The regular season is behind us, so today we award our final weekly honors for the Pac-12. Doing a little housecleaning before we get to this week’s honorees, for the year, Arizona won our Team of the Week more often than anybody else, earning four nods, including three straight way back in the non-conference slate. Unfortunately for Sean Miller and company, they haven’t been the best team in the conference since Week 12, back at the end of January and the start of February. As far as Player of the Week honors, we’ve had 14 different players win the award at least once, with three guys earning two nods – Justin Cobbs, Allen Crabbe and C.J. Wilcox. The Newcomer of the Week has been slightly less muddy, with only 12 different players earning that nod. But that award has definitely been dominated by one guy – no, not Shabazz Muhammad, who only won the award once – but Arizona State’s Jahii Carson, who won the award five times this year, perhaps a hint at the winner when we announce our Freshman of the Year later today.

Allen Crabbe and Justin Cobbs Are Two Of Just Three Guys Who Have Won Our Player Of The Week Multiple Times

Team of the Week – Washington State

It took all year long, but somehow the Cougars have finally started to hit their stride just as the season ends. For the first time all season, they swept a conference home stand, dispatching both of the Los Angeles schools with relative ease. Even more impressively, they won both of those games sans guard DaVonte Lacy and with senior guard Mike Ladd only returning for the final game. The Cougs remain a long shot to do much damage in the conference tourney, but they sure are hitting their stride at just the right time.

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1. Following UCLA’s terrible performance Wednesday night against Washington State, it looked like the Bruins had tossed away their chance to win the outright Pac-12 regular season title. But with a solid win over Washington on Saturday coupled with Utah upsetting Oregon, the Bruins went down as the Pac-12 champion for the first time since 2007-08. Following the game, the team assembled in the hallway at Hec Edmundson Pavilion, borrowed Washington’s 2011-12 conference championship trophy and staged their own impromptu celebration. While the team still has plenty of goals left to chase, for a day at least, expectations have been met and the criticism can maybe not cease, but at least pause.
2. In advance of this week’s conference tournament, there is a chance that USC, already an underdog, could be playing shorthanded due to a case of late-season stupidity. There are reports out of Spokane that following USC’s Saturday night blowout loss to Washington State, “several basketball players” were “shouting anti-Spokane rhetoric” (which may well be my favorite phrase of the season) outside of a downtown bar. Fights (at least two) ensued and the end result was four people getting sent to the hospital. No names of players involved have been released as of Midnight on Sunday, but there are reports of a seven-foot, 260-pound center (there are three different USC players who could fit that general description) looking drunk and belligerent and who, according to the reports of an employee of one of the bars in the area, “basically admitted to hitting several people, including two women.” Stay tuned.
3. Colorado’s conference tournament will start off with a rematch, as they’ll face a last-place Oregon State team that just beat up on them on Saturday. But prior to that game, Tad Boyle will make sure his Buffaloes show up in Las Vegas with something to prove. With Andre Roberson apparently in a battle with mononucleosis which may well end his season, Colorado is going to have to find somebody else to step up and lead this team as tournament play begins. Another point to think about: If the selection committee is going to make choices based on their current rosters, could CU get dinged and perhaps left to the NIT if Roberson’s season is in jeopardy?
4. If Colorado can get out of that first round game with Oregon State, who will be waiting for them in the quarterfinals but their new-found rival, Arizona. The Wildcats slipped all the way to the fourth seed in this week’s Pac-12 Tournament in Vegas and we could be due for a tiebreaker. After January’s infamous Sabatino Chen monitor-reviewed shot, Colorado bounced back to easily handle the Wildcats in Boulder, but heading into the most important stretch of the season, neither team is playing particularly well.
5. Later today, we’ll unveil our Pac-12 awards, just as the conference will. But if you want a preview as to what those awards might look like, Peter Yoon of ESPN LA has your rundown. He’s got Allen Crabbe sneaking out the Player of the Year award over Shabazz Muhammad and Jahii Carson, Dana Altman taking down Coach of the Year over Ben Howland and Mike Montgomery and Muhammad squeaking out a win over Carson for Freshman of the Year. Plenty of discussions could be have over all of these picks (and the rest of the picks Yoon makes), as none of the candidates are clear winners in any of the categories.

