With data heavily reliant on KenPom.com and Hoop-math.com, along with contributions from Adam Butler, Kevin Danna, Connor Pelton and Tracy McDannald.

Regularly here at the RTC microsite, I’ll send out questions or polls to my group of trusted Pac-12 experts: Adam Butler, Connor Pelton, Kevin Danna and Tracy McDannald. We’ll gather votes to come up with consensus all-conference teams. We’ll ask who is the best defender, best dunker, best shooter in the Pac. And every now and then, we have some disagreements. This year, Oregon’s Joseph Young is perhaps our biggest source of regular disagreement. For instance, at the start of the season, I voted Young as the second-best player in the conference, behind only Delon Wright. None of my other trusted advisors ranked him any higher than sixth. We voted for best shooter in the league and I dialed up Young (and his 88.1% FT, 52.8% 2FG, and 41.5% 3FG) as the best in the conference; nobody else ranked him higher than third. And then, when we picked our mid-season all-conference team this week, I put Young in my top five, while only one other voter – Pelton – ranked him among his first five.

On the Curious Case of Oregon’s Joseph Young (USA Today Images)

Now, all of this preamble of is not to lead into a 2,000-word post on why I’m right and everyone else is wrong, but it did allow me to dig into the numbers and compare Young to some of the other guards in the league. I looked at Washington’s Nigel Williams-Goss, I looked at Utah’s Delon Wright. And then I looked at Stanford’s Chasson Randle. And what I found was awesome. Below are screenshots from KenPom.com, detailing Young and Randle’s numbers as of New Year’s Eve.

The basketball nerd in me loved taking screenshots of those two stat lines and comparing them. Look at how similar they are, almost right across the board, starting with height, weight, class and continuing on. Their minutes, offensive ratings and usage numbers are almost all exactly the same. I shared these screenshots with the group, and the idea for a new post comparing similar players to each other was born. I remember some baseball magazine I used to read when I was a kid, back when I still thought baseball was interesting. One of their regular features was to compare and contrast players with some similarity: Alan Trammell vs. Ozzie Smith; Tony Gwynn vs. Wade Boggs; George Brett vs. Mike Schmidt. I loved those things, even if for the life of me I can’t remember the name of the magazine or the name of the feature. (Oh, by the way, the fact that guys like Trammell, Lou Whitaker and Jack Morris are not in the baseball Hall of Fame is ridiculous, says this guy, who hasn’t watched more than nine innings of baseball in a season since before the MLB cancelled the 1994 World Series). I figured we’d try a similar thing here. Sure, baseball is more of an individual sport made up of clearer one-on-one match-ups – pitcher vs. hitter and whatnot. And just looking at the numbers for any individual basketball player without taking into account team composition and even the variability of a schedule is a fool’s errand, but I’ve never been scared of looking foolish. I’m not always going to try to establish exactly which player is better, but I’m going to try to lay out all the facts you’ll need to come up with your own opinion. Here is the first edition of RTC Pac-12 One-on-One.

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It’s been awhile since we checked in on the Mountain West. But with conference play set to begin on New Year’s Eve, it is time we get all caught up with the state of the league. We can break the league into three broad tiers: the conference favorites (San Diego State, Colorado State and Wyoming, in some order); an intriguing group of talented teams with recent success in the middle (New Mexico, Boise State and UNLV); and everybody else.

San Diego State’s Offense Has Been Awful, But They’re Still A Force To Be Reckoned With In The Mountain West. (Stephen Dunn/AP)

The Championship Tier: San Diego State came into the season as the clear-cut favorite in the conference. Somewhere in the middle of an egregious display of offense in a 36-point outing at Washington, that prognosis changed somewhat. With Colorado State out to a 13-0 start, the Rams are making their case as a challenger to the returning champions, while Wyoming is trying to claim the name Dunk City on their way to a big role in the conference championship chase. But really, go back and look at who either of those last two teams have beaten. Both have wins over Colorado and New Mexico State as among their best wins. The Rams can throw in wins over Georgia State, UTEP and UC Santa Barbara for flavor, but the biggest accomplishment for both teams is really the absence of bad losses. Meanwhile, the Aztecs, despite those three losses and offensive issues, has wins over Utah and BYU, both of which are better than anything on Colorado State or Wyoming’s ledger. And, just realistically, we’ve seen Steve Fisher succeed with atrocious offense backed up by excellent defense; it has been their M.O. for the past two years at least. While this level of offensive ineptitude is concerning, and the Aztecs are no longer the prohibitive favorite in the league, smart money still puts San Diego State a notch above the competition. Read the rest of this entry »

