1. For the UCLA Bruins, incoming freshmen Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson were supposed to make the biggest impact, but it’s been Jordan Adams who has been the best freshman so far for the Bruins. In Adams’ first four games, he set a school record as the first freshman to record four 20-point games to start his career. Unlike other impact freshman, Adams doesn’t stand out in any part of the game — he’s not extremely athletic and his shot isn’t the prettiest, but he’s reliable and and can score in multiple ways. No one at UCLA has been surprised by his performance as he continues to impress as the second leading scorer on the team with 16.9 points per game. As the season goes on, opponents will start to notice Jordan Adams even more.
2. Washington guard Andrews Andrews continues to struggle with an ankle injury and is questionable for Thursday’s upcoming match-up against Cal Poly. Andrews has missed the past three games and Lorenzo Romar believes there’s a small chance he could play, despite the fact that Andrews has been unable to practice. The Huskies, who are 6-4 on the season, will play Thursday’s game at home, but will be eager to get back Andrews before conference play as UW starts with three Pac-12 games on the road and will need his presence to help the Huskies get off to a good start.
3. Although Colorado’s bench has had little success this year, Tad Boyle believes getting his reserves into the game earlier more often will help them out and plans to do so against Northern Arizona this Friday. In Colorado’s last game against Fresno State, the bench was outscored by a margin of 20-2, but Boyle believes that the only way his freshman-dominated bench will get better is with more playing time and experience. Andre Roberson, Josh Scott, Askia Booker and Spencer Dinwiddie, all starters, are accounting for 77 percent of the offense on the team and will need the bench to provide more scoring to help ease the burden.
4. Arizona State has been one of the surprises in the Pac-12 this season with its 9-2 record, but Herb Sendek is still concerned about the depth of his team. Only seven players are averaging more than 10 minutes per game and Sendek has said that he would like to get one more player into the rotation but it remains to be seen who will step up. Senior guard Chris Colvin has slowed down since his great start and freshman Eric Jacobsen has shown he can play, but so far only against inferior competition. If the Sun Devils want to continue to become this year’s  surprise team, they will need more production from their bench.
5. One of the surprise players this year in the Pac-12 has been Oregon’s Arsalan Kazemi. He continues to impress in each game he plays and Dana Altman has said that Kazemi hasn’t even shown all of his offensive potential yet. Part of Kazemi’s early success has been the fact that he has put the transfer situation from Rice completely behind him and is focused to on helping Oregon improve, which he has accomplished so far by leading them in rebounds and steals while helping the Ducks to a 9-1 record.

PBaruh (54 Posts)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2012 at 9:01 am by PBaruh and is filed under microsites, morning 5, pac 12. Tagged: andrew andrews, arsalan kazemi, dana altman, herb sendek, jordan adams, pac-12, tad boyle, ucla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.