Saturday night following UCLA’s win over Arizona, Ben Howland admitted that, yes, Shabazz Muhammad had, barring some strange unforeseen circumstances, played his last game at Pauley Pavilion, thus sharing a secret that everybody already knew. One of the nation’s top recruits, Muhammad will be a lottery pick in June’s NBA Draft and his time in Westwood will be limited to just this one season. It’s no surprise, and certainly not worth spilling many pixels on. But, it is a good jumping off point to look around the rest of the Pac-12 and project the collegiate futures of other talented underclassmen and ask a couple different questions: First, will they declare for the NBA Draft after this season and, more subjectively, should they? Certainly every player’s own personal situation will have a say in the decision, and far be it from me to tell kids what they should and should not do with their potentially multi-million dollar futures, but it is that time of year when we start thinking about what some of these teams are going to look like next season. So, here’s a look at the players around the conference most likely to be weighing their options when the season ends, with Draft Express’ opinion on where these guys would be slated to go.

• Allen Crabbe, Junior, California – Crabbe’s gone. The 6’6” wing has taken on a slightly bigger role each season in Berkeley and is one of the purest shooters in the draft. A solid defender as well, he’s got an NBA-ready game and could be a late first-round pick, although Draft Express currently projects him as the #11 pick in the second round. It is doubtful that another year in college would improve his draft stock substantially as Crabbe is mostly a completed player.

Allen Crabbe’s Long Frame and Golden Jumper Have A Spot Waiting For Him In The NBA

• Andre Roberson, Junior, Colorado – Odds are probably good that Roberson will leave after this season, but while he uses his long frame to great effect defensively and on the glass, he’s still a work in progress offensively. He’s a decent enough three-point shooter (35% for his career on limited attempts), but he is a poor free throw shooter, has a questionable handle, and has an unpolished offensive game anywhere inside of the three-point line. Draft Express has him as the seventh pick in the second round of this year’s draft, but I have a hard time projecting this guy’s game to the NBA when he sees players with more size and length and just as much athleticism competing with him for rebounds.

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Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish each week throughout the season. In this piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED…. Ohio State’s Sam Thompson getting so high on this alley-oop against Michigan State on Sunday that he was literally staring at the rim when he got the ball. That would have been enough, but then he chose to hammer home right on a poor Michigan State defender – just for kicks. Definitely one of the more impressive athletic plays I’ve seen this year.

Sam Thompson is not shy about attacking the rim

I LOVED…. the hilariousness that is Jay Bilas and Bill Raftery on set. In this week’s gift from above, Raftery comically asks Bilas if he’s “ever been ridden” before. Take a look – it’s just too much.

I LOVED…. everyone realizing that Miami can be very, very average – or in this case, downright bad in a loss to a Wake Forest team that was 4-9 in the ACC going into Saturday. If Miami and Gonzaga somehow play their way into #1-seeds, I don’t think it’s overkill to say that they could be two of the more susceptible #1-seeds ever for a first-round upset. And Miami could even be the likelier of the two because of how much they love the three-ball.

