1. Sophomore center Kaleb Tarczewski will likely miss his second straight game tonight when Arizona meets in-state foe Northern Arizona on the Pac-12 Networks. Tarczewski is sidelined with a sprained right ankle after landing on a Michigan player’s foot nine days ago in Ann Arbor. “We’re going to take it slow. We want to make sure he’s at his best for the Pac-12,” head coach Sean Miller said about the situation. As was the case against Southern University on Thursday, the top-ranked Wildcats had no problem without the sophomore’s services, and things are likely to be the same against the 3-7 Lumberjacks. Tarczewski is currently averaging 10.1 PPG, and with conference play beginning in 10 days, taking tonight off seems like a good call.
2. Coming into Sunday afternoon’s meeting with #10 Connecticut, Washington was looking for its third consecutive victory, which would have been a season high. And for the first 14 minutes of the game, it looked as if the Huskies might just pull off the upset, which would have been UConn’s second straight loss to a Pac-12 opponent. Washington jumped out to a 33-22 advantage in front of a small but loud gathering at Hec Ed, but the top 10 AAC team showed why they were just that, going on a 27-6 binge to take a lead it would never relinquish. Washington dropped to 6-5 with the loss and will need to at least split its final two non-conference games in order to enter Pac-12 play above the .500 mark.
3. Former UCLA head coach Ben Howland, who led the Bruins to three Final Fours during a decade in Westwood, was featured in the LA Times over the weekend. Howland is still keeping an eye on his former program, rooting on his players and agreeing that his successor, Steve Alford, has done a good job so far. What is he doing with his time off? A whole lot of fly-fishing, bike riding, and hoops watching. And while he’s enjoying those things immensely, the 56-year old is itching to get back onto the sideline. He’ll land somewhere, likely sometime this spring, because as Dick Vitale said during the UCLA-Duke game last week, Howland would be a great fit at a lot of schools around the country.
4. Late last week, the guys over at California Golden Blogs met in roundtable form and discussed whether California had a shot at competing for the Pac-12 championship. That’s looking a lot less likely after yesterday’s result in Omaha, when the Golden Bears were dominated on both ends of the court in a 68-54 loss to #16 Creighton.
5. These stories never get old. This video is from last week, so you may have already seen it, but even if so, it’s worth another view. Air Force Master Sergeant Chris Campbell was reunited with his family at the midway point during the first half of Thursday’s Arizona-Southern game, bringing smiles and some tears to everyone on hand. Each time the Pac-12 Network cameras showed Campbell the rest of the night, he was surrounded by and being thanked by the Wildcats’ fans in attendance. Commentators Roxy Bernstein and Matt Muehlebach joked that, while they were sure he appreciated it, Campbell didn’t get to take in nearly enough of the game as he probably liked. Happy holidays to everyone and to the Campbell family, especially.

Another week of the college basketball season is in the books and if there was a theme of this past week, it would have been the setbacks suffered by several undefeated teams. The first team to fall from the ranks of the unbeaten was Pittsburgh, which suffered its first loss to Cincinnati on Tuesday at the Jimmy V Classic. This theme continued Wednesday when previously eighth-ranked and unbeaten Connecticut suffered its first setback at home against Stanford. Then on Saturday, previously unbeaten and 19th-ranked Massachusetts tasted its first defeat of the season when the Minutemen lost to Florida State. Similarly, Missouri and Saint Mary’s — each a previously unbeaten team that received votes in the poll last week — had their perfect seasons come to an end against Illinois and South Carolina, respectively. With only nine unbeaten teams now left (#1 Arizona, #2 Syracuse, #4 Ohio State, #5 Wisconsin, #8 Villanova, #9 Oregon, #12 Wichita State, #14 Iowa State, and Toledo), it will be interesting to see which among this group will remain unbeaten the longest. The quick n’ dirty analysis of this week’s poll is after the jump.

