Much of the college basketball dialogue has turned to things like one-and-done and transfers. Is it good for the game or is it bad for the game. Mark Cuban went so far as to say the game itself is bad for the sport (I loosely paraphrase). While Cuban’s sentiments aren’t necessarily accurate, they do share the same general tone about the longevity and fluidity of a college career. So on Saturday, when you see Dwight Powell, Josh Huestis, Stefan Nastic and John Gage take the floor for the last time in Palo Alto, note that you’re seeing something special and certainly unique. They’ll stand there short two members of their 2010 recruiting class, Aaron Bright and Anthony Brown, who will both play in 2014-15 as fifth-year seniors after sustaining injuries. They will, of note, all be there together. But think about that for a second. Approximately five years ago, Johnny Dawkins sat in six different living rooms with the promise of a Stanford education and a team. On Saturday, years after these kids committed to their coach, their school and, most importantly, each other, they’ll leave as they arrived: together.

A Team Chock Full of Seniors, The Stanford, Has Become A Rarity (Steve Solis / PRPhotos.com)

So yes, what will transpire Saturday afternoon is rare and I think, in some regards, it trumps whatever success or otherwise they’ve had. It’s yet to be determined if any of these young men will participate in the NCAA Tournament. It was indubitably a goal that may yet come to fruition. And that’s why I’ll be paying such close attention to Saturday’s contest. They just didn’t show up on Wednesday. Collectively the seniors were 12-of-36 from the field; Powell fouled out and the seniors accounted for eight of 12 turnovers. Show up they did not but stick around they have. As the conversation has whipped around and past them, they’ve embodied all that we’ve wanted and cherished about college basketball. You guys… they stuck it out. Dwight Powell nearly bolted for greener (read: $$) pastures and a chance at the NBA. When I had the opportunity to talk to him at Pac-12 media day, he told me he came back to take care of unfinished business with his guys. That 15th-ranked class has done what everyone wants to say everyone else isn’t doing. And everyone appears to be having success (Lyons, Mark; Marshall, Jermaine; All, Oregon) in doing such. So what does it say about us, or those pining for what the Cardinal have done, that we pay them little attention? Or that we’re disappointed in their lack of success? Or, perhaps worse, expecting it? Sometimes success isn’t always the result but the journey to getting there.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are 10 days until Selection Sunday and no fewer than nine Pac-12 teams have designs on crashing March Madness over the next couple of weeks. Let’s take a look at where each stands heading into the final weekend of regular season play.

Locks

• Arizona – Right now they’re an obvious #1 seed. A loss at Oregon and a loss in their opening round Pac-12 Tournament game (to Utah or another team like Cal, Stanford, Utah or Washington) and they drop to a #2 seed; otherwise, the Wildcats have earned the #1 seed in the West, with a San Diego/Anaheim route to Dallas. Heck, even if they do find a way to drop to a #2 seed, they’re still in all likelihood bound for San Diego and Anaheim.

Arizona Looks Locked Into A San Diego -> Anaheim Path To The Final Four (Casey Sapio, USA Today)

• UCLA – Let’s not pretend the Bruins have finished strongly, with two losses in their last three games. They finish up with two on the road (tonight at Washington and Saturday at Washington State), but the Bruins are in the NCAA Tournament. Finish with a good run and they wind up around a #5 seed (a #4 isn’t out of the question, but unlikely); finish with a 1-1 trip to Washington and an early exit in the Pac-12 Tourney and they’re more apt to be in the #8/#9 game.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you’re a college basketball player at a major program, one of the greatest compliments that can be paid to you is to be “hated.” We’re talking sports-hate here, not the real derogatory, run-down, kind of hate, but hate inspired by a player’s ability to act as a thorn in the side of opposing teams. It took some time for Arizona State’s Jordan Bachynski to come by that kind of desirable hate, but he certainly has, and he’s come by it honestly. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you play four seasons on your way to becoming the Pac-12’s all-time leading shot-blocker. Just flipping through Twitter on Tuesday night, you read things like “Flopynski” and comparisons to Vlade Divac or soccer players taking dives. Let me remind you, this is a guy with 309 blocked shots in his career, not exactly the kind of stat that indicates a guy that spends a ton of time flopping around the basketball court.