I LOVED…. glancing at the Georgetown schedule and having my jaw slowly drop lower and lower as I looked at their defensive efficiency during this very impressive nine-game winning streak. Check it out – since losing to South Florida on January 19, the Hoyas have allowed 47, 51, 52, 56, 63, 55, 55, 66 and 46 points. That’s pretty stingy, and it bodes well for a Tournament run if they can continue mustering enough offense. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Last week saw Washington State lose a dramatic game when an underclassman made a poor decision in the waning moments of the game. This week, Oregon State lost a tight one in part due to a poor decision made by an underclassmen in pregame warm-ups. You see, there’s this fairly ridiculous rule that makes dunking in the layup line prior to the game worthy of earning a technical foul against your team. Beavers freshman Olaf Schaftenaar, a guy well-known for his wide variety of aerial acrobatics (note to editors: please use the sarcasm font for that phrase), just couldn’t help himself and threw one down prior to the game. The refs caught the egregious act, penalized OSU with a technical foul, Allen Crabbe knocked down one of two free throws prior to the game, and the Beavers went on to, you know, lose by one. For a Beavers team that Ken Pomeroy currently has ranked as the third-least lucky team in the nation, Saturday’s bad luck reached ridiculous new lows.
2. Arizona scored a couple of wins this weekend. First, on Saturday they coasted to victory over Washington State behind terrific shooting from senior Kevin Parrom, although head coach Sean Miller wasn’t entirely thrilled with his team’s effort. Then, on Sunday, Miller got a commitment from five-star recruit in the 2014 class, 5’7” point guard Parker Jackson-Cartwright. The recruiting coup is not only a big score for what it brings to Tucson, it is also big because the Wildcats beat out Pac-12 rival UCLA for the Los Angeles-area product. Jackson-Cartwright will first play in the 2014-15 season at the same time that Duquesne transfer T.J. McConnell plays his senior season in Tucson.
3. Speaking of UCLA, junior forward Travis Wear missed Sunday afternoon’s battle with USC after spraining his right foot at the start of practice on Saturday. His brother David Wear got the start in place of him, while freshman Tony Parker saw a big increase in minutes and production as a result as well. Travis wore a walking boot on the foot during the game but was ambulatory without crutches and Ben Howland said after the game that he is considered day-to-day. Unfortunately, if the Bruins are going to get him back for their next game, he’ll have to be a quick healer, as they’ll host Arizona State in Westwood on Wednesday night.
4. For some time now Arizona State has been right on the anticipated border between NCAA Tournament team and NIT participant, but the consensus was that the Sun Devils needed to finish strong in order to maintain that positioning. While they’ve still got cracks on the road at UCLA and Arizona, Saturday’s home loss to Washington may leave Herb Sendek’s team needing to win the Pac-12 Tournament in order to earn an NCAA Tournament bid. Freshman point guard Jahii Carson turned in one of his worst games of his young career, senior Carrick Felix was largely – and surprisingly – ineffective in his senior night, and once again, the poor free throw shooting from the Sun Devils helped conspire to leave them on the wrong side of the ledger at the final horn.
5. The race for the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year award is well under way, with Arizona State’s Carrick Felix and Colorado’s Andre Roberson near the top of the list of contenders. Buffaloes head coach Tad Boyle has begun making the case for his guy, by not only listing him as the top defender in the conference, but calling him the best defender in the nation. With guys like Aaron Craft, Victor Oladipo, Russ Smith and Jeff Withey already established and well-recognized as great defenders, there is little doubt that Roberson would fail to medal on the national stage, but in the Pac-12, his rebounding and his ability to guard multiple positions and make insanely athletic plays certainly has him on the short list for the conference award.

From the moment it was first rumored, the relocation of the conference tournament to Las Vegas has created quite a buzz among Pac-12 basketball fans. Adam Butler (@pachoopsAB) of PacHoops will be here every week as he offers his unique perspective along our March to Vegas.

I got a text from my Cal buddy last night, “You’re welcome for Cal again… But 48 points…” This of course set off a chain of text exchanges that culminated in a conversation about whether or not I’d be joining him at Bonnaroo in June – a welcome digression, albeit extremely tangential. But my dear friend had a point. Those 48 points are a less-than-exciting, underwhelming, slow score. It’s for this very count that many of us declare Bo Ryan an eye-ripping excitement-suck for whose style we’d wish the NCAA death penalty upon our own program before enduring a season. The funny thing about that is Bo Ryan wins. Not one of my friends who attended Wisconsin or cheer for the Badgers has seemed to have a problem with his .725 winning percentage. Wisky wins and so too did the Cal Bears on Thursday night. And this is the only stat that matters this time of year.

