1. We’re still three weeks out from actual basketball games taking place, but more and more it is starting to feel like this is just not going to be UCLA’s year. Aside from the NCAA investigations into recruits Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson, the cheap accusations of cheating by certain unnamed media outlets, and the legitimate questions about how some of these pieces fit together, the Bruins are also starting to see some injuries accrue. The newest Bruin laid up is junior forward David Wear, who sprained his right ankle in a practice yesterday, joining junior guard Tyler Lamb (arthroscopic knee surgery) in the infirmary. Of course, the glass-half-full view of this situation could be that it is much better to have these types of things happen now than in February or March. As it is, a simple sprained ankle could just mean a bit of a rest for Wear until the seasons kicks off on November 9.
2. It didn’t take long for the newest Cougar, Oregon-transfer Brett Kingma, to pick up on how things are done in the Washington State basketball program; early Saturday morning, the sophomore guard was arrested by Pullman police for marijuana possession and “minor exhibiting the effects of having consumed alcohol in a public place” – an oddly specific and yet still confusing charge. Now, we understand there isn’t always a whole lot to do in Pullman, but the marijuana busts for WSU’s basketball program are getting ridiculous. In recent years, off the top of my head, Klay Thompson, Reggie Moore and DeAngelo Casto have all been busted for pot. There are two ways for Cougar head coach Ken Bone to deal with this: (1) mostly ignore, offer an obligatory slap on the wrist and pray that Initiative 502 passes, or (2) make an example of Kingma by kicking him off the team. I’m certainly not saying the second option is necessarily the best approach, after all, really what is this arrest about – a college kid was walking home drunk after a Friday night partying and happened to have some dope on him. Stop the presses, right? But the fact of the matter is, this constantly happening in Bone’s program is becoming a black eye.
3. Arizona unveiled the 2012-13 version of its basketball team to its fans on Sunday afternoon with their annual Red-Blue game. Prior to an intrasquad scrimmage, the school honored its 1988 Final Four team and members of the current team got to meet and learn from previous Wildcat greats like Sean Elliott, Steve Kerr and Jud Buechler. The game itself was less of a no-defense All-Star game than a hard-fought scrimmage, but Nick Johnson (who our own Parker Baruh nominated as the Pac-12’s breakout player) got hot, hitting four threes and finishing with 20 points to lead all scorers while also chipping in four assists. New Wildcat point guard Mark Lyons also added four assists, while senior wing Kevin Parrom added four three-pointers of his own. Arizona Desert Swarm has some video highlights of the game and the surrounding festivities. But perhaps the biggest part of the day was UA hosting at least eight recruits, including Aaron Gordon, whom Sean Miller (and other coaches around the country) seriously covet. Given that the 2011 version of the Red-Blue game helped the ‘Cats land Kaleb Tarczewski, the game is becoming a way of tying the great history of the program to its bright future.
4. Arizona wasn’t the only school holding events for their fans this weekend. Stanford held its Friday Frenzy event on, when else, Friday evening, featuring its annual Cardinal-White scrimmage, a dunk contest, and various other events. Oddly enough, the winner of the dunk contest wasn’t even a member of the basketball team, as senior All-American high jumper Jules Sharpe took home the title, edging out junior forward Josh Huestis. As for the scrimmage, junior forward Dwight Powell (our Kevin Danna’s pick for the Pac-12 breakout player) led all scorers with 19 points, getting it done not only from the perimeter but also on the block. It was sophomore guard Chasson Randle, who had 16 points on seven-for-nine shooting, however, who had the last laugh, leading his Cardinal team to an eight-point win over Powell’s White squad.
5. Lastly, Arizona State’s Maroon-Gold scrimmage was Saturday afternoon, giving Sun Devil fans their first chance to see the long-awaited debut of freshman point guard Jahii Carson. Early reports are that, behind Carson, ASU looks like it may live up to Herb Sendek’s promises of a drastically increased tempo. Carson led all scorers with 18 points in the game, while newly eligible transfer Evan Gordon also impressed. The game featured three different 10-minute periods, with Carson splitting time on each team over the course of the scrimmage, but one good takeaway for how important he’ll be to ASU is the fact that whichever team he was on wound up winning each of the three different periods.

