1. It might not be a big rivalry yet, but contests between Colorado and Arizona since CU’s move to the Pac-12 have been intense every time. The last time these two teams met was at the Pac-12 Tournament final last March, with Colorado pulling out the victory. The next time these teams will meet will be the conference opener for both teams on January 3 down in Tucson. Arizona is heavily favored in this game as they are ranked third in the nation and are clearly the better team, but Sean Miller has mentioned that he has a great deal of respect for Tad Boyle and his Colorado team and won’t take this game lightly.
2. Shabazz Muhammad is living up to the hype these days and is getting rewarded for it. He was named the Pac-12 and ESPN player of the week, the first time Muhammad has received this award. If he continues to play like he did against Missouri the rest of the season, he should receive more of these awards as the year goes along. Muhammad scored 27 points in UCLA’s win against Missouri last Friday night and the Bruins will need him to continue on as their leading scorer if they are going to contend with Arizona and others for the Pac-12 title.
3. Some believe that it’s time for Lorenzo Romar to go. Last year did not bode well for Romar as he had two first round draft picks on his team in Tony Wroten and Terrence Ross and won the Pac-12 regular season title, but couldn’t make the NCAA Tournament because of less than stellar play in the non-conference slate. This year Romar has talented players once again in Abdul Gaddy, Scott Suggs, and C.J. Wilcox, but hasn’t managed to do much with it and has picked up some embarrassing home losses along the way to Nevada and Albany. Romar will need to turn this season around quickly and make sure his team steps it up in conference play if he wants to avoid underwhelming back-to-back years that could possibly end his tenure at Washington.
4. Arizona is rolling into conference play at 12-0 and the conference schedule that they have this season could benefit them substantially by pushing the Wildcats to receive a very high seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Wildcats will play Cal, Stanford, Oregon, and Oregon State — all teams that should place somewhere near the top of the conference — only once, and they will face the Bay Area teams at home. They’ll have to take on the Ducks and Beavers on the road as well as Colorado on the road, but other than that, Arizona has a relatively easier road and overall schedule. They’ll play Washington and Washington State, both who have been unspectacular in non-conference play, twice and will play Utah and USC, who look like they’ll be the bottom teams once again, twice as well.
5. Could UCLA miss the NCAA Tournament for two straight years? CBS bracketologist Jerry Palm came out with his latest projections and had only three Pac-12 teams making it — Colorado, Oregon and Arizona. Arizona was listed as a #1 seed, but the most alarming part of his projection had to be UCLA not anywhere in the field. Despite their shortcomings so far this year, the Bruins have too much talent to not make the Tournament and if for some reason that did happen, that would certainly be the end of Ben Howland’s career in Westwood.

With non-conference play all but wrapped up, we start to turn our attention to conference play this week. But, before we do we want to take a look back and see what we talked about prior to the season.

“We made a lot of predictions and bold statements prior to the season. Which prognostication did you nail and which did you completely whiff on?”

Adam Butler: I wish I’d had the stones to say things like “Jordan Adams will be UCLA’s best player” or “Josh Smith will leave the Bruins” or “USC will utterly flop.” No, on each of those insights I was sightless. I was the cool kid picking USC to overachieve and who was gobbling up Shabazz hyperbole like flavored vodka at a sorority house. I went out on the limb to say Arizona and Colorado would be good. I have said Spencer Dinwiddie would be All-Conference and, to date, he’s held up his side of that bargain, and I still love his game when he shows up (although, zero points vs. Fresno?). The one thing I’ve nailed but I don’t think it’s been terribly bold has been that Mark Lyons, no matter what he did numbers-wise, was going to have an overwhelming effect on this Wildcats team. I think it’s safe to say that he’s been a lightning rod of attention and criticism and handled it all in stride, strides that have taken him straight to winning buckets against Florida and SDSU. Lyons brings a dynamic to Tucson that was sorely needed and he has not let them down. As for whiffs? I figured Washington would be better and that Oregon would be worse. I thought Jio Fontan would hover around conference POY talk and that Dewayne Dedmon would be a big surprise: fails. There’s still time to play out but it’s hard to say that any of those thoughts will right themselves in my predictive favor. And in that remaining time, I’m excited to see just what UCLA will do and how Arizona’s freshmen bigs will develop within the routine of Pac-12 play. Moving forward, a few additional thoughts: Can Herb’s team keep up their pace? No. Is Solomon Hill going to win the conference POY award? No (but he may be the MVP). Can Colorado be the second best team in the Pac? Yes. Will Stanford be better then their 8-4 record? Yes. Alas, predictions are meaningless but oh-so-fun.