It Hasn’t Always Been Pretty, But Mike Montgomery Has His Golden Bears Playing The Best Ball In The Pac-12 (credit: Mark J. Terrill)

We are on the cusp of March and by most accounts (check this aggregation out) the Golden Bears are shoving (get it?) their way into the madness. And they most certainly will not be dancing with a statistically intriguing loss. That’s to say, had they shot 48%, outrebounded the Ducks, and committed just 10 turnovers en route to disappointing loss, 74-71, the committee would’ve seen just another loss on a team that’s already wearing nine of them (including a home loss to Harvard). Statistically speaking, Cal had a 27% chance of winning that game. The projected final was 71-64, which is to say that based on the standard game for these two, Oregon was going to win relatively handily. Something different had to happen. So Cal forced a deviation from the norm, limited the game’s possessions, and adjusted the dynamic of the game’s pace.

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1. Thursday night the Pac-12 race got even tighter as California’s Justin Cobbs took advantage of Oregon’s 5’8” point guard Jonathan Loyd in the waning moments of their meeting, knocking down a game-winning jumper over the smaller man’s outstretched arms. As we head into the weekend, we’ve got three teams atop the conference with four losses while a pair of teams, including those Golden Bears, lurk just one game back in the loss column. The game itself wasn’t pretty, as Cobbs turned the ball over eight times, the teams combined to shoot 3-of-21 from deep and nobody on Oregon shot better than 50% from the field, but Cal continues to be the hottest team in the conference with six victories in its last seven games. As for Oregon, this current group of Ducks still remains winless in their careers against California.
2. In the wake of Washington State’s seventh straight conference loss on Wednesday night, the talk about whether head coach Ken Bone is the man for the job in Pullman for the long term has reached a fever pitch. The talk has been slowly bubbling up since way back before the season began as Reggie Moore got booted from the team and incoming transfer Brett Kingma ran afoul of the law, highlighting some off-the-court issues that have troubled Bone’s program for some time. But, as CougCenter pointed out a couple weeks back, if the university hopes to go a different way, they’ve got to figure out a way around Bone’s hefty contract, which promises the coach $2.55 million over the remaining three years. Given the amount of money the WSU athletic department already has tied up in paying current and former football coaches, that amount of money may be too much to bear at this point. And, as I pointed out back before the season, expectations in Pullman have to be realistic. The fact of the matter is that prior to this season, Bone had the second-highest winning percentage of any coach in school history who had coached at least 20 games. Unfortunately for him, however, the one guy ahead of him was his predecessor.
3. USC will take a crack at earning a season sweep of crosstown rival UCLA at the Galen Center on Sunday afternoon. And if they’re going to get it done, they’ll need to lean heavily on senior point guard Jio Fontan who, after dealing with ACL surgery last year and the heavy-handed offensive structure of former head coach Kevin O’Neill, is now thriving with more freedom under interim coach Bob Cantu and more confidence in a knee that gets stronger by the game.
4. One thing we haven’t talked a lot about here this season is the Player of the Year race in the Pac-12. No worries though, as Pachoops has got you covered on that mark. Adam Butler scouts the candidates out and narrows the race down to two guys: Arizona State’s Jahii Carson and Cal’s Allen Crabbe. I wanted to quibble (Carrick Felix anyone?) but in the end decided that yes, those are the two guys atop the leaderboard right now and somebody from the next pack back (some combination of Solomon Hill, Shabazz Muhammad, Spencer Dinwiddie and Felix) would have to go absolutely nuts for that to change. In my mind, however, Carson is the favorite, as he has been for at least a month; but as Cal has heated up, Crabbe has made a big time charge to the point where it is just about even money right now.
5. Lastly, in case you forgot, DirecTV has still not come to an agreement with the Pac-12 conference to carry the Pac-12 Networks. I’m sure all of you have done the right thing and dropped DirecTV like a hot potato, but apparently there are people out there sticking with the satellite television behemoth instead of watching tons of Pac-12 action this season. And, if you’re somehow still among that crowd, you’ve missed the 20 out of Arizona State’s 27 games this season that have aired on the Pac-12 Networks. Don’t hold your breath on a deal getting done any time soon as both sides appear entrenched in their positions.