Jordan Bachynski Is Well-Hated Outside Of Tempe. And He Should Be Proud Of That (US Presswire)

But really, the sheer fact that Bachynski has generated this type of feeling from opponents and opposing fans is proof of the accomplishments the 7’2” Albertan has under his belt. He arrived in Tempe at the age of 21, having completed his LDS mission between the end of high school and the start of his college career, meaning he went almost three years (factor in an ankle injury his senior year in high school that limited his ability to play at Findlay Prep) without playing competitive basketball prior to first donning a Sun Devil uniform. As a result, the long and lanky center needed time to build strength and conditioning, work on coordination and skill, and just get used to the new level of competition. It took him the better part of two years, but down the stretch of his sophomore season, he began to show glimpses of the player he would become. In the last 13 games of 2011-12, he averaged better than 10 points per game, knocked in better than 70 percent of his free throws (quite an accomplishment for a sub-50% guy to that point) and began to show his dominance as a rim protector, rejecting an average of two shots per game over that stretch.

Read the rest of this entry »

As we head into the final week of the season, the regular season conference championship remains very much up for grabs San Diego State and New Mexico are tied atop the standings at 14-2, four games ahead of third-place UNLV, each with one game to go prior to their showdown at Viejas Arena on Saturday evening for what figures to be a battle for the outright conference title. The Aztecs have a bit more precarious mid-week exam ahead of them, as they’ll travel to those previously mentioned Runnin’ Rebels tomorrow to renew what has become one of the better rivalries in the conference in recent years.

Team of the Week

UNLV – The Rebels bounced back from an 0-for-2 previous week to score a solid win over Colorado State and a blowout of Air Force this week, securing their credentials, at least for the time being, as the third-best team in the conference. And, there’s little doubt that this Rebel team is significantly improved from the squad that was stinking up the Thomas & Mack in a home loss to those Falcons back in the early days of 2014. Dave Rice and company are probably still in a position where their only chance at an invitation to the Big Dance involves a Mountain West Tournament win in a week’s time, but at least such a possibility is no longer just a punch line to a bad joke.

Bryce Dejean-Jones Has Helped The Runnin’ Rebels Become More Stable

Player of the Week

Bryce Dejean-Jones, Junior, UNLV – His teammate Khem Birch won the official conference player of the week, but we’re going to go with the team’s most consistent offensive performer, who turned in a solid week of 14.5 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per night while knocking in shots at an efficient 54.7% eFG clip this week. Dejean-Jones has been maddening at time with erratic shot selection early in his career, but on a team without a ton of other guys capable of creating for themselves, he has been a high-volume shooter who has also significantly increased his capacity to separate a good shot from a bad one.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been thinking about how to write a piece on the college careers of the Wear twins for several days now, and, well, it just isn’t coming to me, so I’ll just start writing and see what happens. You see, it’s hard. This is supposed to be a piece honoring their college careers, looking back fondly on what they’ve accomplished, but it is no secret that there are many – on both coasts – who view this pair of former McDonald’s All-Americans as disappointments in college. So this is an exercise in balancing honesty about their faults with optimism about their accomplishments.

Even After Three Years Of Watching The Wears At UCLA, It Is Hard To Figure Out What To Make Of Them. (AP)

Because, really, when you get right down to it, measured up against even most high-major recruits, the Wear twins have had strong careers. (Now is as good of a time as any to apologize to David and Travis for probably never having written their first names in the past three years, but rather just referring to them as The Twins. They’ve been judged not as individuals, but as a singular entity, and that probably won’t change much here either.) Combined, they’ve started 144 of the 242 games in which they’ve played. They’ve each put up offensive ratings over 100.0 for the final three years of their career. And they’ve never caused trouble and generally always done whatever it is their coaches asked them to do. And yet, for some reason, from sea to shining sea, from blue-blood program North Carolina to blue-blood program UCLA, fans remain disappointed in the Wears’ production.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t looked at your calendar, we’re ready to flip the page into March – which means, among other things, the Pac-12 Tournament, the NCAA Tournament, and mixed in there somewhere, the end of some great college basketball careers. Over the next week or so, we’ll dig into some of the best senior classes in the conference and reflect on what their careers have meant to their programs. To kick things off, here’s Adam Butler of Pachoops.com giving us the rundown on the waning careers of California’s Justin Cobbs and Richard Solomon.

