SAT again this weekend if needed.

"But I didn't want to take it again,'' he said. "I was checking all the time to get my score as soon as possible and when I saw it the first person I called was (UW coach Lorenzo Romar) and then (assistant) coach (Cameron) Dollar and then my parents.''

Their reaction, as you might expect, was "very happy,'' Thomas said. "They said just finish the school year off strong and then you are in there.''

Getting the score is the culmination of a roughly two-year academic journey for Thomas. He originally committed to play at UW in the spring of 2006, shortly after the end of his junior season at Curtis High. He was expected to sign with UW in the fall of 2006. But when it became apparent he had some academic issues, he talked with UW coaches who helped facilitate a move to South Kent Prep School, where he could get his grades in order. That, however, meant he'd have to stay two years and delay enrolling at UW one year.

"It has worked out tremendously,'' he said.

He finally signed an official letter with UW last November and now needs only to graduate from South Kent to become fully eligible.

Once he does that, he said he plans to return to Seattle and enroll in the summer bridge program at UW and work out with the Huskies.

"I'll be coming home for good,'' he said.

Now with the passing score in hand, he said he can begin looking forward to becoming a Husky.

"I think I'll fit in real good,'' he said. "The style of play, the up-and-down system, fits my game tremendously well. We're going to get the Washington progam back on its feet, back to where it was when Nate (Robinson) and Brandon (Roy) and all of them were there.''

Three of UW's four incoming recruits are now known to be qualified, the others being Tyreese Breshers and Scott Suggs.

The Huskies are basing much of their hopes for improvement on this year's 16-17 record on improvement in the backcourt, notably the addition of Suggs, Thomas and Elston Turner Jr., all members of a class Scout.com ranked as the 15th best in the nation.