After eight seasons of slightly better than mediocre basketball, Stanford finally pulled the trigger after a 15-15 season and fired longtime coach Johnny Dawkins. Although the decision barely made a ripple on the national scene, there are many who believe that Stanford — thanks to its idyllic setting, academic reputation and commitment to athletics — is a sleeping giant in basketball and an attractive landing spot for a rising head coach. Enter Jerod Haase, a former player and coach under Roy Williams at Kansas and North Carolina and a native of Northern California. Haase’s local ties and a coaching resume that includes turning around a flagging UAB program made him a worthy candidate for the job, but that didn’t stop many Stanford fans from saying, “Who?” when he signed. Everyone agreed that it was time to move on from Dawkins, but dreams of luring Mark Few away from Gonzaga or Archie Miller away from Dayton did not come to fruition. Instead, Stanford got a coach who has just one NCAA Tournament win under his belt (although a #14 seed over a #3 seed is a very nice one).

Can Jerod Haase Make Stanford Nationally Relevant Again? (Getty)

This is the challenge that Haase welcomed when he took the job on The Farm. Stanford’s basketball program has enough tradition behind it that its fans have NCAA Tournament expectations and semi-legitimate Final Four hopes. They watched the school’s football program go from Pac-12 also-ran to perennial contender in just a few seasons, and considering that the basketball facilities are equally as appealing, it makes sense to think that Stanford basketball can undergo a similar renaissance. It will have to start with better recruiting. Part of the criticism with Dawkins was that, even though he made a Sweet Sixteen and his teams were usually competitive, he never truly made a name for himself on the recruiting trail like league colleagues Sean Miller, Steve Alford and Lorenzo Romar. He certainly deserves a lot of credit for developing players like Dwight Powell, Josh Huestis, Chasson Randle and several others. He also deserves credit for uncovering quality basketball players like Anthony Brown and Aaron Bright. But Powell and Huestis are Dawkins’ only pupils currently playing in the NBA and the current roster looks a lot like the previous versions — good enough to be competitive, but not good enough to get anyone very excited about their potential. Read the rest of this entry »

When Arizona State hired Bobby Hurley away from Buffalo as its new basketball coach a year ago, athletic director Ray Anderson made no bones about the incoming expectations for his new coach: “We are intent on becoming an elite men’s basketball program.” The hire gained nearly universal praise, in large part thanks to Hurley’s fantastic playing career at Duke and his work in leading Buffalo to its first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance in 2015. Once his first season in Tempe started, however, the Sun Devils looked anything but elite.

Bobby Hurley’s Team Needs To Show More This Season. (Getty)

The team ranked near the bottom of the Pac-12 on both ends of the floor, won just five league games and generally appeared unready to compete for a conference title. Very little of this was the new head coach’s fault, of course. Predecessor Herb Sendek left insufficient talent on hand for the formation of a competent rotation, and those few players remaining were ill-suited for Hurley’s attacking style of offense. Still, despite the team’s continuing struggles, Hurley managed to pile up the accolades for his work in both changing the program’s culture and luring big-time recruits to the desert. As such, despite finishing 11th in the Pac-12 standings, Hurley convinced Arizona State that he deserved a raise and contract extension. And although there is plenty of evidence that Hurley has pointed the Arizona State ship in the right direction, he now needs to reward that faith and enthusiasm with some accompanying on-court improvement. Read the rest of this entry »

There is no clear-cut favorite in this season’s race for Pac-12 Coach of the Year. Most pundits are picking Oregon‘s Dana Altman but it feels like he is winning by default. Altman has something working against him, though, which is that expectations are already sky high in Eugene. If Oregon wins the conference it may be because they were expected to win the conference, and if the Ducks underachieve, Altman will quickly fall out of the race. I still think that Altman is the right pick and the correct pick. Adam and his eternal soft spot for Sean Miller respectfully disagrees. Here’s the case for each.

The Case for Sean Miller

Sean Miller Has His Work Cut Out For Him This Season (USA Today Images)