Quick n’ dirty analysis.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. UCLA got its big chance on the national stage on Thursday night against Duke at Cameron Square Garden, and the Bruins looked real good for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, those minutes were non-consecutive, and, of course, a college basketball game is still 40 minutes of play. In the end, it was a 17-point win for Duke, another feather in the cap of freshman Jabari Parker on his way to a Player of the Year candidacy, and another opportunity for skeptical Bruins’ fans to distrust the Steve Alford era. UCLA has now struck out in its only two games of national interest in its weak non-conference schedule, and has shown a concerning tendency to lose focus for short stretches of time that ends up costing them.
2. Steve Alford spoke with CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein prior to UCLA’s game with Duke and addressed, among other things, the comments proffered by cross-town rival Andy Enfield earlier in the year. Alford wouldn’t get as explicit as Enfield got in his discussion of it, but his “one side can talk; the other side will do what we do” comment goes a long way towards reinforcing what has become the popular theme in the rivalry: USC will talk, UCLA will act.
3. Speaking of USC, after needing every minute on Sunday night to put away Cal State Bakersfield, the Trojans ran into another Cal State school on Thursday night with a bit more talent and couldn’t make up for another uninspired effort. Pe’Shon Howard led the Trojans with 19 points, but took 13 of his 14 field goal attempts from three-point range, including a wayward bomb on SC’s final half-court possession when the team was only down a point. But Howard isn’t the only Trojan who deserves criticism, as junior Byron Wesley was benched for the first 11 minutes of the first half due to a “coach’s decision” and didn’t score his only basket of the night until there were fewer than four minutes left in the game. It was Wesley’s first game under double-figures this year and likely the worst game in his USC career.
4. So, um. Hmmm. I don’t often read Eamonn Brennan at ESPN.com, but what he wrote on Thursday caught my eye. Apparently, this dude spends a column per week predicting who is at the top of the list for the Wooden Award; you know, the best player in the nation. This week he’s got Arizona’s Aaron Gordon atop that list. Now, I’ve read a lot of dumb things on the Internet (and believe me, I know dumb, because I’ve read Bruins Nation twice today – shudder), but that one takes that cake. I like Gordon a lot and he’s been a great glue guy for the nation’s top-ranked team. But the Wooden Award? I don’t know if Arizona has any name for the award it hands out to its MVP at the end of the year (the Elliott Award?), but if the school were to hand out that award tonight, there are at least two guys (Nick Johnson and Brandon Ashley) who would be ahead of Gordon for that honor. Anthony Gimino of the Tucson Citizen even includes T.J. McConnell ahead of Gordon at this point. None of this should be taken as a strike against Gordon, who has been great on a team that has gotten production for all seven players in its seven-man rotation, but how can Gordon be in the lead for the best player in the nation when he clearly hasn’t even been the best player on his team?
5. Lastly, Oregon was already a deep team in its first nine game of the season, with eight players averaging better than 13 minutes per game. But with Dominic Artis and Ben Carter now back and hungry for some run, how will head coach Dana Altman fold those players back into an already successful rotation? Early reports are that Altman plans to use his team’s depth to its advantage. Eleven guys played at least eight minutes in the Ducks’ recent game against UC Irvine and the coach mentioned afterward that with the added depth he hopes to see his team continue to extend its defensive pressure and up the tempo. While point guard Jonathan Loyd has been excellent this year for the Ducks, Artis in particular will significantly improve Oregon’s ability to apply great defensive pressure.

