When the men’s basketball team travels to face Arizona State tonight and Arizona on Saturday, it will be looking for a ticket to second place in the Pacific-10 Conference standings.

All Matt Haryasz is looking for is a ticket — or two. The junior forward from Page, Ariz. has any number of family and friends who would love to come see him play, but players only get four seats per road game.

“I’ve been trying to get some of my teammates to give me theirs,” Haryasz said. “I know it might look selfish, but this is the only weekend I really need tickets for.”

It’s a homecoming for Haryasz, but the Cardinal (12-7, 6-3 Pac-10) will revisit a less pleasant experience: their last loss, over a month ago, an 81-69 defeat at the hands of the Sun Devils (15-6, 4-5). Junior point guard Chris Hernandez sat that game out with back spasms, the Cardinal had trouble making lay-ups and Arizona forward Ike Diogu scored 28 points and pulled down 15 rebounds.

But Hernandez returned for the next game, shots started finding the net, and Stanford has not seen Diogu — until now. The Cardinal head to the desert as the conference’s hottest team, hoping to build on a six-game winning streak that has them one game out of first place.

While junior guard Dan Grunfeld’s offensive output has remained steady, a number of Stanford players have stepped up their games during the streak. Hernandez’s shot has improved; senior forward Rob Little has provided an inside presence; junior guard Jason Haas has shared the point guard duties and relieved some of the pressure on Hernandez; and, most recently, sophomore guard Fred Washington has emerged as a valuable role player, scoring a season-high eight points against Oregon on Saturday.

But Haryasz has made perhaps the most dramatic improvement. He scored 20 points and pulled down 20 boards against Oregon on Saturday, earning him Sporting News Player of the Week honors. Things have opened up for Haryasz on the offensive end of late.

“Rob has been doing a good job rebounding and he’s hitting his hook shot,” Haryasz said. “In the start of the season, Rob and I were getting doubled every game. I think now, we’re probably getting more one-on-one opportunities.”

Haryasz has taken advantage, averaging 16.3 points and 12.5 rebounds per game — a stat line that looks a lot like that of Diogu, who leads the conference with 21.2 points and 10.2 rebounds per game.

The Cardinal will do everything they can to limit Diogu tonight.

“We have a better idea of how good Ike is,” head coach Trent Johnson said. “What surprised us is that when we came down to double him last game, he stepped away from the basket and made three short jump shots.”

Haryasz and Little have been more aggressive on the defensive end and more active on the boards, but everything pretty much goes out the window against Diogu.

“If Shaq wants to leave Miami and come over and help, then we might have a shot,” Johnson said. “If he gets the ball in the post we’ll send a guy down there. We’ll try to front him, to play straight behind him, whatever works.”

The Cardinal might be able to limit Diogu even without the Big Aristotle. Diogu has scored 15 points or less in each of his last three games, but Arizona State managed to win two of the three. The Sun Devils lost to Washington on Sunday, 79-70, but were within reach until the final couple of minutes.

While Stanford tries to move to the top of the Pac-10, Arizona State is working to assert itself in the middle of the conference. The team is perched in a precarious three-way tie for fifth place.

The Sun Devils have more weapons than just Diogu, and will rely on contributions from Kevin Kruger, who averages 10.4 points per game off the bench, and point guard Steve Moore, who scored 19 points in the teams’ last meeting.

It will make a difference to have Hernandez guarding Moore this time around. Since his return, Hernandez has shut down some of the best guards in the Pac-10, including Arizona’s Mustafa Shakur, California’s Richard Midgley and UCLA’s Jordan Farmar. The team as a whole has upped its defensive effort, limiting opponents to 39.2 percent from the field.

“I know I didn’t play particularly well on defense in [the Arizona State] game,” Haryasz said. “We didn’t look like we had much energy that game. We weren’t getting

back on D nearly as well as we are now. I think going there, having Chris back is huge, but also I think our energy will be up and we’ll look for a little revenge, a little payback.”

Johnson agreed that the team has made strides on the defensive end.

“We have been defending more intelligently,” Johnson said. “We hurt ourselves because of fouls early on. We have been limiting transition baskets, we’ve done well playing team defense and rotating, helping out. We’re playing with a sense of urgency. We understand that we can’t rest on defense because these teams can come from behind.”

The Cardinal will have a big defensive challenge on Saturday against Arizona’s stacked lineup, but a win over the Sun Devils and Wildcats would move Stanford into — at the very least — a tie for second place. They are inching closer to the conference lead, a possibility that seemed dead after they lost to Arizona State at home.

Arizona head coach Lute Olson thinks the conference is still wide open.

“I said at the start of the season that I thought whoever won it could have four or five losses, and I don’t think the picture has changed a whole lot,” Olson said. “Stanford has come on to be what we all expected them to be at the start of the season.”

Haryasz has recently become everything Stanford fans thought he could be — and more. Now he and the Cardinal will set their sights on Diogu. And, of course, the tickets.

“I could use as many as I can get,” he said. “I’ve still got a lot of family and friends out there.”