As of today we must acknowledge that we don’t know that status of Allonzo Trier. He’s pretty good at basketball and critical to Arizona‘s success this season. That said, if he misses extended time and the Wildcats still finish among the top three teams in this conference, it should only further cement Miller’s claim on Pac-12 Coach of the Year. Beyond the fact that the conference set a precedent of rewarding overachievers (all of the 2015 awards), Miller is poised to navigate a Pac-12 season with a group of talented players all of whom are in brand new experiences. Considering Altman returns 68 percent of the minutes played by his rotation last season and UCLA’s Steve Alford is only moving players into more natural positions, Miller will almost certainly have a larger impact on his team’s success that some of his counterparts. And in making this candidacy, I don’t want to paint the Wildcats as underdogs. They’re not. They’re ranked 10th nationally and even in the absence of Trier (and now, Ray Smith) they still rate as a top-30 team according to Sports Illustrated‘s What-If scenarios. Even with just eight scholarship players, none of whom has significant experience in their role, expectations are always lofty in Tucson. But Arizona only plays Oregon once (in Eugene) and has a schedule that is favorable so that this inexperienced, albeit loosely veteran, roster can have time to develop. Miller teams trend well late in the season and this is a group that likely won’t buck that trend.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a factoid that might surprise Pac-12 fans: Colorado, a team that won 22 games last season and made the NCAA Tournament, did so despite having the worst offense in the conference —  a conference that also included the putrid offense that Washington State trotted out. Apologies to the folks in Pullman, but there is strong evidence to support this assertion. You might even want to shield your eyes. In Pac-12 play, the Buffaloes finished 11th in adjusted offensive efficiency (100.5), 12th in effective field goal percentage (45.8%) and 12th in turnover percentage (19.2%). Zoom out from the conference-only statistics and it’s not much better. Colorado ranked 229th overall in turnover percentage (18.8%) and 242nd in effective field goal percentage (48.4%). The latter number is particularly futile when you consider that the Buffaloes were one of the 25 most accurate teams in the country from behind the three-point arc (38.4% 3FG). It makes more sense when you also consider that there were just 20 teams in the country that shot a worse percentage than the Buffs from inside the three-point line (43.9% 2FG). It is amazing how Colorado managed to rank as high as 100th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency.

Tad Boyle, despite some offensive woes, is still one of the best in the Pac-12. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Almost everyone is back from last season’s clank-fest except, of course, the team’s most efficient offensive player and one of the best offensive rebounders in the country, Josh Scott. What Scott left behind is a hodgepodge of talented but inconsistent guards, a pair of potentially electric wing players with big question marks, and a host of able-bodied big men without a refined offensive move between them. It doesn’t sound like a recipe for drastic improvement but there are the makings of an excellent offensive team here. There is also a reasonable chance that, if the offense improves and the defense remains suffocating, Colorado could compete for the conference title. Even though Scott was arguably one of the best frontcourt players in program history, head coach Tad Boyle should feel good about his team’s depth up front. Senior Wesley Gordon will anchor the unit as an arguably better rebounder and shot-blocker than Scott, albeit without the offensive upside. Junior Tory Miller is an offensive liability but he is another athletic big body who played meaningful minutes, and freshman seven-footer Dallas Walton could be a special defensive player with his length and athleticism. But none of the trio are offensive-minded players and if Boyle wants his offense to have a fighting chance, he would be smart to only play one of those three at a time. Read the rest of this entry »

Even after graduating the team’s two leading scorers, Arizona has everything it needs on paper to dethrone Oregon and reassert itself as the best team in the Pac-12. The Wildcats have a redshirt senior who is likely one of the best on-ball defenders in the conference. They have a reigning member of the Pac-12 All-Freshmen Team who averaged nearly 15 points per game last season. They have a freshman wing with enough athleticism to put his own coach on a poster. They have a freshman stretch forward from Finland who can bang three-pointers and take awkward photos with local political figures. They also have a cache of athletic big men, led by a Serbian with enough offensive game to make the program’s official Twitter account think it is okay to rip off the nickname of one of the NBA’s greatest players ever. However, there is one position that isn’t represented on this list and that is because there are still very serious concerns about it. That position is point guard.

Kobi Simmons Has a Tall Task Ahead of Him In His First Season at Arizona. (Rivals.com)

Sean Miller may be the best recruiter in the entire country outside of Lexington, but if one were to start picking at nits, one could easily make the argument that he has struggled to recruit and develop worthwhile point guards in Tucson. In fact, Josiah Turner and MoMo Jones are the only true point guards Miller has recruited in his tenure at Arizona and neither spent more than two seasons in the desert. The best point guards of the Miller era – T.J. McConnell and Mark Lyons – were transfers, and filling McConnell’s sizable shoes last season proved to be a more difficult task than anyone imagined. The Wildcats went from 40th in turnover percentage in 2014-15 to 191st in the category last year, as neither Kadeem Allen nor Parker Jackson-Cartwright were consistent enough to wrestle the job away from the other player. Unfortunately for the Wildcats, the position appears to be just as unsettled heading into this season. Miller smartly moved Allen off the ball, which leaves Jackson-Cartwright to fend off five-star freshman Kobi Simmons for the keys to what should be an explosive offense. Pairing a proven player with one of the best freshmen point guard prospects in the country is a luxury most coaches would love to have, but that argument doesn’t work for Miller when his fan base expect to compete for a national championship. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a weird offseason for Oregon State. If you were looking ahead at the team’s prospects for this upcoming season last March, the future looked very bright even if do-everything guard Gary Payton II was graduating. But Payton’s heir apparent, combo guard Derrick Bruce, transferred out of the program in April followed by steady senior Malcom Duvivier leaving the program for personal reasons in September. These departures suddenly left the Beavers’ backcourt without most of its depth and experience, isolating sophomore Stephen Thompson Jr. as the lone returnee with any on-court experience. Yet Wayne Tinkle and Beavers’ fans are still bullish on their team’s potential this season, with Thompson being the biggest reason why.