1. It seems hard to believe, but it appears that Australian point guard Dante Exum is planning on visiting five colleges — Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, and Oregon (which one of these doesn’t belong…) — in the near-future. The reason that it seems so strange is that Exum could enter the coming NBA Draft and is widely believed to be a top five pick if he did enter the 2014 NBA Draft. Andrew Bogut, a fellow Australian, has spoken publicly advising Exum to enter the NBA Draft if his draft stock is that high. Now this could all just be Exum getting a few trips out of the recruiting process or just wanting to test the college waters to see if he likes the system as a way to prepare for a likely NBA career, but we will believe that Exum is going to college when we see him in a college uniform.
2. If you were hoping for an in-state rivalry to develop between Kansas and Wichita State you can forget about it. Well at least on the court. According to a report from The Kansas City Star, Gregg Marshall would be willing to play a home-and-home series with the Jayhawks, but Bill Self says he won’t because he sees no upside in it for Kansas. While we are not fans of Self’s decision not to schedule games between the two schools we have to agree with his logic that it does not benefit Kansas in any way. Scheduling Wichita State would only make the Jayhawks’ schedule more challenging (and if you look at your schedule this year you know that they do not need it) and the potential cost of a loss to an in-state school that is several rungs below them on the basketball hierarchy would only weaken their stranglehold on the state. In fact, just getting Kansas on their regular schedule would only further validate the Wichita State program (if a Final Four trip last season didn’t do that) so we wouldn’t expect to see this match-up in the regular season any time soon.
3. In his final Power Rankings of 2013, Luke Winn has his usual statistical breakdowns, but he also has one of the longest breakdowns we have seen in the column looking at how Arizona defended Michigan in the last possession of its win this past weekend. Outside of that the numbers that jump out at us the most are how infrequently Michigan State gets to the free throw line and how bad Baylor is in the post. It will be interesting to see how the latter two issues play out as the season progresses as both teams are top 10 teams at this point and both issues seem like they might be significant going forward.
4. How much does it take to get your name attached to an historic college basketball venue? At Indiana, it appears that the price is $40 million, after the school announced on Thursday that Assembly Hall would be renovated and renamed the Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall by 2016. The renovations are reported to include “revenue-generating box seats, a new south entryway, a state-of-the-art video scoreboard, escalators and remodeled restrooms and concession stands.” All of that is fine and well, and we’d much rather see a philanthropist’s name on the side of the building than a corporate one (Bob Evans Assembly Hall just doesn’t have the same ring to it), but let’s just be sure that Indiana administrators are not going to let Skjodt, the daughter of a shopping mall magnate, turn the place into a hoops version of the Mall of America.
5. The NCAA makes a regular practice out of tying itself in knots with its public inconsistencies and embarrassing blunders, but Thursday marked a new one for the likes of Jay Bilas and others to skewer. In a Montgomery County (Maryland) court case involving a wrongful death filed by the family of former Frostburg State football player, Derek Sheely, NCAA counsel wrote in a court filing that “The NCAA denies that it has a legal duty to protect student-athletes, but admits that it was ‘founded to protect young people from the dangerous and exploitative athletic practices of the time.’” From a legal perspective, the NCAA is clearly distinguishing the mission and goals of its current mega-organization from that of something a half-century ago; but from a PR perspective, this is just another quiver in what the public perceives as an organization deeply embedded with hypocrisy and completely out of touch with the world around it. Happy Friday.

Last week, Will Leitch of Sports on Earth wrote a piece ranking the Best 25 Coaching Positions in College Basketball. Since then, some of my colleagues here at RTC have taken their swings at the same topic, albeit on a micro-level, counting down the best jobs in each conference from top to bottom. Now it’s the Pac-12’s turn, using Leitch’s list of priorities. To be clear, we’re not talking about any one thing here. We’re not talking about which team is the best this year, or who has the best chance to be really good in 2017. We’re talking about playing a fun hypothetical game designed to do little more than to start an argument; to wit, if suddenly every single Pac-12 job opened up all at once tomorrow morning, which school would have the best chance of landing its most desired head coach. Or, as Leitch put it: “If I were a hypothetical Average Coach, which job would I most desire?” It’s a completely unanswerable question that is dependent on a million different factors, right? Yeah, screw that. Find the correct answers below.

