1. Colorado traveled to Washington on Sunday afternoon and came away with not only a 17-point loss, but something potentially far worse. Junior point guard Spencer Dinwiddie injured his knee late in the first half, crumpled to the ground in pain and had to be carried off the court. An MRI is scheduled to be conducted today in order to find out more, but as head coach Tad Boyle put it, at first glance this is “not good.” We’ll have more on this story as it develops, but for now just offer our best wishes to Dinwiddie.
2. Utah struggled this weekend, losing a pair on the road to the Washington schools, but Tony Jones of The Salt Lake Tribune has a good story on the maturation of center Dallin Bachynski. Last year, after a strong start to the season, Bachynski saw his minutes and his production dwindle and he let that damage his attitude, to the point where he left the team temporarily in the middle of the season. But, after getting good counsel from his brother Jordan, senior center at Arizona State, Bachynski rejoined the team and has since cleaned up his attitude to the point where he is again a positive to his team.
3. Jones also had the Utes dialed in this weekend when he mentioned in advance of Sunday’s loss that the team’s three losses had come by a grand total of six points. Well, now make it four losses and nine points. But, either way, clearly Utah needs to work on their execution in end-game scenarios. Part of the problem may be due to a young roster, part of it may be the hangover effect of a team that has grown used to winning games, but at least this much is clear: the Utes are close and if they can begin to get over the hump, these close losses may turn into close wins.
4. Arizona had a big weekend in Los Angeles, scoring not only a pair of wins over UCLA and USC, but also a five-star 2015 recruit in the process. Tyler Dorsey of St. John Bosco is currently the #2 shooting guard in his class according to ESPN and also the #7 overall player. After Wildcat head coach Sean Miller caught Dorsey’s Friday night game, Dorsey tweeted out his commitment later that night, choosing the Wildcats over suitors including UCLA and Duke. With an elite recruiting class already headed to Tucson next season, Dorsey is just the start of another great class for Miller.
5. Lastly, California remains one of the conference’s two undefeated teams in league play, having won their first three games – all on the road. Saturday night, the shorthanded Golden Bears, playing without freshman Jabari Bird and junior Ricky Kreklow, nevertheless found a way to get a big boost from their bench to knock off Oregon State. Little-used Jeff Powers led the way by knocking in 14 points (mainly on four threes) in just 15 minutes of action to spark the team to a road comeback win.

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.

The following are the number of road, in-conference losses for each of the previous five Pac-12 champions: 3, 3, 4, 4, and 3. The first thing to note is that across those five seasons there have been four different champions with Washington collecting a pair of ‘ships in that stretch. What’s more is that those seem like some pretty heavy loss numbers considering this is stemming from just half of a champion’s schedule. Now I know we’re coming out of the most miserable stretch of Pac-12 hoops since before the Internet, but still, I’m not impressed. I’m also further intrigued. Earlier this week I came across a new KenPom blog post in which he explores the fairness of evaluating a quality win as we see it today. He basically cites that our evaluation method is pretty rigid and misguided to use RPI (a point he regularly exhausts). He uses Oregon’s loss at Colorado as the common thread. I think this quote best summarizes the piece: “The problem is that road win over #51 is significantly more difficult than a home win over #50. We can all agree on that, right?” Yes we can, Ken. Which is why I was so surprised to see a relatively harsh reaction to Oregon’s performance that night. What’s more, their entire weekend began to serve as a window into perhaps exactly who these Ducks are. Not so fast, my friends.

Losing On The Road Is One Thing, But Losing At Home, As Oregon Did Thursday Night, Is Unacceptable (Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian)

Those very Buffaloes, which we watched beat Oregon, were taken to the brink – overtime, in fact – this week, by a Washington State team that wasn’t even seven days removed from a seven-point half. DaVonte Lacy still wasn’t playing and the game wasn’t even an actual home game in that it was played in Spokane. The concept alone of not playing at the Coors Events Center gave the Cougars a fighting chance against the Buffaloes. The same, strangely, held true for Craig Robinson’s Beavers as they held off an I-don’t-know-what-kind-of-effort-you’ll-ever-get-from-Stanford at home. If you didn’t follow, Oregon State beat Stanford in Corvallis and Arizona State handed USC its first home loss. But the biggest tale from the road last night has got to be Cal’s visit to Oregon. A home loss, as we’ve discussed, is inauspicious, and looking further into things, the box score demonstrates that the Ducks have yielded a lot of points in consecutive games. Even though we’ve mentioned that a single game can’t define a team’s fortunes, back-to-back outcomes might begin to do just that. However, this is a conversation about the trials and tribulations of a traveling squad, and not specifically the Oregon Ducks.