Stevie Thompson Jr. Is Now The Big Man on Campus in Corvallis (AP Photo/Timothy J. Gonzalez)

The son of former Syracuse great Stephen Thompson, the younger Thompson was the crown jewel of Tinkle’s touted 2015 recruiting class that may already be one of the best in program history. At times last season, he lived up that billing, scoring 18 points in a home win against Washington and dropping 23 in a crucial road win against UCLA two weeks later. At other times, he looked like a trigger-happy freshman who struggled to find his offensive rhythm — especially in the half-court. His inconsistency was understandable from an experience perspective, but it was also driven by Payton II dominating most of the team’s offensive possessions. This year Thompson will become the focal point of Oregon State’s perimeter offense and that means the team won’t be able to weather his shooting slumps quite as easily.

Read the rest of this entry »

It seems unfair to say that Oregon’s chances at competing for a National Title depend solely on the long-term health of Dillon Brooks, especially considering the sheer amount of talent and depth Dana Altman has stockpiled in Eugene. But then again, Brooks is no ordinary role player either. The Toronto, Ontario, native emerged as one of the best two-way players in the Pac-12 last season, averaging 16.7 points per game (47.0% FG) to go with 5.4 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game. He started in all 38 of the Ducks’ games and was the linchpin to Altman’s successful attempt at a nearly position-less rotation. He played as the team’s nominal power forward, but his NBA size and athleticism allowed him to easily guard multiple positions and a match-up nightmare on the other end of the floor. Although he laid a seven-point egg in the Elite Eight against Oklahoma, his performances in the Round of 32 against St. Joseph’s and in the Sweet Sixteen against Duke positioned him as a leading candidate for Pac-12 Preseason Player of the Year this season.

How will Oregon adapt without Brooks? (Photo Credit: Craig Strobeck)

When Brooks withdrew his name from the NBA Draft in late May, it instantly made the Ducks a trendy 2017 title contender. That outlook, however, changed considerably when Altman casually mentioned in a summer conference call that Brooks had been held out of workouts because of a “problem with his foot.” Brooks had foot surgery two weeks later, and it became increasingly clear by August that he was going to miss part of the regular season. That shouldn’t be a major issue, though, as the Ducks are one of the few teams in the country with sufficient talent and depth to replace a player of Brooks’ caliber. If Altman wants to play small, he can feel confident in the trio of Casey Benson, Dylan Ennis, and Tyler Dorsey. If he prefers a larger lineup, versatile big men Chris Boucher, Jordan Bell, and JuCo transfer Kavell Williams-Bigby lead one of the country’s best stables of post players. If the team’s recent exhibition games in Spain were any indication, Altman plans to mix and match until he finds a rotation he is comfortable with, a luxury most coaches in the conference surely envy. But that depth won’t change the fact that Oregon will still be missing its best player on both ends of the floor.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is never too early to predict how the Pac-12 will look heading into next season. Let’s not waste words and just get into a look at each team by projected order of finish.

1. Oregon

Assuming Brooks Returns, Oregon Will Be The Class of the Pac-12 Again. (Craig Strobeck)

• Who’s back: Dillon Brooks, Tyler Dorsey, Casey Benson, Chris Boucher, Jordan Bell, Dylan Ennis
• Who’s new: M.J. Cage, Keith Smith, Payton Pritchard
• The skinny: Assuming Brooks returns to school and Ennis is eligible and healthy enough to play a full season, the Ducks will run almost two-deep at every position. Boucher’s extra year of eligibility is also huge because it again gives Oregon two of the best rim-protectors in the country while allowing Dana Altman to space the floor. Don’t sleep on the Ducks’ recruiting class, either; there aren’t any stars here, but Cage and Pritchard will both contribute early.

