cal – Rush The Court

Pac-12 Final Regular Season Power Rankings

Pac-12 Team — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 14:01:52 +0000

The Pac-12 tournament in Las Vegas tips off at Noon PT today and fans are already salivating about the possible semifinals on Friday night. That said, the handful of teams in the second tier — such as Utah — are also serious threats to make some noise in Sin City. Let’s jump into the final Power Rankings of the season.

1. UCLA — Don’t look now, but UCLA is allowing 0.96 points per possession over its last eight games. Considering how much attention has been paid to the Bruins’ defensive issues this season, consider this an encouraging trend. If they can continue to defend at a reasonable level, [...]

Pac-12 Power Rankings: The Big Three and Everyone Else Edition

RJ Abeytia — Wed, 01 Mar 2017 16:01:16 +0000

As we launch ourselves into March and the final weekend of Pac-12 play of the regular season, here are the final Power Rankings.

Thomas Welsh Wants Everyone to Recognize Where UCLA Stands (USA Today Images)

UCLA– Nobody in the upper three did as much as the Bruins last weekend. Note that Arizona — which doesn’t really lose at the McKale Center, remember — was the first team in the past four games to post an offensive efficiency above the national average against UCLA’s improving defense. Oregon– The Ducks stood tough in the Bay Area last weekend thanks in large part to the [...]

Pac-12 Power Rankings: Who Will Get the Fourth Bye?

RJ Abeytia — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 20:11:49 +0000

With three weeks of league play left, both the the regular season title and the cherished final Pac-12 Tournament bye are still very much in play…

UCLA Basketball is Cool in LA Again (USA Today Images)

Arizona– The Wildcats are experiencing their three talented freshmen (Lauri Markannen, Kobi Simmons and Rawle Alkins) running smack into the proverbial freshman wall. Despite that ongoing issue, they were still able to sweep the Bay Area schools without playing their best basketball. One of the biggest signs for optimism comes in the form of Chance Comanche, who has fortified Arizona’s post rotation by shooting [...]

Pac-12 Weekly Power Rankings: Vol. 3

Pac-12 Team — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 22:45:15 +0000

The Pac-12 last season boasted the toughest road game in college basketball. During conference play, the league’s home teams won at a higher rate (71%) than any other conference in America. This season, Pac-12 home teams are winning at just a 59 percent rate. They say that conference titles are won on the road. How has your team fared in hostile territory?

Plenty to smile about for Dillon Brooks and Oregon lately. (Cole Elsasser/Emerald)

Oregon (1) – The Ducks’ conference dominance continues. Since their dramatic, two-point victory over UCLA in the Pac-12 opener, Oregon has simply decimated their opponents. Oregon’s [...]

Weekly Pac-Five: Players Who Need to Step Up

Mike Lemaire — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 21:31:13 +0000

As part of a new weekly feature here on the Pac-12 microsite, we will be creating many lists of five: five best players; five best coaches; five best and worst teams. The topics are never-ending and we intend to cover a lot of ground over the next few months. As we close out the first month of the season, we tackled five Pac-12 players who need to elevate their play, effective immediately.

Dylan Ennis, Senior, Oregon. Maybe his 18-point, six-rebound performance against Boise State was the start of an upward trend, but Ennis looked like someone who hadn’t played in a full [...]

College Hoops Luminaries Take Center Stage at Hall of Fame Inductions

Brian Goodman — Sat, 19 Nov 2016 16:01:15 +0000

To some degree, the National Collegiate Basketball Hall Of Fame will always live in the shadow of the Naismith Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, which celebrates the game at every level around the world. If you were a great pro, chances are you were also great in college, so why not just cover it all in one fell swoop? That thinking ignores the reality that there will always be highly accomplished college players who, for one reason or another, couldn’t replicate their success at the next level, but that doesn’t mean those NCAA careers shouldn’t get their due somewhere. This Hall [...]

Pac-12 Player of the Year Debate: Dillon Brooks vs. Ivan Rabb

Mike Lemaire & Adam Butler — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 18:51:27 +0000

It isn’t often that you see a reigning conference Player of the Year return to school and not be considered the favorite to win it again. But such is life when you play in the same conference as a talent like California’s Ivan Rabb. Oregon’s Dillon Brooks is still the likely favorite to win the award again, but Rabb is almost universally considered the better NBA prospect. To make matters even more complicated, Brooks is returning from a foot injury. While Oregon doesn’t seem overly concerned that its star junior will miss a significant amount of time, it remains unclear when he will be [...]