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This is the early conference game that both Arizona and UCLA fans had likely been looking forward to for a couple weeks. It’s the biggest historic rivalry in the conference and it was Arizona’s first road test in Pac-12 play . But really, as people were imagining what this game would look like, this is probably not what they foresaw. UCLA holding its own on the glass, despite almost no help from its pair of senior frontcourt starters? Arizona the team with the deadly outside shooting? Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams struggling, yet the Bruins keeping this close for 40 minutes? Let’s look at each of those things below.

Gabe York’s Perimeter Shooting Was a Big Key For Arizona On Thursday Night (Mamta Popat, Arizona Daily Star)

• The Wildcats came into the game eighth in the nation in offensive rebounding percentage and 13th in the nation in defensive rebounding percentage, while UCLA is a middling rebounding team with a ton of question marks up front. Therefore the expectation was that Arizona would dominate the glass. While the Cats did make some hay on the offensive boards and wound up dominating the interior on the offensive end (Arizona outscored UCLA 42-22 in the paint), UCLA stayed in the game in large part because it was able to create second chance opportunities of its own. This was a surprise even to Arizona head coach Sean Miller, who pointed to that as one of the keys of the game by saying “They really hurt us on the offensive glass. That was a surprise to us, because we’ve done very well there, and isn’t necessarily a strength of theirs but last night it was. If we had done a better job defensive rebounding, the game wouldn’t have come down to the final plays. One of the reasons that they were in it was because of the number of second shots they got.” Even more surprising, the Bruins did their damage on the glass without much of a contribution from the Wear twins, who combined to grab just four total boards. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Colorado is 7-11 in league road games since joining the Pac-12, and the 15th ranked Buffaloes will play their first of the 2013-14 season this Sunday in Seattle. The team says they’re ready to take the next step; they’ve beaten a pair of top ten teams at home and took down two solid Mountain West clubs on the road by a combined 29 points. But in order to join the top ten realm themselves, the Buffaloes need to get the Pac-12 road monkey off their back. Things didn’t go too smoothly in Colorado’s first conference game away from home two nights ago, when Washington State took the highly-favored Buffs to overtime in a neutral site game at Spokane Arena on Wednesday. Colorado did escape with the one-point win, but that was with it shooting 33 more free throws than the Cougars. It’ll need a much better effort than that to beat swiftly-improving Washington on Sunday afternoon.
2. Arizona equaled its school best 16-0 start last night, hanging on for a great 79-75 win at UCLA. The Wildcats had revenge on their minds after suffering three losses to the Bruins last season, and a near-perfect first 34 minutes put Arizona up 68-55 and had a large contingent of fans dressed in cardinal red drowning out the hometown crowd. An insane 15-1 run by the hosts put UCLA up one with 1:45 remaining, but the top-ranked team in the nation proved why they belonged up there, making eight free throws in the final minute to secure the win. Wildcat guard Nick Johnson led all scorers with 22 points.
3. Joe Lunardi released his now weekly Bracketology report yesterday, and four Pac-12 teams were included in his field of 68. Undefeated and number one Arizona takes the top overall seed, with Colorado next for the Pac as a three. Oregon is just below the Buffaloes on the four line, and it seems likely that those two could be battling for those two spots all the way until March. UCLA is the last Pac-12 team included and is listed as a seven seed, and it gets the most intriguing opening round game (against Harvard) by virtue of having the worst seed of the four. California is Lunardi’s first team left out of the field, although that could change after its 13-point win at Oregon last night. Stanford is included on the “Next Four Out” list along with Arkansas, SMU, and Butler. Be sure to also read the latest edition of Rush the Court’s bracket projections, which are released last Monday.
4. Transfer wizard Dana Altman pulled another one out of his hat on Thursday, when the Ducks officially announced that a class of 2013 Top 50 recruit, small forward Brandon Austin, would be transferring from Providence to Oregon. Austin had offers from Connecticut, Xavier, and Temple, among others, before deciding on the Friars, but did not see a minute of action in his stint there due to a pair of suspensions. Altman has brought in transfers like Arsalan Kazemi (Rice), Joseph Young (Houston), and Mike Moser (UCLA and UNLV) during his four years in Eugene.
5. Oregon State junior Eric Moreland showed a bit of rust in his first two games back from a 12-game suspension to open the season, but that was all washed away on Thursday against Stanford. Starting your season with two games in Boulder and Salt Lake City is a difficult chore for a number of reasons, most notably of which is the altitude at which both schools are located. So maybe some home cooking is all the forward needed. Moreland scored 17 points, grabbed 15 rebounds, and recorded four blocks and four assists, producing a career night when the Beavers desperately needed one.