2. Arizona

• Who’s back: Allonzo Trier, Ray Smith, Parker Jackson-Cartwright, Dusan Ristic, Kadeem Allen, Chance Comanche
• Who’s new: Rawle Alkins, Kobi Simmons, Lauri Markkanen
• The skinny: Simmons is the key here. If the point guard is as good as everyone seems to think he is, the Wildcats have the athletes elsewhere to be above-average offensively and elite defensively. Trier could be a Pac-12 Player of the Year contender and some believe that Smith, now healthy after missing all of last season, is the better player in that recruiting class. Sean Miller has reportedly been sniffing around the graduate transfer market as well — if the Wildcats can land an extra big man, that would help shore up a frontcourt that right now consists of Ristic and maybe Comanche.

Read the rest of this entry »

The college basketball season isn’t quite over yet but the page has already turned for the Pac-12. Once Oregon was rudely bounced from the tournament by Oklahoma last weekend, it was time for the always exciting period when coaches are hired and fired, players declare for the NBA Draft, and some others decide on a change of scenery. The Pac-12 has been full of these changes in the past two weeks — from Stanford hiring a new coach to Washington’s precocious freshmen hiring agents to a multitude of players transferring — there’s been a lot of action.

Let’s break down some of the moves that have already been announced and what they mean for their respective teams.

Jerod Haase Hired by Stanford

Stanford Coach Jerod Haase Has Won A Lot In C-USA But Can He Do It In The PAC-12 Too?

Stanford isn’t the can’t-miss job that many think it is, but it still feels like the Cardinal reached in its replacement of Johnny Dawkins. Haase came up as an assistant to Roy Williams and made headlines when his team at UAB beat Iowa State last season, but he has only been to the NCAA Tournament once and his three seasons of 20+ wins are as much a result of Conference USA being awful as his coaching prowess. Furthermore, advanced statistics have not been impressed with the Blazers at all despite their several-year win totals. The former Cal graduate and Bay Area native will bring energy and excitement to the Stanford program, but the jury is out on whether he can coach at this level.

Dejounte Murray and Marquese Chriss Declare for NBA Draft

It isn’t surprising that Murray and Chriss have decided to test the waters after excellent freshman seasons at Washington. It also wouldn’t have been surprising if they had decided to stay in the draft after gathering enough information. What is surprising is that both signed with agents almost immediately, effectively ending their college careers before March was even finished. Both players have a shot at at the lottery, which will mean that their decisions are probably good ones. But Washington could have been poised for a special season next year with the duo back in Seattle. Now, Lorenzo Romar’s rebuilding project looks to be moving a bit slower now.

Read the rest of this entry »

The dust has settled on a wild first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, and guess what Pac-12 fans? All that talk about the conference being overrated and its teams not showing up on the big stage in March?

It is all pretty much true!

Oregon is the lone remaining representative of Bill Walton’s Conference of Champions and the onus is on the Ducks to carry the rest of the conference from here on out. This is because the league didn’t just have another tough tournament; it has had a brutally bad tournament. Only Utah and Oregon made it out of the First Round and the Utes didn’t exactly do the conference proud by getting run out of the gym against Gonzaga.

In honor of all the awfulness, we ranked the performances from really bad to downright awful and went back to wishing Oregon well against Duke.

USC.

Andy Enfield’s Team Choked Away A Late Lead But Otherwise Actually Played Providence Team

Congratulations to the Trojans, a team that lost to Providence at the buzzer and therefore cemented its status as the Least Bad Pac-12 Tournament Team of 2016. In the interest of full disclosure, USC basically had Providence on the ropes with three minutes to play and frittered the lead away in a flurry of turnovers and missed free throws. You could therefore make an argument that thee Trjoans’ performance in this Tournament was especially bad. The team’s youth and inexperience showed through in a big way down the stretch, as it did pretty much all season long. They shot the ball well, played solid defense for the most part, and literally return everybody, so there’s no obvious reason to hang their heads. They probably would have just been blown out by North Carolina in the Second Round anyway.

Oregon State. Aside from some awful shooting from Stephen Thompson and general uselessness from Malcolm Duvivier, the Beavers actually played VCU tough. The team’s offensive struggles were expected against the Rams’ athletic defense, but Oregon State mitigated some of its shortcomings by taking care of the basketball and locking down their perimeter shooters. The moral victory, however, is limited in that the Rams shot better than 60 percent on their two-pointers and completely had their way on the offensive glass. The Beavers will miss Gary Payton II next season, but they have a solid young nucleus and should be excited about the future in Corvallis.

Read the rest of this entry »