Jio Fontan In The Player Of The Year Race? Not So Much. (AP Photo)

Connor Pelton: Looking back on it, I made some interesting (to say the least) picks back in October. But I did nail a few of those, starting with the pick of Arsalan Kazemi as an All-Pac-12 performer. I was the only one to include the Rice transfer on my 15-player ballot, and he has answered by averaging 9.2 PPG, 10.4 RPG, and 3.1 SPG so far. In fact, if he had not had been so tentative shooting the ball at the beginning of the season, it is not a stretch to say he would not only be leading the team in rebounds but points as well. Another pick I am liking was that of Jonathan Gilling as an all-conference three-point shooter. Kevin and I were the only ones to include the sophomore on our lists, and he has proved us right by knocking down 30 triples, second highest in the conference. But the pick I am most proud of is selecting USC at 10th in the conference, while everyone else here had the Trojans sixth or seventh. The thing that made me so skeptical about USC at the beginning of the season was the question, “Where do the points come from behind Jio Fontan?” Some said senior forward Aaron Fuller, who’s averaging a stellar 2.9 PPG. Case closed.

Now, onto the whiffs. While Chasson Randle hasn’t had a great season, there is no question he should be second team All-Pac-12 right now. I did not even include him on my list of 15, opting instead for guys like Ricky Kreklow and Kaleb Tarczewski. Whoops. It is easy to look bad when projecting an all-newcomer team, and boy have I done that. I did not include Mark Lyons on my team, or Jahii Carson, or Josh Scott. Those guys are averaging 13.4, 17.9, and 12.5 PPG, respectively. As we move into conference play, the picks that are on the fence of good and bad will begin to clear up. Are the Buffaloes an NCAA Tournament team? I said yes in October, and I still think they are now. Can Washington rebound from an awful start and make the NIT? No. Can California win a big game? It has to happen eventually, right?

Time will answer everything, and before we know it, we will be filling out brackets and talking about surprises and snubs on Selection Sunday.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brendon Mulvihill is the head curator for @SportsGawker and an RTC contributor. You can find him @TheMulv on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

College hoops heads into 2013 with the opening of conference season in some of the major leagues set to begin . The slate of games scheduled for New Year’s Eve is not to be missed, as the Big East and Big Ten seasons both get underway. However, it is one final non-conference match-up that leads our breakdowns. Happy New Year!

Game of the Week

#16 Gonzaga at #21 Oklahoma State – 6:00 PM EST, Monday on ESPN2 (*****)

Le’Bryan Nash and company look to stop Gonzaga’s winning ways against the Big 12. (AP)