Colorado 71, Washington State 70 (OT)

After last weekend where the Cougars looked anemic offensively and the Buffaloes looked every bit like their RTC #17 ranking, the expectation was certainly that this wouldn’t be a game much worth keeping an eye on. Add in the fact that at opening tip, Washington State’s “crowd” in their game in Spokane could be counted by hand and there was little reason to suspect that the Cougars had a chance. Forty-five minutes later, the Buffaloes were limping out of Spokane Arena with a much tougher win than anyone should have expected. While Washington State was shorthanded without junior gurd DaVonte Lacy, Colorado was also playing without their veteran point guard, Spencer Dinwiddie. Huh? What’s that? He played, you say? He played 38 minutes? Well, what do you know? The box score backs up such an assertion, although the film may test that story.

Spencer Dinwiddie Was Uncharacteristically Silent For the Buffaloes Against Washington State (David Zalubowski, AP Photo)

In fact, Dinwiddie did play, took five shots from the field (all after the halftime break), scored six points and added a variety of other plays here and there, but was largely absent, an occurrence that likely would have cost his team a game had the opponent been just about any other conference team other than a short-handed WSU team. Backcourt partner Askia Booker was very active, conversely, but made most of his impact from the free-throw line, scoring 13 of his 18 points from the charity stripe while going just two-of-12 from the field. For what it’s worth, Booker’s free throw contributions summed up the game for Colorado, as they enjoyed a whopping 38-3 advantage in free throw attempts in the game. Still, Tad Boyle wound up needing Josh Scott to go nuts late in order to come away with the tough win; the sophomore big man had eight points (on four-of-four shooting), four boards (two on the offensive end) and a blocked shot in the final two minutes of regulation plus the overtime period.

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There were quite a few teams around the conference that, for whatever reason, we were unable to get a real peg on in non-conference play. Maybe the level of competition was low, or new guys were getting used to new roles, or injuries and suspensions changed the roster. But now that we’re into conference play, there is no longer anyplace to hide. After just a weekend of action, we’ve started to get a read on two teams that had previously proved inscrutable. Meanwhile, we’ve also seen a couple of teams that now have us more confused than ever. Below, we’ll take a look at all four of those squads with some of the explanations behind each.

Opening weekend of conference play was enlightening in these two cases.

1. Utah – After the loss at Boise State in which the Utes looked good, you felt like you still didn’t really know this team. Soon afterward, there was their blowout win over BYU, which, to be honest, felt a little fluky, didn’t it? So we came into Pac-12 play maybe hoping that the Utes were going to be legitimate, but not really having anything to back that up. After an opening weekend home stand that finished with one in the good column and one in the bad, we’ve got to start getting used to the fact that the Utes are going to be a factor worth talking about (and worth watching) in the Pac-12. We knew about Jordan Loveridge, but it is becoming more and more apparent that Delon Wright is the “fill-in-your-hyperbole here” guy. Just last week, when national columnists were naming all-Pac-12 teams for the non-conference schedule, Wright was routinely overlooked. But this dude – for those of you who have still not made yourself acquainted with his game – is legit. He’s good enough that, when describing his game, it is easy to be torn between deciding whether to first mention his athleticism or his innate feel for the game. Throw in a full rotation that has nice bits and pieces most of the way down the bench – including in the coach’s seat – and, while we still want to see just how different the road Mr. Hyde is from the home Dr. Jekyll, it is about time to start taking these Utes seriously.
   