1. For those who want to take a look at the NIT Champion Stanford basketball team, the Cardinal will be holding their own version of Midnight Madness this Friday. Titled “Friday Frenzy”, the night will feature a Cardinal-White scrimmage, an open women’s practice, and a dunk contest. The scrimmage will certainly be worth the price of free admission as the 2012-13 Cardinal looks to make a run at the NCAA Tournament. They have a potential all-conference backcourt in the duo of Chasson Randle and Aaron Bright, and expect the post play to be much improved as Johnny Dawkins welcomes in Rosco Allen and Grant Verhoeven. The event should get Cardinal fans revved up for a big weekend of sports, as the football team will be playing in the Big Game a mere 18 hours later. Stanford will open up the exhibition season on November 4 against UNC Pembroke.
2. After finishing 2011-12 with an awful 6-26 record, USC is a trendy pick for “team to surprise” this year in the Pac-12. Excitement took a bit of a hit last month when it was learned that junior guard Maurice Jones would have to sit out the year due to academics, but the return of Jio Fontan from injury will help out the backcourt. The revamped roster will feature five transfers, all of whom can contribute immediately. J.T. Terrell (Peninsula College) and Ari Stewart (Wake Forest), both of whom played together in Winston-Salem before ending up in Los Angeles, are expected to make the biggest impact. Throw in a pair of incoming freshmen in Strahinja Gavrilovic and Brendyn Taylor, junior center Dewayne Dedmon, and senior forward Aaron Fuller, and Kevin O’Neill has a pretty nice 10-man rotation to play around with. And while finding valuable minutes for everyone might be tough early on, it will be a welcome challenge for a team that struggled with depth issues all of last season.
3. Be sure to check all of your Twitter feeds this morning (or whatever you use to follow the decisions of 18-year-old kids), as the Contra Costa Times reported yesterday that Marcus Lee would be announcing his college choice at some point throughout the day. One of the top forwards in the nation, the Deer Valley High School (CA) prospect has narrowed his choices down to California and Kentucky. Lee was supposed to take a visit to Berkeley this weekend and take in the Big Game experience, but he has apparently come to a decision after taking in “Big Blue Madness” last Friday in Lexington.
4. The guys over at Bruins Nation have put together an extensive look at both the best and worst case scenarios for the 2012-13 UCLA Bruins. On the best case side of things, “DCBruins” has Ben Howland’s bunch going 10-2 in non-conference action with losses to Georgetown and Missouri. The Bruins then go on to win the Pac-12 with a 15-3 record before making the Final Four. The worst case scenario doesn’t go over any specific games or records, but instead focuses on what the Bruin rotation will look like if Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson aren’t cleared to play.
5. Speaking of Muhammad and Anderson’s eligibility, the Los Angeles Times covered that exact topic this morning. Bill Plaschke‘s column discusses how the team’s media day was monitored by the school’s vice-chancellor for legal affairs, and that the silence being put forth by the program is putting itself under a dark cloud. But as Plaschke states at the end, most everyone “would rather have UCLA chase those big stars and endure the NCAA microscope than settle for the mediocre acquisitions who never are noticed.” And even if recruiting classes like the one Howland brought in this season may label him as a “cheater,” he had no choice. It’s safe to say Howland’s job is on incredibly thin ice, and without guys like Jordan Adams, Tony Parker, Muhammad, and Anderson, Howland very well might not have survived the duration of the 2012-13 campaign. So even if the program is under a cloud now, it’ll be worth it in the long run that Howland brought these big names in.