1. Arizona – Leitch puts Arizona as the 11th best job in the nation, just behind UCLA, which checks in at #8. UCLA’s got 11 banners in the rafters, the legacy of John Wooden, an alumni list that could be mistaken for a list of basketball Hall of Fame inductees, a great campus with an opportunity for a great education, and it’s right there in the heart of Los Angeles. Undoubtedly, UCLA is one of the three best college basketball programs of all-time. But Arizona’s the better job. We’ll get to some of the relative negatives on the UCLA side of things below, but here, since we’re talking about Arizona, let’s wax positivity about this position. Arizona, as you may know, has had some basketball success of its own. It is the Pac-12 program with the most recent NCAA title (1997). In the modern era of college basketball (let’s call that post-Magic/Bird), it has the most regular season conference titles of anyone in the Pac-12, it has as many Final Four appearances as UCLA (at least according to the NCAA’s official record book; UCLA had its 1980 Final Four appearance vacated), and it’s got the same number of national championships as the Bruins. Let’s call those records a wash. What is not a wash is the level of support that the Arizona fan base gives its team. It isn’t really up for debate; Arizona has the best basketball fans in the Pac-12. By a long shot. And, in part because of that, when it comes down to the facilities arms race, Arizona is probably in the lead there as well. That’s true even before the McKale Center begins a $30 million renovation. UCLA is a great job, don’t get me wrong, but all things being equal, the UofA head coaching gig offers the best chance for success in the Pac-12 over the next couple decades.
   

   The Renovations To The McKale Center, Announced Monday, Will Put Arizona Another Step Forward On the Facilities’ Front (Arizona Athletics)

2. UCLA – Above, we’ve already alluded to quite a few of the positives that UCLA has going its way. Its history is unmatched in college basketball. But, in the past 35 years, UCLA has one national title and 10 times has gotten at least a piece of the Pac-12 title. In other words, while nobody is ever going to forget about that great history, UCLA takes something of a back seat in the modern era of college basketball. And a lot of that has to do with fan support. Right now, you go to a UCLA basketball game and you’re liable to see a Pauley Pavilion that would generously be called half-full. Even during the three-straight Final Four era of Ben Howland, there were plum mid-afternoon weekend starting times against Top 25 conference opponents that wouldn’t sell out. And the expectations at UCLA? Yikes. Yes, it was probably best for both sides that Howland and UCLA parted last season, but let’s remember: Howland went to three straight Final Fours half a decade ago, was coming off a Pac-12 title, and got straight canned. Limited fan support plus unreasonable expectations? Yeah, UCLA is a good job – a very good job – but compared to the sunshine and rainbows in Tucson, Westwood is a briar patch. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Last night Oregon welcomed back sophomores Dominic Artis and Ben Carter from suspension, as both made their season debuts after sitting out the first nine games. And, while Jonathan Loyd has come to earn plenty of well-deserved respect around the conference, we were reminded that, oh yeah, Artis is pretty darn good himself. Artis got penetration on the regular on one end of the court, then showed his ability to be a completely annoying pest on the other, and then surprised everybody as the 6’1” guard also grabbed eight rebounds in the win. Carter wasn’t bad himself, showing himself to be a solid inside-outside stretch-four for the Ducks, although his offensive production didn’t come easily. As for folding these guys back in with the already established players, Loyd for one continues to look good, although his minutes were hampered by fouls. Meanwhile, guys like Joseph Young and Jason Calliste saw their shot attempts drop ever so slightly, but it looks like in the long run these guys are going to be meshed back into the rotation with ease.
2. Tomorrow night Kyle Anderson returns home as UCLA travels to New York City to face Duke at Madison Square Garden. Anderson is a native of a community in New Jersey that is part of the NYC metropolitan area, and he’s watched his fair share of games at MSG over the years. Not only does he get to go home (where he’ll have to deal with distributing tickets to his friends and family), but he’ll get to renew his competition with a somewhat familiar foe in Chicago native, Jabari Parker.
3. Oregon State’s game tonight is their last game on the mainland before the Beavers head out to Honolulu to take part in the Diamond Head Classic on Sunday with an opening round game against Akron. As it is, they’re not the only Oregon State team headed to Hawaii for the holidays, as the Beavers’ football team is also going to paradise. They’ll be facing Boise State on Christmas Eve in the Hawaii Bowl and it just so happens that the Diamond Head Classic features a perfectly coincidental off day. Roberto Nelson and company will not only get a nice trip to the islands for the holidays, but they’ll have a chance to support their fellow OSU athletes.
4. Colorado doesn’t play again until Saturday against Oklahoma State, but when the team does it will have to lean heavily on sophomore forward Xavier Johnson, who has done a great job helping to fill in for the departed Andre Roberson. As Terry Frei of The Denver Post writes, while Johnson is getting plenty of help from freshman Wesley Gordon, he’s made big strides in shifting his game from that of primarily a perimeter player to one who is expected to make major contributions in the paint as well.
5. Lastly, while things seem to be going smoothly for Sean Miller and Arizona, the head coach is not about to let his precocious young ‘Cats rest on their laurels. Last year at this time (and weeks into the future), his squad also remained undefeated only to get off to a bumpy start in conference play from which they never truly recovered. He’s using that experience to teach his current team to keep its focus, avoid distractions, and keep improving.