   Delon Wright And The Utes Deserve To Be Taken Seriously (Tom Smart, Deseret News)

2. California – Down Jabari Bird and Ricky Kreklow and heading across the Bay to face rival Stanford in their Pac-12 opener, the Golden Bears appeared to be walking into an ambush. But they’ve got a couple big weapons of their own that will keep this team competitive throughout the rest of the regular season. First, Mike Montgomery. You may have heard of him. He can coach a little. And against most of the coaches in this conference, he’ll provide his team with a mismatch in the coaching battle. The other is the ever-elusive rare breed in modern-day college basketball – the senior point guard, or Justin Cobbs, in this case. In his fifth year of college basketball and in his third season as a starter for Cal, he’s seen it all. So when he looks up at the under-four timeout and sees his team down in an unfriendly environment, he’s not going to be dissuaded. Late Thursday night, he took over the game by drilling step-back jumpers, getting to the line, and dropping dimes when needed. Monty’s genius will go a long way towards keeping Cal in a lot of games, but it may be up to Cobbs to put them over the top on the regular.

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Out of the country? Living under a rock? Here’s what you missed in the eighth week of Pac-12 basketball. 

Power Rankings (as voted upon by Connor Pelton, Andrew Murawa and Adam Butler):

Arizona is once again the unanimous top choice this week, but the only other unanimous pick is Washington State at the bottom. There is a general consensus among the group as to the top six in the league, but after that, things get very interesting. Check the results below.

Junior Guard Askia Booker Scored 27 Points While Handing Oregon Its First Loss Of The Season On Sunday

1. Arizona (15-0, 3 Points). Comment: “This doesn’t appear to be one of those blow-the-other-guy-to-smithereens Arizona teams like those that Lute Olson operated, winning by ridiculous, double-figure margins. Saturday’s game might have been the surest preview of what the final 16 games of the Pac-12 season will be.” – Greg Hansen (@ghansen711)
2. Colorado (13-2, 7 Points). Comment: “The SDSU-Kansas game has a bigger storyline, but this Oregon-Colorado contest is a much better game. Two second-weekend teams squaring off.” – Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan)
3. Oregon (13-1, 9 Points). Comment: “Colorado wasn’t doing anything different defensively than they had all game in the final 10 minutes — Oregon was just missing, missing, and missing some more.” – David Piper (@atqdave)  Read the rest of this entry »

It was a busy Pac-12 weekend around the conference. Here are some thoughts on each of the weekend’s five games.

Colorado 100, Oregon 91

• It was a game that largely lived up to the hype, with both teams looking good for long stretches. But over the last 10 minutes of the game, it was – get this – Colorado’s guard play that was the deciding factor in the game. It was supposed to be the undefeated Ducks with the bevy of play-making guards that had the advantage on the perimeter, while the Buffaloes were going to need to take advantage of a weak Oregon frontcourt in order to win this game at home. Instead, over the final quarter of the game, Askia Booker and Spencer Dinwiddie combined for 25 of Colorado’s 39 points, sophomore guard Xavier Talton chipped in six more, and Jaron Hopkins was the guy to get everything started with a three off a Dinwiddie dime. All told, the five Colorado guards outscored Oregon’s by a total of 66-52.
  

  Big Game Askia? Who Knew? (Patrick Ghidossi, BuffaloSportsNews)

• Meanwhile up front the Ducks were just okay against that tough Colorado frontcourt. On the offensive end, they were great, grabbing better than 41 percent of their own misses and getting a terrific 24-point performance out of Mike Moser. But the bigger concern is their ability to defend on the interior, and here they were exposed a bit, allowing Colorado to grab better than 46 percent of their misses, leading to lots of easy putbacks for the Buffs. Oregon’s guards are going to keep them in a lot of games, but they need to clean up their frontcourt issues in order to reach their potential.
• For some of the surprises in this game, the most expected angle proved completely true: Colorado is going to be really, really tough at home. With a strong seven-man rotation plus a couple other guys ready to provide spot minutes, the Buffs are deep, athletic, big, strong and – most importantly – good. And the Coors Events Center is a great homecourt advatange. KenPom.com has the Buffs expected to win their next six games at home by an average of just under 10 points per game, but that only takes us to February 22 when they’ll host Arizona in their last home game of the season. Right now that KenPom projection is Arizona, 68-65, but in what could be Dinwiddie’s final home game, the early inclination is to lean Buffs. Not that trying to project a game seven weeks out is good practice.