• A win against Oklahoma State today will make Gonzaga the best team in the Big 12. Obviously, Gonzaga is still in the West Coast Conference, but they are already 4-0 against Big 12 teams this season with wins against West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kansas State, and Baylor. Monday’s game against the Cowboys, however, is their first true road test against a Big 12 opponent. The other games have either been at home or on neutral courts. The Zags usually have a size advantage against their opponents, but Oklahoma State can match their size and even has that advantage at the guard position. The Pokes have four guards who contribute heavily to the offense that are 6’3″ or taller, including 6’7″ Le’Bryan Nash. With Bulldog guards Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell, Jr. measuring at 6’2″ and 6’1″, respectively, it will be very important to watch how Mark Few’s squad chooses to defend the perimeter size of the Cowboys. Much of that defensive pressure could actually fall on the Zags’ frontcourt. The Oklahoma State guards do most of their damage inside the three-point line because they are not much of a threat from the outside. Keep an eye on how this defensive responsibility affects Gonzaga’s offense inside. The Bulldogs will still need to pound the ball down low and get to the line because it’s their best chance of winning. If they can get to the line like Virginia Tech did against Oklahoma State, they can win this game in a tough road environment.
• No team has shot over 50% eFG in a game against Oklahoma State this season, but the Cowboys face a Gonzaga team that is lethally efficient from two-point range. The GU frontcourt’s two-point shooting breaks down like this – Elias Harris shoots 58.8%, Kelly Olynyk shoots 72.3%, Sam Dower shoots 59.7%, and Przemek Karnowski shoots 65.3%. These player will put considerable pressure on Cowboys center Phillip Jurick and freshman forward Kamari Murphy. The key will be how OSU head coach Travis Ford uses his big guards on help defense to stop the Gonzaga low post attack. If Oklahoma State can figure this out, they will pick-up an important non-conference win as they head into Big 12 play.
• Non-conference home losses are few and far between for Oklahoma State under Travis Ford. It’s hard to believe that Gonzaga can actually go 5-0 against the Big 12 this season, especially on the road in front of the Cowboy faithful at Gallagher-Iba Arena. This game will be extremely fun to watch, but the edge has to go to the Cowboys at home.

Other Games to Watch

#10 Cincinnati at #23 Pittsburgh – 12:00 PM EST, Monday on ESPN2 (****)

• Pittsburgh is a very flimsy 12-1. The only good team they’ve play this season is Michigan and they lost that game. We’ll know very quickly if Pitt is any good against a tough and tested Cincinnati squad. However, the Bearcats have shot the ball quite poorly over the last three games. They cannot afford to continue to do so if they expect to win this one, especially at the “Oakland Zoo” in Pittsburgh. The match-up between Tray Woodall and Cashmere Wright should be great to watch all night. Expect Cincy to get back on track and win this game, though, from behind the three-point line. However, if they are shooting bricks like they have been in the past few outings, Pitt will get a great win to start off the Big East season.

Read the rest of this entry »

* Editor’s Note: Due to a light schedule over the past week, this edition of the ATB covers all games played from Monday through Friday.

Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. 

The Week’s Lede. Wrapping Up Holiday Week.  When college basketball thins out over the Christmas Holiday, so too does the ATB. This version will cover an entire week of games, meager and diffuse though they were. If you took a break from the sport this week, there’s not a whole lot you missed out on, outside a few appealing contests towards the end of the week, and a sneaky good tournament in Hawaii which featured one of the best game-saving plays all season and which, in essence, amounted to a total scheduling coup. (note to Feast Week event organizers: push your tournaments into December, if only to make this dry lull a little more palatable). That doesn’t sum up everything that went down. Just last night, we saw an undefeated top 10 team lose in its own building, and there’s plenty on tap for the weekend ahead. Consider this a refresher to prep you for the last weekend of significant non-conference action. Which reminds me: conference play is finally upon us! That means really, really good things. Now, let’s have our look back at this here week of Holiday Hoops.

Your Watercooler Moment. Diamond Head Classic Produces A Gem Of Non-Conference Action.