Throughout the preseason, the Pac-12 microsite will be rolling out these featured breakdowns of each of the 12 league schools. Today’s release are the Stanford Cardinal

Strengths: The tandem of junior Aaron Bright and sophomore Chasson Randle in the backcourt is shaping up to be one of the most dynamic duos in the Pac-12. The diminutive Bright has some characteristics reminiscent of other small guys who made names for themselves in the Seattle area, most notably the moxie to take and make big shots for his team. While he might not have the speed of a Nate Robinson or Isaiah Thomas, Bright can still get into the lane and distribute with some flashy passes. However, he doesn’t break down defenses as well as Randle, who may very well be the most significant guard to come through The Farm since Brevin Knight when it’s all said and done. Randle finished second among Pac-12 freshmen in scoring, behind only the NBA-bound Tony Wroten. The Rock Island, IL native displayed an ability to go into “put the team on my back” mode during his freshman campaign, highlighted by the 24 points he scored to lead Stanford in its 103-101 quadruple-overtime victory at Oregon State.

Chasson Randle did more than hold up his jersey during Stanford’s quadruple-overtime victory over Oregon State (credit: Rick Bowmer)

Weaknesses: Stanford is going to be physically light down low with the departures of Josh Owens and Andrew Zimmermann. While the Cardinal have to potential to be a good rebounding team again with guys like Dwight Powell and Josh Huestis still in town to crash the glass, Stanford will have to make up for a lot of toughness lost with Owens and Zimmermann gone. Although Owens was the better athlete, Zimmermann might end up being a bigger loss for head coach Johnny Dawkins. He was a guy who did all of the little things in the paint, including taking charges and talking on defense (he didn’t have a bad jump shot, either). As such, this group also needs to find a vocal leader. That might be tough, considering none of the major rotation players are seniors and haven’t been called on to be captains before.

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We’ve been all around the Stanford program in the past week, but we’ve got time for one more post. At the end of every week we like to take a step back and look at the overall state of the program – not just how the team performed last year or is expected to perform next year, but what the long-term prognosis for the program is. At Stanford, while the short-term future appears to be bright (no pun intended), things could take a turn for the worse quickly. As we pointed out earlier this week, before current head man Johnny Dawkins took over in 2008-09, the Cardinal had made 13 out of the last 14 NCAA Tournaments. They haven’t gone dancing since, but the pieces are there to make it back soon enough. The problem in the past four seasons have been mid-season losing streaks. Not only do they usually kill all excitement around the team, but it ruins any chance at gaining an at-large entry into the Big Dance. Let’s take a look at some of these mid-season collapses:

This Photo May Have Been Taken Prior To The 2008-09 Season, But It’s A Scene That Fans Have Seen Many Times In The Past Four Years (credit: Roundball Nuts)

• 2011-12 : Started out the season 15-3, including double-figure victories against Colorado State and Oklahoma State. Then immediately dropped five of their next six, all by double figures.
• 2010-11 : It wasn’t going to be an NCAA Tournament year anyway, but dropping five out of seven games from early January to early February put all postseason dreams to rest.
• 2009-10 : The Cardinal lost five of six games from late January to mid-February, putting a footnote on Dawkins’ worst season on the Farm.
• 2008-09 : By far the worst collapse of Dawkins’ tenure came in his first season. Stanford started out the season with an 11-1 record, picking up home victories against Colorado, Northwestern, Texas Tech, and Arizona, while going on the road and beating Colorado State and Santa Clara. Then, out of nowhere, disaster struck. An NCAA Tournament season became a “scrape-your-way-into-the-CBI” campaign after dropping eight of 10 contests in more than a month-long span.

Terrible. Just terrible. And it happens like clockwork every year.

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We’re most of the way through our week-long look at the Cardinal and have at least enough information to make some educated guesses about what the 2012-13 season has in store. With four players lost to graduation and a trio of highly rated recruits coming in, we can expect to see a different, and likely better, team than won the NIT Championship last year. But who exactly will lead this team and what will the final results be? Here are our guesses.

Stanford’s Leading Scorer – Chasson Randle. No doubt about this one. Randle’s average of 13.8 PPG last season might drop a bit due to him trying to become more of a passing threat, but there’s no question that he is the best scorer on the roster. The next step for Randle is to become an All-Pac-12 guard, and he’s got the talent and scoring ability to do so.