Richard Solomon (35) and Justin Cobbs Are Great Examples of Guys Who Have Grown Up Over Their College Careers. (Ezra Shaw, Getty Images)

In an ideal world, or at least the world as it’s explained to us, you go to college to “discover yourself.” It’s the greatest time of your life and you’ll make mistakes and learn from them and grow and mature and leave ready to attack the real world. A grown-up. This, of course, is not always the case. But for Cal seniors Justin Cobbs and Richard Solomon, perhaps it is. Maybe these two personify the college experience because look at them now. As they stand today they’re the leaders of a likely NCAA-bound team – the third Dance of their careers – and another top-half Pac-12 finish. Cobbs is a legitimate Player of the Year candidate and Solomon leads the conference in rebounding by nearly an entire board per game. To understand the magnitude of their senior years, we need to know where they started.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

‘Tis the time of year when we really dive into favorites. It makes sense as those usually come first. We pick our favorite candy, friend, player, etc., first whenever organizing. And with the NCAA Tournament fast approaching (you guys realize tomorrow is March, right?) our immediate dialogue turns to picking the favorites to win the thing. Well let’s take a step back from the NCAAs and away from favorites for a second and get ahead of ourselves and talk about who might be a dark horse winner of the Pac-12 Tournament. Semantics would suggest that I’m just citing the favorite rally through a few upsets in Vegas, but I’d disagree. The favorites to win the tournament are foregone. As Tad Boyle recently said, ““There are 11 other teams in the Pac-12 and then there’s Arizona.” There ya have it folks, the favorites debate is settled. Which isn’t to say that anyone not named “Wildcats” is a dark horse champion candidate. Quite the contrary. I like UCLA’s odds and think a senior-laden Stanford crew could most certainly make noise. Arizona State has one of the most dynamic players in the country in Jahii Carson with a red hot support staff in Jermaine Marshall and the conference’s all-time leading shot blocker in Jordan Bachynski making the Sun Devils another viable title option.

Yeah, Arizona Is The Favorite, We Know That Already. Give Us An Underdog. (Casey Sapio, USA Today)

But whoopdie doo, Adam! These guys are all in the top half of the conference. That’s why it’s not too exciting, right now in this column, to discuss the favorites. We know them. So what about those dark horses, the un-favorites. I’d say that the criteria to fit this bill is slim. You have had to show the propensity to: A) beat top teams, B) do something elite, and/or C) get wildly hot with top talent. Let’s get something out of the way: USC and Washington State fit none of these bills. The Trojans have demonstrated that not only can they not beat elite teams, but they can’t beat anyone. They will not win the Pac-12 Tournament. Likewise, the Cougars won’t either. Did you know that they put up 0.46 points per possession in a game this season? They couldn’t even bust the 1.0 PPP mark against Oregon State. At this point we have covered the favorites and the least favorites. Leaving us right where we want to be, looking at my favorite dark horse candidates to win the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada (it’s two weeks away, by the way).