When 2012-13 is all said and done, the Diamond Head Classic will be mostly remembered for one thing: Arizona guard Nick Johnson’s acrobatic swat to deny San Diego State’s Chase Tapley in the final seconds and clinch the championship trophy. It was arguably the best individual defensive play we’ve seen all season, and if it wasn’t the best, then certainly the most important. In beating San Diego State, Arizona not only solidified its status as the best team on the West Coast, but it beat a deep, athletic, well-coached, disciplined SDSU team on a neutral floor, which is a notable feat on its own, but even more impressive when you stack it on top of the 19-point bludgeoning the Wildcats put on Miami in the semifinals. That was a humbling blow for the Hurricanes, a team that many were touting as the second best in the ACC after that nice 22-point road win at UCF. Worse was the two-point loss to Indiana State that followed; not to take anything away from Jake Odum and the Sycamores, but if you’re the second best team in the ACC, you don’t lose that game. And it should be noted: ISU had a very nice time out on the islands. Scraping out overtime wins against Ole Miss and Miami is the type of thing that spawns serious reevaluation of an already top-heavy MVC. All in all, the field didn’t disappoint, churned out a few surprising results and staged maybe the most thrilling, high-stakes, down-to-the-wire fixture of the season outside of Butler-Indiana and UCLA-Missouri.

Also Worth Chatting About. Lobos Bounce Back.

New Mexico’s Win at Cincy, Led by Alex Kirk, Was an Important One

Beyond the outward toughness and hard-nosed defense and equalized intensity across its roster, it was hard to draw too much from New Mexico’s early-season track record. Home wins over Dayton, USC and Valparaiso; neutral court wins over George Mason and UConn; the timeless strain of a road trip to rival New Mexico State – that is a nice selection of good but not great teams. It is not the work of a top-10-caliber club. The Lobos traveled to No. 8 Cincinnati Thursday night with perception-altering intentions on their minds. And boy, did they alter some perceptions. New Mexico took the physical brand of basketball Cincinnati hangs its hat on and threw it right back at Mick Cronin’s team. Kendall Williams and Tony Snell went right at Jaquon Parker, Cashmere Wright and Sean Kilpatrick in the backcourt (while providing stingy defense for much of the night), and Lobos seven-footer Alex Kirk played his best game of the season, to the extreme chagrin of Cincinnati’s undercooked frontcourt. In the end, this game – like so many others – came down to shot-making: The Bearcats converted just 31.3 percent from the field, and didn’t really make up for it at the free throw line (3-of-4). It was a wakeup call for the Bearcats in that their patented formula – crash the glass, grind opponents with physical defense and an intimidating backcourt – is not totally unassailable. In fact, no game plan functions quite right when you shoot as poorly as Cincinnati did Thursday night.

Your Quick Hits…

• UCLA Comes Together. In the preseason when UCLA was being thrown around as a legitimate national championship contender, beating Missouri would not have seemed nearly as important as it does now. But because the Bruins have had so much trouble living up to those massive expectations, and because Ben Howland’s No. 1 recruiting class is still sorting things out on both ends of the floor, and because this team has overcome the lowest of lows — losing to Cal Poly, along with the departures of two players — there is no understating what a win like this can do for UCLA’s on and off-court chemistry and confidence as it turns to the Pac-12 portion of its schedule. Depending on your source, the Bruins were a 3.5-point favorite against Missouri. That is not an accurate snapshot of the overall perceptions of these teams. UCLA had taken its lumps in every non-conference game of note, weathered internal and external obstacles (fan apathy, for one), embarrassed itself against San Diego State at a John Wooden-themed event in Anaheim in a putative battle for the state of California, all the while shoving off rumors of Ben Howland’s endangered job status. Missouri, meanwhile, has looked like the best team in the SEC. Don’t let Vegas fool you; this was an upset — an important one. Read the rest of this entry »