In any conference, there are hierarchies with the storylines, and, the Pac-12 is no different. Arizona is a perennial national contender. Utah is living up to its offseason promise as a challenger to the throne. Washington is the surprise team. Colorado is the disappointment. UCLA is struggling through a major roster change, sometimes with spectacular failures. USC is, well, yuck. Oregon State is fending off its preseason narrative as one of the worst major conference teams in America. Tyrone Wallace is blowing up for California. Stanford is completely indecipherable. I could go on.

In Two Games With Gerry Blakes As Their Point Guard, Arizona State Looks Like A Different Team (Jamie Squire, Getty Images)

My point is, wow; you can go a long way in discussing this conference before you get down the line to talk about Arizona State, but this is a pretty fascinating team. Let’s throw out the Sun Devils’ two performances in the CBE Classic in Kansas City, where they played 38 strong minutes in each game with Maryland and Alabama only to implode in the waning minutes. Let’s also throw out a 22-point win over UNLV and the ensuing one-point loss at Texas A&M — both featuring late-game struggles — and let’s just look at their last four games: an ugly performance in a seven-point loss at Marquette; a triple-overtime home loss to Lehigh; and a pair of home wins over Detroit, by 39 points, and Harvard, by 10 points. Why do we want to look at just these games? Well, in that recent span, we’ve seen head coach Herb Sendek start to figure out exactly what his rotation will be, beginning with sliding junior Gerry Blakes from the shooting guard to the point guard spot.

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Each week the Pac-12 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, which typically will include a Team, Player and Newcomer of the Week, along with our weekly Power Rankings.

Team of the Week: Stanford

Behind Chasson Randle and Anthony Brown, Stanford Earned Themselves A Big-Time Non-Conference Win. (Getty)

In a week with so much inexplicable carnage – Arizona, Washington, California, UCLA and Colorado all would like to have do-overs – the Cardinal are the conference’s saviors, earning the league’s best non-conference win of the season with a true road win at Texas in overtime last Tuesday. Coming on the heels of a tight loss at BYU, and with that ugly DePaul loss still lingering in the air, this game proved that this Cardinal team is capable of doing the kinds of things that last year’s Sweet Sixteen team did. Led by seniors Anthony Brown and Chasson Randle, Stanford battled the Longhorns and their crowd, fought back time and again from (at times self-inflicted) bad breaks and gave themselves and the conference an early Christmas present that should pay dividends the rest of the year.

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Adam Butler (@pachoopsab) of Pachoops will again be joining us all year, providing us with his weekly take on our favorite conference as we begin the March to Vegas.

One of the major factors of future success is margin of victory. It plays significantly into the predictive work of Dan Hanner as he algorithmically computes future outcomes and it also helps us lay people. Kentucky demolishes Kansas by 32 and we conclude, “Yup, those ‘Cats are good.” Pure science. So you can perhaps understand that it was becoming cause for concern as my beloved Wildcats (the Tucson genus, not Lexington) were beating the Manhattan genus of Wildcats by just four. And San Diego State by only a pair. Or what about at deficit to UC Irvine with as little as seven minutes remaining? Perhaps this is spoiled complaint, but as the Dukes and Kentuckys were demolishing the opposition – and elite competition at that – Arizona was being left behind in the conversation.

