Crisis manager.(Steve Lavin )

Despite some shocking losses, unrelenting critics and Rick Pitino's shadow, UCLA coach Steve Lavin isn't going anywhere just yet

The Arizona game has been over for 97 minutes. The students who rushed the floor at the end have been gone nearly as long. The leftovers of UCLA's gripping overtime victory are either being swept up and bagged by the cleaning crew or typed into laptops by straggling sportswriters trying to beat deadline and the slight chill in the Pauley Pavilion air.

So what is Steve Lavin still doing here?

Lavin, the Bruins coach, has been working this room since he finished his postgame news conference and radio show. It seems he has been hanging around almost as long as those championship banners everyone talks about so much. He has spoken with fans, friends, family members. He shall talk to everyone before he goes. Lavin will stay as long as they'll have him.

But how long is that? This always is the question at Pauley. The length of his contract is measured in years, but his popularity and competence are gauged from game to game, on a sliding scale that depends largely on what hot coaches are on the market. He has lived with this since the day in November 1996 that he became, through little fault of his own, the seventh successor to the John Wooden dynasty, albeit on an interim basis. Nothing changed as his employment status became permanent and he was presented a long-term contract, as his teams made one trip to the NCAA Tournament's Elite Eight and two to the Sweet 16, as he and his staff collected three top-five recruiting classes.

Everything changed, worsened, though, when The Pitino Episode became public. That's what Lavin calls it: The Pitino Episode. He does not refer to it casually as the Pitino episode and later call it the Pitino affair or the Pitino incident. No. It's always The Pitino Episode. Lavin has not lasted this long under this much pressure without being able to stuff his frustrations neatly into boxes, and this is has been his biggest yet.

"I was definitely worried about him," says point guard Earl Watson, who has started for Lavin for four years. Perhaps he needn't have been. Critics have questioned nearly every aspect of Lavin's program, from his bench demeanor to his efficiency in practice to the color of his players' shoes, but who can question his survival skills?