1. After a quiet period surrounding Christmas, things pick back up again beginning tonight with a pair of games involving Pac-12 teams. The most high profile game is UCLA hosting Missouri in a chance to see whether the Bruins’ recent improvements on the offensive end are enough to have them ready to compete with very good teams. Missouri is coming off its most high profile win of the season, a nine-point win over Illinois in the Braggin’ Rights game, but they have also handled Stanford and Virginia Commonwealth in a pair of quality wins in the Bahamas. The Tigers will be playing a bit shorthanded, though, as reserve forward Tony Criswell – he of 18 minutes, six points and five rebounds per game – will miss the game with a broken finger.
2. Utah is the other Pac-12 team to break its Christmas fast and return to the court tonight, as they will host the College of Idaho, an NAIA school. While the Utes already have more wins this year than they earned all of last season, they still left quite a few on the table. Despite a 7-4 record, if the Utes had simply been able to hang on to three different second-half double-figure advantages, they could be 10-1 at this point. But with a young team that is still getting used to the idea of winning games, closing out victories is still a work in progress.
3. Oregon State gets back in the swing of things on Saturday when they host Towson at Gill Coliseum. And in a cool bit of marketing for the program, the first 1,000 fans into the venue will get a free Alamo Bowl t-shirt and everyone is invited to stick around after the game and watch the football game (vs. Texas) as well as participate in an autograph session with OSU players and coaches. Way to take a simple, relatively unappealing basketball game for which the students will be out of town and turn it into a blockbuster day for Beaver fans to spend enjoying both of their big-time sports programs.
4. Oregon got back from its Christmas break and resumed practice yesterday in advance of a meeting with Nevada on New Year’s Eve, and they are hoping to repeat last year’s improvement following their time off. Last year the Ducks got run over by Virginia then coasted through three uninspired wins over bad teams prior to Christmas break, before coming back and tearing through Washington State to kick off a strong conference run. Dana Altman recognizes that the parts are in place for the Ducks to again compete for a conference title, but he’ll have his team spending the next few practices working on offensive execution and defensive communication.
5. It seems like all week we have had a little something about the big Arizona win over San Diego State on Christmas night, but for the most part we have focused on Nick Johnson’s highlight-reel blocked shot in the waning moments. Head coach Sean Miller notes that, while Johnson’s play was great, senior Kevin Parrom put a bow on the game by running down the loose ball after the block and making sure that the Aztecs were unable to get a second-shot opportunity. That, coupled with Parrom’s offensive contributions, made him a underrated key to Arizona’s Diamond Head Classic title, even though teammates like Johnson, Solomon Hill, and Mark Lyons may normally get more publicity.

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 evening’s games.

Cincinnati’s dreams of an unbeaten season, wild as they may have been, came to an end Thursday night in the Queen City. New Mexico wound up a point better in a predictably grinding contest, as Tony Snell’s fadeaway jumper with 2:28 to play would close out the scoring. No coach will be happy after a loss, but should Mick Cronin feel any extra pain tonight when realizing that his team’s dream of perfection disappeared? Should John Beilein, Mike Krzyzewski, Sean Miller and Larry Shyatt (coaches of the four remaining unbeatens) be paying any sort of attention to the pursuit of being the “Last Unbeaten Team?” If the March success of past title-holders is used as proof, it’s hard to really say how much weight the distinction deserves to hold.

Mick Cronin Shouldn’t Lose Too Much Sleep Over Cincinnati’s First Loss

It happens every year. The eyes of the college basketball world will begin to gain sharp focus in January or February, or perhaps if we are lucky, March. One team will lay claim to the title of “Last Unbeaten,” and for better or worse, we as college basketball fans seem to really care. Talking heads will banter about how long the run can last, where the significant hurdles lie on the schedule, and even if a perfect season is a real possibility. And this buzz doesn’t discriminate; whether you are Duke (the last unbeaten four times since Indiana’s perfect season in 1976), or Murray State (last year’s final unbeaten), the attention will follow. So we clearly do care, and look, it probably should be that way. The notion of a perfect season is a tantalizingly romantic one, having last been accomplished nearly four decades ago, when Bob Knight led an unblemished Indiana squad to a title. No matter how unlikely the perfect season may be, it’s undeniably fun to wonder if this year could be the next one. So dream away college basketball fans, but the question still remains – does this distinction really mean anything?