It was a slower than slow week last week around College Basketball Land, but we were rewarded for our wait with an exciting weekend of early-season blockbusters. In this week’s RTC Podcast, hosted by Shane Connolly (@sconnolly114), the guys break down all the big games of the weekend, starting with Arizona’s comeback win over Michigan in Ann Arbor, and work our way through all the compelling action from last weekend. We also discussed our favorite players to watch in the entire college hoops landscape this season, and were honored to have ESPN analyst Jay Bilas join us for this week’s Rush the Take, where he extolled on some of the teams he’s seen recently, talks some Jimmy V (the coach and the event), and reflects on his longtime nemesis, the NCAA. It’s great stuff, and you should definitely have a listen.

Jay Bilas Joined Us This Week to Talk Some Hoops

The complete rundown is below. Make sure to add the RTC Podcast to your iTunes lineup so that you’ll automatically upload it on your listening device after we record. And feel free to contact us through Twitter or email — we’re listening.

• 0:00-4:43 – Arizona Reinforces Its #1 Ranking
• 4:43-8:56 – UNC Notches Another Big Win…
• 8:56-14:16 – …and Kentucky Notches Another Disappointing Loss
• 14:16-17:33 – CyHawk Rivalry Produces Some Hilton Magic on Friday Night
• 17:33-19:11 – Other Weekend Highlights
• 19:11-32:15 – Rush the Take With Jay Bilas
• 32:15-38:26 – Favorite Players To Watch
• 38:26-47:01 – Previewing This Week

With Saturday marking the first weekend where college football didn’t dominate the sports schedule, college basketball took full advantage, with some pivotal non-conference games on the docket, a few featuring Top 25 teams and some others that made an argument to be ranked.

If you’re starting with Top 25 teams, you have to begin with No. 18 Kentucky at No. 11 North Carolina on Saturday, where the Tar Heels kept their head-scratching narrative going with an 82-77 victory in the Dean Dome. Marcus Paige dropped 23 points, including a 10-of-10 performance from the free throw line. After losing to Belmont at home and UAB in Birmingham, UNC has now notched victories over several of the top teams in the nation, beating the AP’s top three preseason teams in America. As you’ll see, you can attribute their elevated play to hot shooting against elite defensive teams, but it’s pretty impressive that Roy Williams’ bunch is doing all this without P.J. Hairston in the lineup (more on him at the bottom).

Marcus Paige has been terrific in the second half. UNC again rising to the occasion. Another inspiring performance by the Tarheels.

— Jon Rothstein (@JonRothstein) December 15, 2013

Wow. North Carolina shot a combined 55.1 percent in the second halves of wins against Louisville, Michigan State and Kentucky.

