1. Good morning and welcome to Pac-12 Media Day. A coach and a player from each of the 12 schools will all be assembled at the Pac-12 Studios in San Francisco today to be grilled by Pac-12 writers from up and down the west coast, including our own representative in Adam Butler. We’ll have plenty of interesting stuff coming your way from this event, but if you’d like to follow along, the conference has set up a live stream for you to watch as each team gets their time on the podium.
2. One thing you can be sure new USC head coach Andy Enfield will be questioned about today is the line that he used to get his players running in practice, as reported by Jeff Faraudo of the San Jose Mercury News: “We play uptempo basketball here. If you want to play slow, go to UCLA.” It’s a great line to be sure, one that the national media picked up on immediately and, aside from the immediate fact that it probably reinforced his overall objective to his team, it also serves as further notice to future recruits, the national basketball populace and certainly to that team in the nicer neighborhood uptown, that the Trojans and their brash new coach aim to be the basketball team in Los Angeles. We’ll have more on this later today.
3. Yesterday we pointed you to some fine position-by-position breakdowns of the Washington roster. Today, we send you to the start of a similar rundown of the California squad by Scott Chong at California Golden Blogs. Last week he kicked off the series with a look at the wings on that squad, a group highlighted by highly-anticipated freshman Jabari Bird. Despite the fact that the Bears are tasked with replacing Pac-12 Player of the Year Allen Crabbe, Cal fans have reason to be confident that Bird and company can keep things going strong in Berkeley. Check back with them regularly to see the rest of the series.
4. It’s no secret that one of the big storylines for Oregon and head coach Dana Altman is the success they are having with transfers, having ridden players like Tony Woods, Arsalan Kazemi, Devoe Joseph and Olu Ashaolu to year-by-year improvement in Eugene. But there’s another aspect to that storyline and a tie between those last two players we mentioned and another pair of senior transfers – Jason Calliste and Richard Amardi – who hope to make their marks in their lone seasons with the Ducks. You see, all four of those guys – Joseph, Ashaolu, Calliste and Amardi – are natives of Toronto who spent time in the Grassroots Elite AAU program. Aside from becoming a home for transfers, Altman has also turned his program into a welcome landing spot for Torontonians.
5. Lastly, a quick check in on some recruiting news, as Michael Humphrey, a raw top-100 2014 power forward has made visits to three Pac-12 campuses to date. But now, according to Bruce Pascoe of the Arizona Daily Star, Humphrey has narrowed his list down to just two schools – Arizona and Stanford. Humphrey told Pascoe that he is “in love” with both schools, but expects to come up with a decision sometime soon after he spends his official visit in Tucson this weekend.

AMurawa (999 Posts)

Andrew Murawa Likes Basketball.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 17th, 2013 at 9:01 am by AMurawa and is filed under microsites, morning 5, pac 12. Tagged: andy enfield, arizona, california, dana altman, Jabari Bird, Jason Calliste, michael humphrey, oregon, Pac-12 media day, richard amardi, stanford, steve alford, ucla, usc. 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.