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a look at the power rankings that Drew, Parker, Adam, and I have compiled after the sixth week of Pac-12 games (delta in parentheses):

1. Arizona, 12-0 (-): Arizona will be the only Pac-12 team to go through non-conference play undefeated, thanks to three walk-over wins and a last-second thriller in Honolulu in the Christmas-extended week six. After dispatching Oral Roberts in Tucson and East Tennessee State and Miami (Florida) on the islands, the Wildcats met San Diego State in the Christmas night final of the Diamond Head Classic. And if not for a game played 10 days prior in the desert, this one would have made a good choice for game of the non-conference season. Just like Arizona, the Aztecs came into Tuesday winners of their last 11. And at two points in the second half, it looked as if SDSU would leave with its 12th. But trailing 45-37, freshman Brandon Ashley made his mark on an otherwise lackluster night. Ashley scored six points and had a key assist in just over five minutes, and along with some help from Solomon Hill, pulled Arizona even at 52-all. The game would go back and forth from there, with the lead changing nine different times, and both teams tied at seven different points. The Wildcats’ perfect non-conference record was finally secured with an out-of-nowhere Nick Johnson block and controversial Kevin Parrom rebound as time expired. Up Next: 1/3 vs. Colorado.
2. Oregon, 10-2 (-): Played in front of more fans but a lesser national audience, Oregon was entangled in its own thriller last Wednesday in El Paso. And this time, the Pac-12 team didn’t come out on top. UTEP appeared to be practically begging Oregon to win the game, but the Ducks gave away chance after chance before the reluctant Miners finally closed out a 91-84 triple overtime win. Up Next: 12/31 vs. Nevada Christmas Came Early For UTEP Fans, While Arsalan Kazemi And The Ducks Left The Don Haskins Center Disappointed. (credit: Pac-12.com)
   

   Christmas Came Early For UTEP Fans, While Arsalan Kazemi And The Ducks Left The Don Haskins Center Disappointed. (credit: Pac-12.com)

3. Colorado, 9-2 (-): The Buffaloes hold steady at number three after destroying an awful Northern Arizona team, 98-51. Askia Booker and Xavier Johnson led all scorers with 17 points a piece in the victory. Up Next: 12/29 vs. Hartford.
4. Oregon State, 9-2 (-): Another week, another pair of unimpressive wins for Oregon State. The good news is of course that the Beavers are winning games, and that is the point of playing these contests. The bad news is that if they put out the type of efforts we saw against Howard and in the second half against San Diego, conference play is going to be a disaster. Up Next: 12/29 vs. Towson. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Following their thrilling Christmas night win over San Diego State, Arizona is the talk of the college basketball world in this downtime before hoops picks back up again. Coming on the heels of their similarly enjoyable win over Florida, the win over the Aztecs puts the Wildcats in the driver’s seat for the meaningless title of “Best in the West” and NBC Sports’ Daniel Martin lays out the four best contenders. Arizona leads the pack, but Gonzaga and UNLV have their names in the mix as well, while SDSU, despite the razor-thin loss, needs to be considered among the contenders too. Notably (and understandably) missing are any other Pac-12 teams. The sad thing is that this is an improvement over last season where no Pac-12 team deserved to be in such a conversation at this point in the season.
2. Elsewhere on the Arizona front, CBS Sports’ Jeff Goodman wrote a great piece about how Sean Miller has taken that program from a team with questionable talent and turned it into a program that is on the move again. While the Derrick Williams-led run to the Elite Eight two seasons back was impressive, it was also just a fortunate blip on the radar for the ‘Cats. But, with this year’s talented recruiting class, future stars in the queue, and the program back near the level of national importance it regularly enjoyed under Lute Olson, odds are that Arizona is again going to be a regular fixture near the top of the national rankings for years to come.
3. The Wildcats aren’t the only team in the Grand Canyon State that has its fans excited for the future. Arizona State, after a couple years lost in the basketball wilderness, is back on the map again behind freshman point guard Jahii Carson (who saluted himself as the best point guard in the Pac-12 on Christmas night) and Sun Devil fans are ready to be optimistic again about the direction of the program. As Ben Haber at House of Sparky points out, even if this team’s 10-2 record is built on the back of a somewhat weak schedule, the mere fact that the Sun Devils are an entertaining team to watch (and, yeah, let’s be honest, wins help too) is a significant upgrade over the past two seasons.
4. As the non-conference seasons winds down, the number of interesting games on the slate begins to dwindle. We have Missouri and UCLA tomorrow night, and then on Saturday a couple of interesting East-West match-ups as Harvard visits California and Washington heads out to visit Connecticut. The latter match-up between a couple of groups of Huskies is an inter-regional rivalry with plenty of history behind it. And, for the UW folks, memories of those match-ups aren’t pleasant — the history includes Rip Hamilton’s buzzer-beater in 1998 and a 2006 Sweet Sixteen overtime game that again sent Washington home in crushing fashion. The first one hurt Lorenzo Romar just because of his status as a fan and an alum of UW, but the latter goes down as Romar’s toughest loss.
5. Lastly, it is about that time where we begin to look full-bore at conference play, reassess where we were oh-so-wrong in the preseason, celebrate our few moments of clarity and come up with a whole new batch of guesses for the rest of the year. We’ll delve into that plenty early next week, but The Register-Guard already has its team-by-team Pac-12 preview ready to digest. Arizona’s clearly the favorite, but beyond that, I’d say the surprises are Oregon at #5 (too low), Washington at #6 (too high) and USC at #10 (the Trojans still play basketball?).

