The Oregon State women’s basketball team has 80 minutes of Pacific-10 Conference basketball remaining in the regular season.

Coach LaVonda Wagner doesn’t want the Beavers to waste even one of them.

“I hope we can show up and compete for 40 minutes, and hopefully by the ends of the games have ourselves in position where we can win,” Wagner said Tuesday in previewing the upcoming series with the Los Angeles schools.

“We’ve made some strides, the kids have done a good job. A lot of that has come from hard work and the kids just stepping up.”

OSU (12-12, 6-10) plays host to UCLA (15-10, 10-6) tonight and then meets USC (16-9, 10-6) on Saturday night. Both games start at 7 p.m. at Gill Coliseum.

The Beavers have already far, far surpassed preseason expectations, so much so that Wagner was peeved this past Saturday when a Seattle-based reporter asked her how long it would take her to turn the program around.

“I already have,” she replied testily.

Picked to finish 10th in the coaches poll after losing their top scorer from a 6-23, 1-17 edition, they’re presently seventh and can finish no lower than eighth. They could even tie California for sixth place if they win twice and the Bears get swept at home by the Washington schools.

They’ve won three Pac-10 road games; doubled last year’s win total; have six times as many conference victories, and renewed interest in a program that drew “crowds” of 645, 572, 735, 432 and 362 for some Pac-10 home games the previous season.

Yet much remains at stake. To wit:

• If the Beavers maintain seventh, they’ll most likely play Washington State in the 7-10 game on March 3 in the first round of the Pacific-10 Conference tournament. That winner faces Arizona State in the quarterfinals on March 4. The seventh seed is 4-0 there since the tournament began in 2002, and the resulting 2-7 matchup has historically been very competitive.

But if they fall to eighth, they’ll probably play Arizona in the 8-9 game. The winner there faces the No. 1 seed, which has won all four of the 1-8/9 encounters by an average of 34 points.

• The Beavers can remain in WNIT contention by at least splitting this weekend and then defeating Texas-Pan American (6-19) on Monday night in their regular-season finale. Teams must be .500 or better to play in the 32-team WNIT.

• OSU can end a recent history of losing to the Los Angeles schools. Its dropped four in a row to the Bruins and three straight to USC.

Wagner said she’s thinking about one thing and one thing only: UCLA, which features the productive 1-2-3 guard punch of seniors Nikki Blue and Lisa Willis and junior Noelle Quinn.

“We’re just taking it one game at a time,” she said, and not even considering seventh place, the Pac-10 tournament or the WNIT. “These are two good teams we’re playing.

“We have them at home. They’re looking to get into the best position for the Pac-10 tournament as well. We’ve got to be able to show up.”

UCLA had won three in a row and five of six before stumbling against USC this past Saturday at Pauley Pavilion. The Bruins were 8-0 in conference play and 10-2 overall at Pauley but USC stunned them 77-73 to move into a fourth-place tie with UCLA.

“We want to finish out strong, get back to doing what we were doing when we were successful,” UCLA coach Kathy Olivier said. “We were on a roll. Had won five of our last six and SC came in and played us very tough. It just shows how competitive the conference is.

“Oregon State plays so hard and they work very hard at doing the little things. You can tell LaVonda has changed their mindset. You have to come in ready to go, or you’re going to get beat.”

OSU had 19 turnovers in a 72-62 loss at USC on Dec. 20, 2005, in its Pac-10 opener, and 24 two days later in a 79-64 setback at UCLA. Close had 10 turnovers against the Bruins and five against USC, but countered that with a combined 10 assists.

“They are teams with athleticism on the perimeter that will really pressure her quite a bit with the basketball,” Wagner said. “We going to see how she responds.”