Highlighted Quotes From Each Team at Pac-12 Media Day

Adam Butler — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 17:01:08 +0000

Pac-12 Media Day, the annual effusing of excitement, promise and not caring for the media poll, was held on Friday at the conference’s network headquarters in San Francisco. There were no on-stage fireworks (there rarely are) but Allonzo Trier was replaced by Kadeem Allen as Arizona’s player representative the night before things got started. Sean Miller would not comment. There was Larry Scott’s now annual promotion of all things Pac-12 + China as well as no update on a DirecTV deal. Following each player/coach stage appearance, and wrapping the day up, was the conference’s top official, Bobby Dibler. Did you [...]

Morning Five: 04.27.16 Edition

nvr1983 — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 14:15:23 +0000

On Monday, North Carolina received a revised Notice of Allegations from the NCAA regarding alleged violations in its Afro-American Studies department. The 13-page document lists five Level 1 violations and overall does not differ that much than the original Notice of Allegations. Two key differences are that the amended Notice of Allegations no longer lists either the football or men’s basketball programs as it seems to focus instead on the women’s basketball program and it also no longer mentions impermissible benefits related to those classes leading some analysts to speculate that neither of the school’s revenue-generating programs will be touched. The [...]

From Bad to Really Bad: Assessing the Pac-12’s NCAA Tournament

Mike Lemaire — Tue, 22 Mar 2016 21:45:08 +0000

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

It is all pretty much true!

Oregon is the lone remaining representative of Bill Walton’s Conference of Champions and the onus is on the Ducks to carry the rest of the conference from here on out. This is because the league didn’t just have another tough tournament; it has had a brutally bad tournament. Only Utah and Oregon made it out of the First Round and the [...]

Cal’s Tyrone Wallace Sidelined Again With Broken Hand

Kenny Ocker (@KennyOcker) — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 13:31:13 +0000

California has an unexpected hole in its starting lineup today after senior point guard Tyrone Wallace broke his hand for the second time this season days before the Golden Bears’ NCAA Tournament game. The injury came in a non-contact drill when Wallace, the team’s lone senior, got his hand caught in a teammate’s jersey, head coach Cuonzo Martin said during a Thursday news conference. With the importance of veteran guard play in the NCAA Tournament, the injury couldn’t have come at a worse time for the #4 seed in the South Region. But at least they’ve already played five games without Wallace this [...]

Pac-12 Tournament Preview

Andrew Murawa — Wed, 09 Mar 2016 15:31:44 +0000

We’ve spent the last several months marching to Vegas, so let’s tip things off a bit later today with our Pac-12 Tournament preview.

Bracket

Favorite: Oregon

This may not be the very best version of the Pac-12 Conference in its illustrious history, but it is a certainty that this has been a strong and deep conference. For Oregon to win 14 games this year against an unbalanced in-conference schedule tougher than that of either Utah or Arizona is impressive. While the Ducks’ lack of depth (310th in the nation in bench minutes) is concerning in a three-game/three-night scenario, they’ve done enough to prove that they’re the best team in this [...]

Jabari Bird is Leading Cal’s Resurgence

Mike Lemaire — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 19:52:08 +0000

After thumping UCLA last week, Cal forward Jabari Bird told reporters that the primary reason for the Bears’ recent success was that they were “coming together as a team.” It is a nice sentiment but it isn’t why the Bears are winning. What Bird is too humble to admit is that Cal is winning because he was one of the Pac-12’s best players in February. His 12-point, five-rebound effort against USC over the weekend came in the wake of 20 points — including 5-of-8 threes — against UCLA, and and that wasn’t even his best performance of the last two [...]

Preseason Rankings May Reveal Final Four Destiny

William Ezekowitz — Fri, 12 Feb 2016 18:07:16 +0000

With March right around the corner, teams that rank highly in the Top 25 are daring to dream of a magical run to the Final Four in Houston. Because the NCAA Tournament is so matchup-based, it makes sense that most observers can’t realistically pick their favorites until Selection Sunday. But what if there were data that allowed us to eliminate a few upstarts before we even saw the brackets? Well, there are ways to do that. One oddity of college basketball is how important and even predictive the preseason rankings are. Nate Silver uses them as one of the tools [...]

Marching to Vegas: In Defense of the Pac

Adam Butler (@pachoopsab) — Thu, 14 Jan 2016 22:25:26 +0000

The Pac-12 is exactly what we want it to be, at least in a season like this. In a conference whose most tenured coach has a 0.456 winning percentage over his last four seasons and the second most tenured is Johnny Dawkins, we’ve got what we want. The Pac isn’t producing basketball we’ll soon tell our grandchildren about or write new defensive schematics to contain something transcendent. Only Bill Walton could contextualize the Pac-12 as historically brilliant right now. He’s wrong. He knows he’s wrong but he’ll say it anyway because he’s Bill Walton and he’s forgotten more basketball than [...]