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Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We start the nomination portion with Washington. [ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]

Up first is this beauty of a hustle play from point guard Isaiah Thomas. While they are few and far between, we really appreciate hustle plays in this project. This also came at a crucial moment in Washington’s game, with the Huskies hanging onto a six-point lead in the second half against visiting Arizona. The save led to a three on the other end of the court, and Washington ended up winning the game going away, 85-68.

This is your classic Thomas moment. Pac-12 Tournament Championship. Overtime. Tie game. Shot clock off. Thomas decides to do it himself, winning the conference championship with a step-back jumper as time expires. The real question, however, which is better — the shot, or Gus Johnson’s call?

Our third and final nominee comes from the 2011-12 NIT Quarterfinals, where Oregon visited the Dawgs for an all-Pac-12 matchup. After going back and forth most of the night, Washington led 82-79 with 55 seconds remaining. The Ducks deployed a full-court trap to force a turnover, and they nearly did. But after a mad scramble for the ball, the rock bounced right up to combo guard Tony Wroten, who slammed it home to all but ice the victory and send Washington to Madison Square Garden.

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If you have any other nominees, put them in the comments and we will add it to the poll. Voting closes a week from now, and the top vote-getter advances to the tournament of champions.

1. As Drew reported last week, Oregon State decided junior forward Eric Moreland was eligible to return from his 14-game suspension two games early, meaning that he could appear in the Beavers’ Pac-12 opener last Thursday at Colorado. His return sparked some energy into a team that has had an up-and-down non-conference slate, using his lengthy frame to force bad shots and his athletic ability to grab 10 rebounds. Head coach Craig Robinson ended up misunderstanding the terms of the big man’s suspension that was handed down last summer, thinking that it was for half of all games played, when it was actually measured by days of the season. Moreland came back down to earth on Saturday at Utah, only playing 19 minutes as he, along with the entirety of the Oregon State starting lineup, lacked energy. The result was a forgettable one-rebound, four-point performance in an 80-69 loss to the Utes. The return of the junior was expected to lift the Beavers to at least an NIT run, but if the first weekend of conference play is any indication, it could be another long winter in Corvallis.
2. The nation is now down to six undefeated teams — and the Pac-12 to just one — after Colorado exploded for a 100-point performance against previously undefeated Oregon on Sunday afternoon in Boulder. The Ducks were able to survive despite giving up 105 points to Mississippi and 96 to BYU earlier in the season, but the Buffaloes in their home building proved too much to handle. They now sit at 13-1 and are likely to drop out of the top 10 when the national rankings are released later today.
3. The USC–UCLA crosstown basketball rivalry wrote another chapter yesterday, with the Bruins throttling USC for a 107-73 win. The 107 points scored by UCLA ties the record for the most points from a winning team in the history of the rivalry. Both teams are of course led by first year coaches, Andy Enfield with the Trojans, and Steve Alford with the Bruins, and it was just the fourth time ever that each entered conference play with new coaches at the same time. Enfield has quickly learned in his stint with at USC that anything and everything he says about the team in Westwood will be reported and scrutinized, and they are surely already looking forward to a rematch at the Galen Center on February 8. UCLA improved to 12-2 with the win, while SC fell to 9-5. Both teams get to stay home this week and will host the difficult Arizona schools.
4. Sticking with UCLA, Bruins Nation rates the full Bruins’ lineup after non-conference play. The UCLA roster is loaded with talent, but it’s tough to know just how far the team could go in March when it dropped its only two challenging non-conference games. Sophomore guard Jordan Adams leads the team in scoring with 18.5 PPG, while wing Kyle Anderson is contributing at a 14.5 PPG clip and leading UCLA in rebounds with 8.7 boards a game. Next up for the Bruins is what a lot of people assumed would be the Pac-12 game of the year before the season began, a visit from top-ranked Arizona on Thursday at 6:00 PM. This will be the only time that the Bruins and Wildcats will meet in the regular season.
5. We close today with some recruiting news, as Arizona has emerged as a major player in the courting of class of 2015 power forward Carlton Bragg. Head coach Sean Miller is working hard in preparing for the future, as his talented Wildcat frontline featuring Kaleb Tarczewski, Aaron Gordon and Brandon Ashley won’t be around Tucson forever. Bragg would be a huge addition to the program, a five-star player who already has offers from Michigan State, Indiana, and UCLA, to name a few.