— Brett Dawson (@BDawsonRivals) December 15, 2013

From last night … It's hard to watch North Carolina without thinking about the Hairston/McDonald NCAA debacle. http://t.co/M2Za7px4NX

— Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan) December 15, 2013

Soooo the Tarheels have beat the #1 #3 and #11 without their #1 scorer and #3 best player? #dope. Can't wait for conference play. Ya dig.

— • (@iVoryBabyBaby) December 17, 2013

Another game that really caught the public eye on Saturday was No. 1 Arizona heading to the Crisler Center to take on Michigan. The Wildcats came back late and held on to win to preserve their spot at the top of the polls. While Brandon Ashley led the Cats with a team-high 18 points, Aaron Gordon put up his own nice performance of 14 points, five rebounds and two assists, but saved his best for what he did defensively in the second half against a red-hot Glenn Robinson III.  Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

For the second consecutive week, we’ve got the same four teams at the top of the poll. We’ve also got consensus on all of those teams, with every ballot listing the top four teams in the same order. From there, however, things get tricky, but there is very clearly a second tier of four teams, with Arizona State, California, Utah and Stanford all bunched together before there is another drop off to Oregon State, Washington State, USC and Washington locked into a group. But perhaps the most notable thing, and likely the most surprising occurrence around the conference this season, is Washington polling last. Expectations were not particularly high for the Huskies this season, but I doubt many expected that.

Arizona’s Big Win At Michigan Has The Wildcats Firmly Entrenched  as the Pac-12’s Top Team. (AP)

1. Arizona
2. Oregon
3. Colorado
4. UCLA
5. Arizona State
6. California
7. Utah
8. Stanford
9. Oregon State
10. Washington State
11. USC
12. Washington

Team of the Week

Arizona – The Wildcats are the no-brainer here, not only for their #1 national ranking but also for the way in which they maintained that ranking — by going on the road to an unfriendly arena; bouncing back from a slow start that led to a double-figure second half deficit; fighting through a key injury and some foul trouble on an already intentionally short rotation; and making enough big-time plays down the stretch to knock off last year’s national runner-up. Yes, Arizona earned this honor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Roughly a quarter of the way through the year, we’re going to unveil something a little new here, something we’ll check back in on once a month or so. We’re going to take all the schools west of the Rockies (and we’re going to be a bit generous with our geography – basically we’re looking at schools from the Pac-12, Mountain West, West Coast, and Big West and then some of the schools from the Big Sky and Western Athletic Conferences) and give you the top 20 teams. But, rather than just ranking schools 1 though 20, we’re going to divide all these teams up into tiers, in part because calling Arizona #1 and then naming another school #2 just seems wrong, because the Wildcats are just so far ahead of everyone else. Below, you’ll see our Top 20 teams in the West (their overall rank will be in parentheses), with descriptions of what we think the teams in each tier have in common, plus brief comments on the teams in our list.

Arizona Is The Undisputed Leader In The West (Casey Sapio, USA Today Sports)

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

Arizona (#1 overall, Pac-12 #1) – The Wildcats are in a class by themselves out West. Even when putting together my national top 25, I wanted to put Arizona at #1, leave spots 2-5 empty, and then have a four-way tie at #6. What they’ve accomplished thus far is unassailable, especially considering how young this team is. Expect somebody (maybe multiple somebodies) in the Pac-12 to put up a serious challenge, but at this point in the season, Sean Miller’s squad is not only the best in the West, but they’re the best by a long shot.

Contenders to the Throne – And all top 25 teams.

Oregon (#2 overall, Pac-12 #2) – The Ducks are the team closest to joining the Wildcats up top, but while they’ve got an undefeated record and some quality scalps, they’re missing the quality of wins that the Wildcats have. But, as good as Dana Altman’s squad has been, they’re not even at full strength yet – Dominic Artis and Ben Carter are due back this week.

Read the rest of this entry »