Bennet Hayes is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @HoopsTraveler on Twitter. Night Line runs on weeknights during the season, highlighting a major storyline development from that day’s games.

If you are a college basketball fan and don’t reside under a rock, you know all about Mike Montgomery and Allen Crabbe’s testy exchange on Sunday. An unfortunate incident worthy of at least most of the debate and discussion that followed, but it’s officially time to move on, folks. Don’t despair if you still want to talk Cal basketball, however, as the Golden Bears are providing plenty of reasons on the court to keep the buzz going. A 48-46 win at Oregon tonight now has them winners of four in a row and six out of seven, with wins over Arizona, UCLA, and now a season sweep of Oregon included in the surge. For those keeping track at home, that’s a win over each of the top three teams in the Pac-12 standings, with a respectable loss at Arizona State standing as the only February blemish. Winning hasn’t always been pretty or easy for the Bears, but they are suddenly as likely a candidate as any to steal the Pac-12 regular season title. Yes, you read that right – California, once 3-4 in league play, could wind up as your Pac-12 champs.

Allen Crabbe Was Relatively Quiet On Thursday Night, But His Pac-12 Player Of The Year Profile Grows With Every Golden Bear Victory

Give credit to the collective resourcefulness of the Bears, the coaching of Montgomery, and the proficiency of Crabbe (his Pac-12 POY stock soaring right now), but the reason the recent push has the Bears sitting with realistic championship dreams has far more to do with every other team in the conference. After spending the 2011-12 season facing constant derision (and deservedly so), the Pac-12 conference has bounced back in a big way this year. Recent bracket projections have included as many as six conference teams in the NCAA Tournament field, a development that would be a veritable windfall for a league that sent just one at-large team to the Dance a year ago.

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1. Shove-gate, day four. With California getting back into action tomorrow night, thankfully this overreaction to Mike Montgomery’s regrettable decision to physically contact his star player, Allen Crabbe, is ready to come to a close. The final words on the incident from both sides: First, Montgomery regrets his action, if for no other reason than the fact that all the focus this past week has been on that incident rather than on the fact that his team has risen from mediocrity to, well, more mediocrity, but at least mediocrity that is in contention for an NCAA Tournament bid. Meanwhile, on the other side, Allen Crabbe has brushed off the incident with the brand of typical Crabbe-esque nonchalance that got Montgomery so riled up to begin with. His parents, however, were not so quick to put it behind them. While both his mom and dad have handled the situation with class, each has indicated that Montgomery’s action didn’t sit entirely well with them. Nevertheless, Montgomery’s apology coupled with Crabbe’s mature response to the incident make this story completely ready to be put to bed.
2. Last night was perhaps the biggest snoozer on the Pac-12 conference schedule thus far, as both Arizona schools handled their opponents from Washington with relative ease, so in lieu of wasting pixels on games that we already spent time watching, I’ll instead refer you to a Dana O’Neil piece about how Mark Lyons wound up back with Sean Miller in the desert after blowing off Miller’s final meeting at Xavier three years earlier and ignoring his former coach’s texts out of anger with him for leaving the Cincinnati school. But now they’re reunited at Arizona and have a chance to accomplish something special together in Lyons’ last go-round in college.
3. Looking ahead to tonight, Dana Altman and Oregon host California in what will be Altman’s first crack at attempting to reach the 600-win mark for his career. Just 66 of those have come in Eugene, and only 476 were chalked up at the Division I level, but with the 54-year-old Altman seemingly having a lot of basketball left in him, we wouldn’t be surprised at all to see him top the mark in Division I victories alone in the relatively near future. Unfortunately, Duck fans, we also wouldn’t be all that surprised to see him eventually top that 600 mark somewhere back close to his Midwestern roots. As for tonight’s game, if the Ducks can pull off the win, it will mark the first time that anybody on this current roster, including Altman and his 599 career wins, has ever beaten Cal. And if that’s going to happen, it’ll likely have to happen without the services of point guard Dominic Artis, who appears to be on the verge of missing another week of basketball. Unlike Duke’s Ryan Kelly, however, Artis is making visible progress, as his crutches are at least a thing of the past and he is reported to be doing some minimal basketball-related drills.
4. Oregon State, meanwhile, will host Stanford tonight, and in doing so Joe Burton will play his second-to-last game in front of the home crowd in his career. Yep, believe it or not, we’re to that point in the season where senior days (or nights, I suppose, depending on when the game is played) begin to crop up. As for Burton, he’s a special kid. The first Native American to earn a scholarship to a Pac-10/Pac-12 school for men’s basketball, Burton has made a name for himself as a below-the-rim space-eater and a phenomenal passer. The first recruit signed by Craig Robinson, Burton is on track to become the first OSU player to ever amass 1,000 points, 700 rebounds and 300 assists in his career. It’s always bittersweet this time of year, knowing that we’re seeing some of these guys that we’ve gotten to know and love over recent years play their last basketball games for us (even though many, likely including Burton, who aren’t destined for NBA futures have the chance for a pro career somewhere else should they so choose), but it is also a great time to be thankful for the moments we’ve been able to experience.
5. Lastly, Ryan Kartje of the Orange County Register writes that with Ben Howland having drastically simplified his offense, UCLA is experiencing smooth sailing on the offensive end. Now, apparently, Mr. Kartje skipped the recent Arizona State, USC, Washington and Cal games in favor of simply watching the Stanford game, but his note that Howland has thrown away 36 of the 45 sets he had set up for teams in years past in order to focus on executing a simplified game plan is an interesting one.