1. Saint Nick came through in a big way on Christmas night for Arizona, as sophomore guard Nick Johnson swatted away a potentially game-winning layup attempt by San Diego State’s Chase Tapley to preserve the Wildcats’ perfect season and earn the Diamond Head Classic title. While the first half was stodgy and slow, the two teams lived up to expectations in the second half and delivered a terrific performance. Once again, it was seniors who led UA, this time Solomon Hill and Kevin Parrom doing the job as Mark Lyons never really got into a groove, hampered by foul trouble, turnovers and erratic shooting. And then there was, of course, Johnson, who struggled shooting the ball but was terrific defensively, and helped out initiating the offense and made the athletic play in the waning moments to seal the game.
2. Former Arizona star Miles Simon, who won the Most Outstanding Player in the Wildcats\’ 1997 run to Lute Olson’s sole NCAA Championship, worked the Diamond Head Classic as the color man for ESPN. And, despite the fact that UA’s backcourt may not match up with the traditional ideal of true point and scoring off-guard, Simon is impressed with the duo of Lyons and Johnson. He sees the duo as complementary parts with Johnson capable of helping Lyons out with some areas (initiating offense and getting other players involved) that he is weaker in. I would add that their ability to have Hill also share some of the ball-handling load means that, even without the proverbial “traditional” point, Arizona’s guard play is not a significant concern.
3. UCLA’s Tony Parker has been a little-used piece for Ben Howland, averaging under nine minutes a game despite his team’s lack of depth along the frontcourt. Following another eight-minute appearance against Fresno State, he tweeted out “A lot of told me this wasn’t for me I wish I would’ve listened.\” Given Howland’s recent issues with players transferring out of his program, this tweet and other recent tweets from Parker referencing homesickness indicate that he may not be long for the Bruin program as well. And, of course, Bruins Nation took this as a chance to rip Howland again. The other side of the coin is that Parker missed time early due to injury and has been inconsistent in the minutes he has received, playing ineffectively on the boards, fouling at far too high of a rate and getting lost defensively, and this type of complaining public message probably does nothing to help him earn more playing time. The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle, as Howland likely should have found some more minutes against UCLA’s weaker competition, but the fact of the matter is, Parker hasn’t done a whole lot to earn those minutes yet.
4. Tying up one loose end, Oregon State’s Eric Moreland earned the official Pac-12 Player of the Week honor for his pair of double-doubles and 17-point and 11.5-rebound average last week. We opted for Jordan Adams as our pick (and oddly enough, neither Adams nor any other Bruin was even nominated by the school for the award), but Moreland was certainly a worthy recipient as well. Always known for his defensive ability, Moreland has shown a significantly improved offensive game this season. Where last year he was little more than a garbage man on offense, he’s added the ability to beat his man off the bounce, his jumper is significantly improved and he’s converting shots around the lane at a high rate, all while continuing to defend and rebound like a madman.
5. And lastly, back to UCLA. As some Bruin fans continue to root for Ben Howland’s ouster as head coach, Bruins Nation put together a post with some of the great moments in his time in Westwood. Worth a look for hoops fans, but sure makes you remember just how good UCLA was going just a few years back. Could you have imagined after Howland’s third straight trip to the Final Four that he would be on the chopping block inside of five years, minus any type of serious NCAA investigation into improprieties in his program? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

