Rush The Court

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Mountain West and Pac-12 conferences.

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Last week in this space, we mentioned that California, of all the teams in the conference, was the one team with a pretty good argument for consideration for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament. Sure, they had no significant wins on their schedule, but they were ranked 30^th in the RPI, a strong enough number that could have earned them a bid. However, the Golden Bears were upset at home by Arizona on Thursday night, and when the RPI numbers came out on Monday, Cal had dropped to 48^th (notably, the Wildcats jumped up from 85^th to 62^nd). This little factoid shows two things: first, and perhaps most important, the RPI rankings are fluid at this point in the season; a good win or a bad loss (and for that matter, good wins and bad losses from previous opponents on your schedule) can have a significant effect on your ranking, especially for teams on the ubiquitous bubble. Secondly, it shows just how slim the margin of error for Pac-12 teams is. With no significant wins to fall back on, any team in the conference that hopes to earn legitimate at-large consideration needs to string together some wins here down the stretch and slowly but surely bump those RPI numbers up.

If you’re looking at it from a conference-wide perspective, the best thing that can happen for the league is for a handful of teams to distance themselves from the middle of the Pac. If, for instance, Washington (current conference leader, RPI of 76), Arizona and California were to get on a roll going down the stretch and consistently off teams like say, Colorado, Oregon, and Stanford, it is still possible that the conference could have three different teams with fairly strong RPIs to help make their case for inclusion in the Big Dance. Of course, those strong RPIs will likely be just about the only significant chip in their corner when those arguments get made. One last note, before we put away all mentions of the RPI for a week, just as an example of how silly it is, Washington swept the Los Angeles schools this week, and their RPI actually dropped, from 72 to 76.

What to Watch For

The two biggest clashes of the weekend come on Thursday night, as Colorado travels to Arizona and Washington goes to Oregon. Arizona caught fire on the road last week and now they get a chance to extend their two-game winning streak against the Rocky Mountain schools, with the Buffaloes getting the first crack. Colorado rides a two-game winning streak as well, but they have struggled on the road this year winning just one of their first four conference road games with the lone win coming against a depleted USC team. An hour later on Thursday night, we get one of the better rivalry games in the conference, as Washington heads to Oregon for a battle that will help determine who is atop the standings on Friday morning. The Huskies are riding a five-game winning streak and are currently a game up on the Ducks, but despite U-Dub’s 3-1 road record in conference play, it is easy to still be a little bit skeptical of their ability to go on the road and win games. If they can do that this week in what is likely their toughest remaining test on the schedule, you have to be much more inclined to be Husky believers.

Elsewhere around the conference, both California and Stanford will make the road trip to the Los Angeles schools, where each should be significant favorites against USC but slight underdogs to UCLA; Stanford faces the Bruins on Thursday, while Cal makes the trip to the Sports Arena Saturday afternoon.

Player of the Year Watch

Last week, we essentially narrowed the field here down to four players: Terrence Ross, Jorge Gutierrez, Jared Cunningham, and (reluctantly) Tony Wroten. The biggest concern we had about Cunningham’s candidacy was the fact that, despite his conference-leading 18.0 point per game average and other excellent numbers (of both the traditional and tempo-free variety), his team was still below the .500 mark in conference. That prompted Doug Tammaro, the Media Relations Director at Arizona State to send us the following list of Pac-12 Player of the Year award winners compared with his team’s Pac-10 finish and postseason invitation. In short, of the 19 winners in the last 18 years (in 1994-95, there were co-winners), only twice has the POTY winner come from a team that has not earned an NCAA invitation. And, interestingly enough, both of those times the player was a Sun Devil: Ike Diogu in 2004-05 and Eddie House in 1999-2000.

Beyond that, seven of the winners in that time frame played on the conference champions, while 13 played on teams that won at least 12 games, a feat that would require Oregon State to win their final seven games of the season to accomplish. So, yes, it is possible for Cunningham to win the POTY even on a sub-.500 team, and the fact that it is a down year for the conference gives the idea even a bit more credence, but looking back on the numbers for Diogu and House, those players were dominant. When Diogu won it as a junior, he led the conference in points (22.5 PPG), rebounds (9.6 RPG), and blocks (2.2 BPG) and is still the only player in conference history to lead the league in all three categories in the same season. House won it his senior year after averaging 23 points (the only guy on his team to average double digit scoring), 5.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and more than two steals a game while also posting one of the best single games in recent conference history when he erupted for 61 points in a double-overtime win against Cal.

Has Cunningham displayed enough of the kind of individual dominance that guys like Diogu and House used to overcome their team’s subpar performance? It remains to be seen, but last week he again led his team in scoring twice (he has been the Beavers’ leading scorer in their last five games and nine of their last ten) although Colorado was pretty effective at shutting him down in their 22-point blowout win. Of our other three main candidates, Terrence Ross had the best week, scoring 22 points, including 10 of his team’s last 12, as he willed his team to a big comeback victory over UCLA. Teammate Tony Wroten was limited by a thigh bruise, but still averaged 13 points, five assists and 5.5 rebounds in 28 minutes per game. Jorge Gutierrez was his typical fiery self, but faltered some down the stretch in a loss to Arizona.

One other dark horse candidate, who, wrongly, may not have even been mentioned once in this space all season, is Brock Motum of Washington State. Motum has been a significant bright spot for Ken Bone all year, averaging 17.2 points and 6.8 rebounds and scoring in double figures in 21 of the Cougars’ 23 games. But as good as the numbers have been all year, Motum has really turned it up in recent weeks following the season-ending injury to Faisal Aden. In the three games since then, the junior out of Australia has tried to pick up for his fallen teammate, averaging a spectacular 28.3 points and nine rebounds while shooting a 69.8 eFG%. Those kind of numbers are hard to ignore.

Freshman of the Year Watch

Maybe next week we will dig further into the history of the conference Freshman of the Year award, but for now, this race is more or less already decided. Tony Wroten is the man here. Somebody would have to really turn it on down the stretch in order to surpass him, and that’s a long shot for now.

Power Rankings

While California may have dropped to second place in the league, they are still atop our power rankings for the third consecutive week. Washington, however, has jumped as high as second for the first time all year and is knocking at the door. Stanford, meanwhile, has fallen precipitously, dropping to sixth, their lowest ranking this season.

Weekly Honors

After their road sweep in the Bay Area, Arizona took down our Team of the Week award for the first time since week one. Meanwhile, the Player of the Week and Newcomer of the Week awards went to first-time winners this week, as UCLA’s Joshua Smith nudged Brock Motum and Kyle Fogg for the POTW award, while Askia Booker became the second Colorado player to win the NOTW award after Spencer Dinwiddie won it earlier in the year.

YouTube of the Week

This alley-oop dunk by Carlos Emory off a beautiful pass from Devoe Joseph has got to be on the very short list of Pac-12 dunks of the year.