Randle’s Ability To Take the Ball To The Rack And Score Will Make Him Stanford’s Leading Scorer For The Second Straight Season (credit: Paul Sakuma)

Stanford’s MVP – Aaron Bright. Bright is the team’s truest point guard and has shown good growth in his first two seasons on the Farm. If the upward trend continues, he should be averaging around 13 PPG and 5 APG next season. Overall, he’s not a better talent than Randle, but his nose for the ball and on-floor leadership make him one of the most important players on the team.

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As we go to wind down our coverage of the Stanford basketball program, we head back to Adam Butler of Pachoops for his perspective on the Cardinal basketball program. Adam and I go over every pressing topic surrounding the team’s immediate future, including how they plan on replacing three key seniors and expectations for sophomore-to-be extraordinaire, Chasson Randle. Here’s our conversation:

RTC: How do the Cardinal replace players like Josh Owens, Jarrett Mann, and Andrew Zimmerman?

AB: First of all, you don’t replace an Andrew Zimmerman. Beards like that don’t come around often, but when they do, they’re irreplaceable. On the court, however, Mann and Zimmerman were very solid role players and integral to the success of a Johnny Dawkins team in which hustle and defense would seem to be heavily rewarded. How else does a guy averaging 3 PPG and 3 RPG (Mann) play 20 MPG? So replacing those guys in some respects is easy in that they brought effort to the table. Guys like Josh Huestis, Gabriel Harris, and John Gage should be able to fill those roles. But it’s Owens who leaves the most gaping hole in the Cardinal lineup. Hustle, effort, all of the Tebow stuff, cannot replace talent, and Josh Owens had that. I loved his game and believe he’ll be tough to replace. But this is a roster seemingly full of eligible Owens replacements. My favorite of those candidates is Dwight Powell, who has length and athleticism for days but basketball IQ for minutes. Some more floor time for the rangy Canadian should go a long way in helping the Cardinal replace Owens. I’ll talk about Anthony Brown later.

Before Playing Basketball At Stanford, Zimmerman Starred As The Geico Caveman

RTC: Through some luck and upsets along the way, Stanford never faced a team seeded higher than fifth in the NIT. Do you think it would have won the whole thing if they had to face teams like Mississippi, Arizona, and Seton Hall instead of Illinois State, Nevada, and Massachusetts?

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Pachoops’ Adam Butler joins us once again to chime in with his thoughts on our Burning Question. This is now his fourth straight appearance after giving us answers on the programs of Arizona, USC, and Washington. As for Stanford’s question, here goes:

Stanford made the NCAA Tournament in 13 out of 14 seasons before current head coach Johnny Dawkins took over in 2008-09. In his four seasons on the Farm, Dawkins has yet to lead the Cardinal back to the Big Dance, which has dropped the program down a step in terms of national prominence. How many more times can he go without dancing before his seat begins to heat up?

Dawkins Needs To Bring Stanford Back To National Prominence In A Hurry (credit: Danny Moloshok)

Connor Pelton: It’s tough to stand out and become a prominent team nationally in college basketball. In college football, an average fan will watch roughly 70 out of 125 FBS teams play at least one game throughout the season. That number is about the same for college basketball, but  it’s out of 345 Division I teams. If you think of it as a huge pie, there are about 30 large slices, 40 medium slices, and the rest are crumbs. Stanford used to be one of those coveted large slices, one that would without a doubt hear their name called on Selection Sunday year in and year out. But since Dawkins has taken over, the Cardinal have taken a step down to just one of the medium slices. Fans around the nation know who they are, but they don’t care enough to stay up until Midnight (on the east coast) to watch them play. The same goes for recruits, and if you find yourself in one of those six or seven-year droughts without going dancing, your four- and five-stars are going to become twos and threes.

With that said, Dawkins was able to pump some life into a program that was a little sleepy by winning the NIT Championship last season. That will buy him some time, if only because he can point to it and say, “Hey, we’re on the road back to success.” But if he doesn’t get back to the promised land within the next two seasons, it might be time to move on in Palo Alto.

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The Cardinal return five players from last season’s main rotation. Below, we’ll take a look at each of these returnees in order of their scoring averages in the last season played.