Arizona Appears To Be Starting To Click, But The Road Can Be Unkind. (Getty)

Now, we’re still in that glorious time of year where narrative and hype drives the conversation. Our sample sets are minimal at best by which to forecast the next three months. Teams are just now learning about themselves, freshmen have barely broken out their winter coats from under their bunks. But even Arizona’s best win evoked toughness from the Zags. The vaunted Arizona defense wasn’t what it was a season ago and Stanley Johnson was neither Aaron Gordon nor Nick Johnson. Perhaps this Arizona team wasn’t quite the dominant force we thought they’d be?

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I’m not sure when it started, but at some point Saturday afternoon, UCLA became a national laughingstock. Maybe it was in the middle somewhere of Kentucky’s 24-0 run to start their made-for-national-TV game in Chicago. Maybe it was when UCLA finally scored a bucket to make it 24-2 almost eight minutes into the game and got the sarcastic “oh, isn’t that nice for them” round of applause. Maybe it was at halftime when Doug Gottlieb and Seth Davis got to laugh at the Bruins and their 41-7 deficit. But certainly from halftime on, as the score floated around and into the casual sports fans’ consciousness, the Bruins became a punch line, a sick joke that lasted until that sports cycle ended and Sunday and the NFL took over.

Odds Are Good That This Shot Attempt By Norman Powell Wound Up Getting Rejected. (USA Today)

A lot of times when a team gets killed like UCLA did on Saturday in Chicago, you’ll hear someone say something like: “Just burn the tape, there is nothing you can learn from that game.” Well, screw that. There is plenty UCLA can learn from their disaster in Chicago. In terms of X’s and O’s: throw those out the window. What UCLA can – and needs to – learn from this game is more primal. Toughness, togetherness, competitiveness. Pride. Kansas got knocked down and kicked and left for dead by Kentucky a month ago, but since then, the Jayhawks have toughened up and started to come together and proven themselves a top ten team. The Bruins – fresh off a 39-point loss to Kentucky in which the final score was completely merciful – find themselves at a crossroads. Do they turn this into the rock bottom upon which they bounce back to the surface? Or is this a team ready to go the way of Michigan – a team whose confidence is broken?

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Each week the Pac-12 microsite will run down our weekly superlatives, which typically will include a Team, Player and Newcomer of the Week, along with our weekly Power Rankings.

Team of the Week: Washington

Nigel Williams-Goss and The Huskies Are Beginning To Make Believers Out of Pac-12 Fans (USA Today)

Given the way the past three seasons have gone in Seattle, it has been perfectly reasonable to remain skeptical of the Huskies thus far. Yeah, they won the Wooden Legacy tournament over Thanksgiving weekend, but San Jose State, Long Beach State and UTEP were not exactly a murderer’s row there. Now, three weeks later, we look back on that and instead see a tough neutral-court win over those Miners (who just gave Arizona all it wanted) a little bit more impressive. Then, two weeks ago, there was an ugly, ugly, ugly Sunday night win over San Diego State, which was easily written off as little more than a horrific shooting night by the Aztecs, followed up by a come-from-behind victory against a middling Eastern Washington team. Any of those things in a vacuum elicits more yawns; but taken as a whole, we’re starting to get somewhere. Then on Saturday evening in Last Vegas, the Huskies turned in their first masterpiece of the season in a win over Oklahoma, delivering a superb offensive first half before getting to the finish line on the strength of strong defense and timely buckets. We’ll get to some of the Huskies’ specific performances shortly, but a neutral-site win over a quality Sooners’ team gets the Huskies recognition as our first unanimous Pac-12 Team of the Week.

Player of the Week: Nigel Williams-Goss, Utah

You’re not often going to see the Huskies’ floor general put up massive numbers, but he does a little bit of everything for this team. Always calm and under control, Williams-Goss is a master at getting his players the ball in the places where they can make the most positive plays for the team on the offensive end, and sticking his nose into trouble wherever he can on the defensive end. In three games this week (including Monday night’s win over Tulane), Williams-Goss averaged 10.3 points, 8.7 assists and 5.7 boards per game, numbers that only begin to hint at the impact he has had for his team.

