Randy Lein: Entering his 13th season as the golf coach at Arizona State, Lein faces one of his biggest challenges as the 12th-ranked Sun Devils tee off today in the NCAA West Regional at Stanford, Calif. The rub? How does he get his talented trio of Alejandro Canizares, Pat Moore and Niklas Lemke to live up to its ability, and get solid support from Jesse Mueller and Charly Simon? And, for that matter, how does he avoid another collapse like the one that took place at the recent Pac-10 Championship?

“All that did was fire us up for regionals,’’ said Lein (pronounced “Line”). “I’m not going to worry about the Pac-10s, because the weather had more to do with it than we did. It was awful.’’

Indeed, it was an unlucky draw, as midway through the final round of the Pac-10 the winds suddenly raged into the 30- to 40-mph range. ASU, which had led the tournament from the get-go, saw its nine-shot lead with nine holes to play blown away, as the Sun Devils ended up tied with Washington but lost a tie-breaker to the Huskies based on total score in the final round.

“By playing two hours ahead of us, Washington got a big break,’’ reported Lein, whose team went through a similar situation last year, when they led the conference tournament through the first three rounds only to falter to Arizona on the final day.

Make no mistake, this team is not at the level of Lein’s 1996 NCAA Championship team at ASU. That team won six tournaments that year compared to one team title this season. But ASU has superstar in Canizares, a junior from Spain who won NCAA medalist honors as a freshman, and Moore and Lemke also have the game to win it this time around.

“Pat Moore is a stud,’’ Lein said of his senior from Phoenix, who led the Pac-10 by three shots with nine holes to go but also was gone with the wind, ending up third. “Last year, he average 74.5 (strokes per round) and this year that’s 71.9. He just keeps getting better and better.’’

Lemke, a sophomore from Sweden, is so long off the tee that only his inexperience can get in his way, said Lein pointing to Lemke’s seventh-place finish at the Pac-10. And if Mueller, a senior from Mesa, and Simon, a junior from Spain, “can give us some solid play, we could make a late-season run.’’

“Of course, it all starts with Alejandro,’’ said Lein, who has watched, somewhat perplexingly, as his best player has won three times this season, but finished out of the top 30 on five occasions.

Being one of the 10 teams out of 27 to advance out of the West Regional should not be a problem. ASU is seeded fourth behind third-ranked UNLV, fourth-ranked New Mexico and sixth-ranked Auburn. Getting past the likes of No. 1 Oklahoma State and No. 2 Georgia will be a much taller task when the NCAA Championship takes place May 31-June 3 at Owing Mills, Md.

Lein, who coached at Southern Cal for nine years before he joined ASU in 1993, has earned 60 tournament titles as a coach, and has mentored 48 All-Americans. However, he said his greatest achievement at ASU, besides the big win in 1996, is the number of players who have graduated under him.

“I’m very proud of our 92 percent graduation rate, because I think that says a lot about the kind of program we run,’’ said Lein, pointing to the fact that all six of his starters at the Pac-10s, which included senior Kendall Critchfield, had a 3.0 GPA or better.

NOTEWORTHY

MCC at NJCAA: The third-ranked Mesa Community College women are competing this week in the National Junior College Athletic Association Championship at the LPGA International Course in Daytona Beach, Fla. That tournament concludes today. The No. 7 MCC men’s team heads to Scottsboro, Ala., next week for the NJCAA finals, which take place Monday through Thursday on the Goose Pond Colony Course.

Low wins Anser: The late Willie Low, the longtime head pro at Phoenix Country Club, was recently selected by the Southwest Section of the PGA as the recipient of its annual Anser Award, which was established in 1990 to honor PING founder Karsten Solheim.

Final thought: It was perhaps a perfect ending for the Big Stakes Match Play tournament held last week in Mesquite, Nev., as two young, struggling minitour players, Garth Mulroy of South Africa and David Ping from Michigan, beat two seasoned club pros, Rick Hartmann and Mark Mielke, to win the $3 million first prize. Needless to say, Mulroy and Ping are struggling no more.