LOS ANGELES --The next thing you know Frederick Jones and Luke Jackson and Luke Ridnour will have their images plastered all over the tallest building in Springfield, Mass. Okay, maybe they'll have a forest of trees named after them somewhere between Portland and Eugene. Okay, okay. Maybe after the fairly spectacular triumvirate of athletic Ducks get through running and jumping and quacking their relatively unknown bills off at the Pac-10 tournament this week, they’ll possibly get, like, discovered.

Although ... who knows? The loudest noise emanating from the mostly unpacked stands at the Staples Center during Oregon’s 86-64 rout of Washington -- well, it was only Game One of an event that hasn’t been contested in a dozen years and began way too early for those politically correct Californians still hung over from celebrating Gary Condit’s demise -- was the cheer that arose when the Southern Cal players left their seats to go to the locker room for Game Two.

"We’re used to it," said Ducks coach Ernie Kent, speaking of the lack of attention his regular season champs (who beat everybody else by two games in arguably the toughest conference in the land) have battled all season, "because that’s what football went through. For five years our football team has been one of the dominant programs in the country. Then they finally got to number two and Joey Harrington was up for the Heisman. We’re just riding their coattails now. It’s disappointing but it’s okay, too, because it’s fueled this team to really work hard."

Ah, yes. Harrington -- the kid Oregon and Nike billboarded so enormously last summer on that skyscraper near Penn Station in New York. Jones and Jackson and Ridnour are all smalltown guys from the Pacific Northwest who sky as well -- but it’s their work on the perimeter that sends Oregon fanatics into paroxyms of that formerly hysterical salutation that sounds like a supplemental insurance commercial. You know: "AFLAC ... AFLAC .. AFLAC."

Oregon head man Kent, who played at Eugene among the infamous "kamikaze kids" way back the last time the team was any good, is a dead ringer for the revered Chicago soul troubadour, Lou Rawls. He is spending this week fending off questions about packing up for the Windy City to take the DePaul job. But in the meantime he has constructed a dangerous outfit which on Thursday shook off tired legs, a terrible first-half performance and a 42-35 deficit at the break to simply blow away the Huskies.

The Ducks backcourt of point guard Ridnour, a 6'2" curly-haired sophomore whom Oregonians liken to Pete Maravich (in their dreams) and Jones, a 6'4" senior (playing with a 102-degree fever), made all of two baskets between them in the opening half -- when the Huskies’ Doug Wrenn threatened to take over the game. But Jackson, another 6'7" soph who seems to have the green light from anywhere in any arena on his stylish, left-handed bombs, kept the Ducks close- -- until the whole team found it’s running rhythm following intermission.

Recalling the days of Arkansas’ similar attack on defense, Wrenn (who began his own career at Connecticut) labels the Oregon fast break "40 minutes of hell on offense. Their transition game is phenomenal. They get it and go ... and know where everybody is at ... and finish."

The spindly Jackson actually finished off Wrenn himself, holding the Washington star to a single basket in the second half. Oh yeah, Washington as a team scored a paltry 22 points in the period. While Jackson netted 27 on his own -- Jones and Ridnour rallied to finish with 15 and 11 points -- he also provided a kind of hilari-scare moment when he jammed on a breakaway and came down flat on his, uh ...

"As if he’s got a butt as it is," Kent said afterward, chuckling. "We may have a parenting moment later."

Maybe the Pac-10 media need the same kind of counsel -- or maybe it’s just the pollution floating through the ozone in not only "Championship Week" but "The Bob Knight Movie Week". Why else would the first post-game question from a TV reporter to a startled Ridnour be: "How is Luke Jackson’s ass?"

"Actually, my pride is hurt more than [anything else]," said a red-, uh, -faced Jackson.

And what about the team’s feelings -- inasmuch as the devalued Ducks are never mentioned in the same breath with Oklahoma and Cincinnati for that mystery fourth Number One seed?

"Sure it’s disappointing not to get the notoriety of those teams in the East," said Ridnour -- who may have been geographically challenged as a youngster in tiny Blaine, Washington "two blocks from the Canadian border" where he played for the Blaine HS Borderites. "But I don’t think a lot of people have seen us play. We play so late at night back there. It’s tough to get recognition. But we’ve dealt with it pretty well, used it as motivation to show people we have a legit team here. That’s why the Pac Ten tournament is so great. We can showcase our skills and maybe help our seeding out for the NCAA tournament."

That’s logical reasoning beyond the comprehension of a couple of the league’s power coaches -- Mike Montgomery of Stanford and Lute Olson of Arizona who balked long and loud at the resumption of the conference tourney and a return of the Pac Ten to planet earth. Montgomery, in fact, deigned to have his Cardinal practice in LA on Wednesday -- due to "classes" or something equally silly. (After Stanford got punked by USC, 103-78, hopefully the team was able to quickly resume their studies.)

"I don’t see anything but positives about conference tournaments," said Kent. "You see how hard these kids battle in these things. Whether Oregon is the conference champion or on the bubble, it’s a great environment. It does nothing but help all of us."

Finally in the spotlight, though, even if the Ducks were to win the title this week, they would need some substantial help from other regions to get what they probably deserve- -- that number one seed. Oregon’s case was weakened considerably early on when the team went coast-to-coast-to-midcoasts, losing three straight (by a total of 8 points) to UMass, Portland and Minnesota. "Bad scheduling," laughs Kent, who knows all about global travel, having spent seven years coaching and working in the Oil industry in Saudi Arabia where his three children were born.

"I know we’re one of those teams the (NCAA tournament) committee is looking at on all those TV monitors this week, wondering who are these Pac Ten champions," says the coach. "Well we can shoot the lights out, we run like crazy, we play pretty good defense and we never hold back. We’re an impressive group. That’s Oregon basketball. This is who we are."

AFLAC!

Curry Kirkpatrick is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at curry.kirkpatrick@espnmag.com.