1. One side effect of the parity in the conference this season has been a lot of intensity as we head into the stretch run. We saw this most glaringly on Sunday night with Mike Montgomery’s now infamous “shove” of Allen Crabbe, but elsewhere around the conference there were more incidents. In Pullman, Oregon center Tony Woods was ejected for throwing an elbow to the head of Washington State’s Brock Motum. The Pac-12 reviewed the play and decided Woods would face no further suspension. Another pair of bigs got tangled up in Boulder on Saturday when Jordan Bachynski and Josh Scott fell to the floor in pursuit of a rebound. Scott wound up banging his head against the hardwood and sustaining a concussion from which he is still recovering. Colorado head coach Tad Boyle called that game the most physical game he has ever been involved in.
2. It’s been a tumultuous season for UCLA freshman Shabazz Muhammad, with an NCAA investigation delaying his debut and the flu catching up with him prior to the USC game back in January. Now, and again in advance of a USC game, Muhammad is dealing with pinkeye, which kept him out of practice on Tuesday. However, this issue isn’t expected to have any impact on Muhammad’s availability for Sunday’s game.
3. Arizona State has compiled an 8-5 conference record largely on the strength of its starting five. Senior Carrick Felix leads the conference in minutes (38.3 minutes per night), while Jahii Carson and Jonathan Gilling both top out at over 36 minutes per game and are among the top five players in the conference in minutes. While head coach Herb Sendek admits that his heavy reliance on a small number of players is “a concern,” he doesn’t expect much to change for the rest of the year.
4. Meanwhile, down south a little, Arizona head coach Sean Miller has been increasingly relying on a smaller number of players as well. And with his confidence in Jordin Mayes dwindling, Mark Lyons and Nick Johnson are becoming the only options in the backcourt for the Wildcats. However, unlike Sendek up the road, Miller may be ready for a change and could turn to freshman guard Gabe York for some spot minutes on the perimeter. York earned 16 minutes over the course of three games back at the turn of the month into February, but since then York has never left the bench in the last four games.
5. Continuing the theme, Lorenzo Romar returned to freshman Jernard Jarreau this past weekend as an option off the bench. Jarreau won the starting power forward spot in preseason practice, but was ineffective while starting the first seven games of the season. Since then his role almost completely evaporated to the point where he played just 17 minutes over the course of six games prior to his emergence against Oregon State on Saturday. And Romar says Jarreau has earned a right to continue getting minutes in the hopes of building up his game to the point where he can be a contributor for the next three seasons.