1. If you missed last night’s game between Arizona and San Diego State in what was billed as the battle of the two best teams on the West Coast you missed an excellent game with a crazy finish. After what could be can most gently describe as a slow start where both teams struggled to make even basic basketball plays, the level of play increased significantly. We are not ready to jump on the Arizona bandwagon with both feet, but after their 68-67 win we are looking for an open space to hop into pretty soon. The Wildcats are still a work in progress and we are not sure if we fully buy into a team that relies on Mark Lyons as its point guard, but they have a solid combination of youth, talent, and experience to make them an intriguing team in March. Most of the country will probably forget about the Wildcats until March as they don’t play another ranked team the rest of the season, but they would be wise to keep an eye on what is going on in Tucson.
2. We are pretty sure that we have never linked to a college football article in the Morning Five before, but the article by the NCAA (hello, propaganda) about how San Jose State turned around its APR by focusing on student academics at all levels caught our eye. While we certainly can appreciate the work that the school did to achieve this change we are sure that some will view this as nothing more than an attempt by the NCAA to get people to support its APR system that has been criticized by many as being ineffective in judging a school’s performance in educating its student-athletes. While we will leave you to ponder that, we found the last quote in the article amusing given the current economic/unemployment situation: “But if you have a degree, you are set for life.”
3. While Syracuse has had to deal with its share of bad publicity over the past week there are still some good stories happening on campus including a basketball player–Baye Moussa Keita–and a football player from Senegal and the Ivory Coast respectively who are making a substantial impact on their teams. While they have somewhat similar backgrounds (coming from Africa to the United States in their teens, there are some key differences as the article illustrates, but they still managed to form a bond at the school. We don’t know much about the football player they talk about, but we can say that Keita has certainly improved over the years and plays hard. We doubt that he ever play in the NBA, but he should have a professional career overseas.
4. As we near the start of conference play, we have seen some sensational freshmen performances even if none of them may quite match the impact that Anthony Davis had last year. In his weekly Freshmen of the Year column, Jeff Borzello takes a look at the top freshmen in the country. While the ranking should not come as much of a surprise, looking at it should serve as a reminder that even though this year’s freshmen class may not be as loaded as some in year’s past there are still several freshmen who could merit consideration for first team All-American consideration by the end of the season.
5. Depending on where you live you have heard varying amounts of Christmas caroling over the past few weeks, but we doubt that you heard many carols from a college basketball team. We know it’s a little late now (or maybe a little early if you are already looking forward to Christmas 2013), but Jeff Eisenberg collected some of the best (or worst) renditions this holiday season. Now none of these approach the brilliance of a #DMXMas, but they are worth a listen if you are sitting around doing nothing today even if only to satisfy your curiosity as to how such a production would turn out.