(Also receiving votes: Brandon Taylor, Utah)

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More than a month into the season, we’ve had a chance to see each of the Pac-12 teams multiple times, with every school getting a crack or two (or more) at good competition. As for the returnees, we’ve already got a good idea of what to think of their games; but it’s been the newcomers who have made their impressions on us through five weeks. In the spirit of getting to know them, we’re going to put together a team – an honest-to-goodness team with a point guard and bigs and defenders and shooters – made from among our favorite newcomers in the league. Easy enough, you might say. Start with Arizona’s Stanley Johnson, Utah’s Jakob Poeltl and UCLA’s Kevon Looney and go from there, right? Nah, child’s play. Future NBA lottery picks are ineligible for this team. We’re going to dig a little deeper.

Arizona State Freshman Kodi Justice Running The Point: Bold Choice

• PG: Kodi Justice, Arizona State – He’s not your typical point guard. He’s not the small, quick athlete; he’s more of a long, lanky glider. But he’s got savvy and awareness; he’s capable of dropping a dime on his teammates’ hands given only the slimmest of openings. Back off of him and he’ll drill a three in your face. Get up on him and, even though he doesn’t exactly have the quickest first step, he’s got a good enough handle to slide by you and open things up on the move. This Arizona State team will have to make up for Justice’s average athleticism and defensive shortcomings for his position, but we’ll make up for it with great athletes everywhere else in this lineup.

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It’s been a while since we last did this, so it is now time for another round of Pac-12 Burning Questions, where we ask our panelists all to take a crack at one key question. This time, right to the point:

Of all the new players around the conference, who is your favorite?

Kevin Danna: For me it’s gotta be Utah’s Jakob Poeltl. Maybe it’s from spending too much time around Brian Scalabrine when he was demoted to Santa Cruz last year, but all I want out of a big man is someone who defends the paint, rebounds, and finishes well at the rim. The Amazing Austrian does all three of those things wonderfully, averaging 10.9 points, 9.4 rebounds and 2.9 blocks per game while shooting 69 percent from the floor, mostly on shots in the paint. Sure, there’s plenty of other stuff he can work on – starting with his free-throw shooting (44.9%) – but he patrols the paint on defense and doesn’t mess around with the rock when he gets it inside. Dunk, defend and rebound… just like God intended from his big men.

Jakob Poeltl Does What You Want A Big Man To Do (Utah Basketball)

Adam Butler: Gary Payton II. Let me know if it seems I exhaust this narrative, but Oregon State was projected to be the worst major conference team. I’m not talking about pundits, either. We’re talking 10K simulations run by Winn and Hanner. So the fact that Oregon State isn’t in the cellar, is playing impressive ball, and is being led by the spawn of Gary Payton – I’m paying attention. GP2 put up a triple-double this week, which puts him in rare Pac-12 air. His numbers speak for themselves but the important part is that he’s leading a team that was desperate for leadership.

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We’re a little more than a quarter of the way through the season now, so it is time to roll out our first edition of Best in the West. We’re going to take all the schools west of the Rockies (and we’re going to be a bit generous with our geography here – basically we’re looking at schools from the Pac-12, Mountain West, WCC and Big West, and then some of the schools from the Big Sky and WAC) and give you the top 20 teams as of today. But rather than just ranking schools #1 though #20, we’re going to divide them up into tiers, mostly because I don’t think putting Gonzaga at #2 when they played Arizona into overtime in Tucson feels right to anybody.

Here are our Top 20 teams in the West (their overall ranking is in parentheses), with descriptions of what the teams in each tier have in common as well as brief comments on each school.

The Best of the Best  – In a league of their own.

• Arizona (#1 overall, Pac-12 #1) – There have been some growing pains for the Wildcats, but with an unblemished record and wins over Kansas State, San Diego State, Gonzaga and Michigan, they’ve still got a ways to go before they tap out on their potential.

Arizona and Gonzaga Played A Fun One A Week Back, Proving Themselves Nearly Equal. (AP)

• Gonzaga (#2 overall, WCC #1) – Really, the Zags are more of a #1A in this tier. An overtime loss at Arizona in which they didn’t play all that well and let some good chances slip away bodes well for their upside. Read the rest of this entry »