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Did you see Arizona on Wednesday night? Did you see them run through California at McKale in a barrage of suffocating defense and ridiculous transition throwdowns? Did you think what I thought? As Greg Hansen of the Arizona Daily Star points out, Wednesday night was the Wildcats’ demonstration that they have healed and moved on since losing Brandon Ashley. He won’t, and I won’t, and I doubt anyone will claim that the Wildcats are better without Ashley, but they have definitely worked their way back to the point where they’re roughly as good, and as dominant, as they were before their sophomore power forward went down. There are still certainly some weaknesses there, but I’ll gladly put Arizona right up there with the best in the nation as equally deserving of national championship contender status.
2. Thursday night, UCLA hosted Oregon and did so without their two best players, as sophomores Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams watched after being suspended in the middle of the day on Thursday for a “violation of team rules.” And, midway through the second half with the Bruins down 14, it looked like Oregon would walk away with an easy win that would help bolster their tournament resume. Well, those Ducks got that all-important win, but it took them an extra 10 minutes to do so, as a wild, literally-last second David Wear three forced overtime, much-maligned freshman point guard Bryce Alford went nuts for 31 points in 49 minutes and still the Bruins weren’t able to overcome the effort of Oregon transfer guards Joseph Young and Jason Calliste. For UCLA, it is no harm, no foul when it comes to their NCAA prospects while Oregon comes away a game south of .500 in the conference with three to play and another solid win for their resume. Anderson and Adams are expected to be back Sunday for UCLA’s home finale against Oregon State and in the end, no harm done, but hopefully a lesson learned.
3. Tonight, Washington and Washington State will reignite their rivalry in an in-state battle that few outside of the Evergreen State will pay much attention to, even on a night largely barren of meaningful college basketball games. As Christian Caple of The News Tribune calls it, “apathy” has set in, as neither the Huskies nor the Cougars have been much worth watching in recent years. Their match-up earlier this year drew the least number of fans in more than a decade and excitement for Friday night’s match-up isn’t a whole lot stronger than it was.
4. We mentioned this way back in October and were taken to task for it by a Washington fan, but… at what point does Lorenzo Romar’s seat on the sideline at Hec Edmunson Pavilion get a little tingly? Athletic director Scott Woodward still calls Romar the “right man for the job” and his contract that runs through 2020 (at $1.7 million per year) , which should guarantee that he won’t be run off too hastily. But the Huskies are now heading into their third-straight March on the outside looking in come the NCAA Tournament. And, with C.J. Wilcox graduating and the recruiting pipeline starting to dry up, there is no end in sight to the drought. Make no mistake, Romar’s still got plenty of leash in Seattle, but questions about his long-term viability absolutely need to be considered these days.
5. Below is our panel’s selections for this weekend in Pac-12 basketball. We head to the mountains for our game of the week, where all three of us took the host Utes in a rare Saturday morning game. In fact, there is no differential between our panel’s selections this week. Very boring.
   

   Game	Connor (27-7)	Drew (23-11)	Adam (22-12)
   Washington State @ Washington	Washington	Washington	Washington
   Colorado @ Utah	Utah	Utah	Utah
   California @ Arizona State	Arizona State	Arizona State	Arizona State
   Stanford @ Arizona	Arizona	Arizona	Arizona
   Oregon State @ UCLA	UCLA	UCLA	UCLA
   Oregon @ USC	Oregon	Oregon	Oregon

We’ve still got two weeks of conference play remaining, but the Pac-12 Player of the Year has really crystallized into a two-man race between UCLA’s Kyle Anderson and Arizona’s Nick Johnson. Still, there are a handful of other players for whom arguments deserve to be made. Below, our RTC Microsite staff plus frequent guest Adam Butler of Pachoops.com break down what they consider to be the top five candidates for this award, presented below in alphabetical order.

Kyle Anderson, UCLA (argued by Andrew Murawa)

Kyle Anderson Not Only Leads The Bruins In Several Stats, But He Also Just Flat Out Leads

If he’s not the clear-cut favorite to win the conference Player of the Year, he’s likely one of just two players realistically in the conversation. Why is Slo-Mo so deserving of such recognition? Well, quite simply, he does just about everything related to the game of basketball very well and he’s also one of the most versatile players ever to grace a college basketball court. He’s a 6’9” dynamo who is not only the best point guard in the conference, but he’s also arguably the best power forward in the conference. Compared to players nationally, his KenPom profile is littered with all sorts of little red numbers highlighted in yellow, indicating that he’s very effective across the board. He leads his team in rebounds, blocks and assists; he’s second in points and steals. But most importantly, he leads. A floor general in the purest sense of the term, he knows where all of his teammates are at all times, and just as importantly, he knows where they should be – and isn’t afraid to tell them. Off the court he’s taken on the mantle of the team’s spokesman at times. And when the game seems to be moving too fast for others, Anderson is sure to keep it cool, proving once and for all that Slo-Mo is not meant to be a pejorative.

Justin Cobbs, California (AM)

Senior point guard. Is there a more comforting phrase in all of college athletics? The very thought brings up the image of guys like Peyton Siva and Jon Scheyer and A.J. Price and Gerry McNamara, elevating their games to new heights. Cobbs may not wind up having the type of team success that those guys had, but it’s not for a lack of trying. Minus his running mate from his last two seasons in Berkeley, Allen Crabbe, Cobbs has gone out of his way this season to try to get teammates like senior forward Richard Solomon, sophomore wing Tyrone Wallace and mercurial freshman Jabari Bird involved in the offense. Despite the loss of the Pac-12 Player of the Year and the elevated roles of young and unproven scorers, the Golden Bears are light years better this season offensively than they were last year, scoring almost seven more points per 100 possessions. Cobbs has been the biggest reason why. The percentage of shots he is taking this season has remained steady, but his assists have skyrocketed, making the transition for those aforementioned teammates into larger roles that much smoother. When it has come time late in tight games for the Golden Bears to rely on their senior leader to score big buckets, he’s repeatedly come up big. His ridiculous late-game performance against #1 Arizona earned the most national attention, but astute Pac-12 hoops fans have seen those deadly step-back daggers on more than a handful of occasions this year.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. It’s been another rough season on the Palouse for Washington State and head coach Ken Bone. Last year, Bone’s job was saved after a disappointing season in part because of a large buyout. But this time around, expectations are that athletic director Bill Moos is going to have to move on from Bone and bring in a new head coach. The question is, who? Vince Grippi of The Spokesman-Review suggests a plan is already in place, but it remains to be seen if it will be a retread coach (Ben Howland makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways), an assistant from some big-time job earning his first head spot, or a mid-major guy taking a big step up.
2. Oregon is still very much alive in terms of their chances to earn their way back onto the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. But, according to Steve Mims of the Eugene Register-Guard, various people from around the conference peg the Ducks as a strong candidate to repeat as the Pac-12 Tournament champions and earn the conference’s automatic bid. Both Ernie Kent –an analyst with the Pac-12 Networks – and Mike Montgomery note that Oregon’s ability to get hot and score in bunches could be a major advantage when it comes to having to win four games in four days.
3. While nothing is official yet, it appears that sophomore guard Damyean Dotson will play for Oregon on Thursday night when the Ducks travel to UCLA. Dotson, who missed Sunday’s game against Washington State after being cited for using a fake ID at a Eugene Bar, had started the previous 60 games for the Ducks. Head coach Dana Altman reports that no decision has been made yet, but that the situation is “moving in the direction” of Dotson being available to play against the Bruins.
4. After a weekend where junior point guard T.J. McConnell had 16 assists and no turnovers while leading his team to a pair of road wins, there were hopes around Tucson that he would wind up with the Pac-12 Player of the Week award. That was not to be, but head coach Sean Miller made it clear on Monday how much he values McConnell’s contributions to the team, praising not only his effectiveness at running the offense, but also his defensive prowess.
5. As for the Wildcats’ in-state rival Arizona State, despite getting swept last week by the schools in the Rockies, the Sun Devils are still in good shape to make the NCAA Tournament, according to Doug Haller of AZCentral.com. Their RPI is still rock solid, they’ve got three wins against teams in the top 50 of the RPI and, given the struggles other teams in contention for NCAA Tournament consideration have gone through, they’re pretty comfortably in the field. But, Haller points out five areas where the Sun Devils need to improve between now and Tournament time: urgency, shooting, leadership, consistency and… Jahii Carson. Much as we talked about most recently on Monday, while Carson has been good this season, he hasn’t approached the elite level of play he turned in regularly during his sparkling freshman season.