• Chasson Randle, Sophomore, Guard (13.8 PPG, 2.1 APG, 3.3 RPG, 1.1 SPG) – Looking for the reason why Stanford won 26 games in 2011-12? Look no further than Randle, the freshman sensation who took over this team from the day he arrived on campus. Even when he would have a rough day putting the ball in the hoop (those days came few and far between), his body language and leadership displayed by the freshman would have neutral observers thinking he was a uppperclassman. Randle led the team with 13.8 PPG but could easily explode for many more on any given night. In Stanford’s first round game of the Pac-12 Tournament against Arizona State, Randle dazzled the Staples Center crowd, going for 30 points and picking up three steals on the defensive end. Randle is a “score first” type of point guard, but expect that role to change slightly in 2012-13. Johnny Dawkins needs to keep the ball in Randle’s hands, but if there was one ongoing problem last year, it was that the offense could become stale and bogged down at times because they didn’t have a true passing guard at the one. Randle will still have all the freedom he can handle in the Cardinal offense, because quite frankly they can’t afford for him not to, but he needs to distribute better. Once he proves to opponents that he can do that, there will be even more of an opportunity to score off the dribble or on a jump shot.
  

  Randle Can Be Even More Dangerous In His Sophomore Season If He Can Distribute The Ball Better In 2012-13 (credit: Jae Hong)

• Aaron Bright, Junior, Guard (11.7 PPG, 1.6 RPG, 3.6 APG) – Bright was the Cardinal’s best passer last season, but he also fit in perfectly within Dawkins’ system of “everyone on the floor has to be able to score” basketball. He saw the floor for an average of 28.4 MPG yet wasn’t always a full-time starter. That will change next season with the departure of Jarrett Mann. The balance of distributing and scoring in the offense that Bright has shown needs to be copied by the younger guards, mainly Randle. If Bright and Randle are both triple threats in 2012-13, Stanford could easily find itself dancing come March.
• Anthony Brown, Junior, Guard/Forward (8.1 PPG, 1.0 APG) – Brown has played identical minutes in his two seasons on the Farm. While a freshman in 2010-11, Brown seemed to focus a bit more on his play as a guard, but that changed last year. Brown played much more as a spread-out small forward who was willing to do anything to get the rebound. With Josh Owens, Andrew Zimmerman, and Jack Trotter all graduating, Brown will continue to play in that role for the most part. He’s got tremendous upside and looks prime for a breakout junior season.

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In last year’s NIT Championship campaign there were seven different Cardinal players who saw significant playing time under head coach Johnny Dawkins. Of those seven players, two will be lost in 2012-13 due to graduation. A third senior saw minutes when the situation or game plan called for it, and a fourth played mainly garbage minutes or was used in backup roles when an injury occurred. We fill you in on their details in the order of importance to the program below.

• Josh Owens – After playing just garbage minutes as a freshman in 2007-08, Owens saw a major increase in playing time as a sophomore the next year. Poised to build on that solid foundation, Owens was forced to sit out the 2009-10 campaign due to a private medical condition. While some speculated he would never play basketball again, Owens returned for what would be the best season of his college career, averaging 11.6 PPG and 6.5 RPG in just over 27 MPG. His scoring and rebounding stats were almost identical in his final season with the Cardinal, but 2011-12 saw a more aggressive Owens, mainly on the defensive end of the floor. Andy Brown, Stefan Nastic, and Jack Ryan will all be competing this October to try to fill Owens’ shoes, with Nastic being the current slight frontrunner. As for Owens, the forward/center did not receive an invite to either the NBA Combine or Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, and while he went undrafted, he impressed enough in team workouts to earn a spot on the Charlotte Bobcats Summer League roster. Owens didn’t see any action in the team’s first game, but scored six points and grabbed two rebounds in its second summer competition.

Out Of Stanford’s Four Graduating Seniors, Owens Will Be Missed The Most (credit: John Todd Images)

• Jarrett Mann – Mann still earned solid minutes as a senior, but due to the emergence of freshman star Chasson Randle, he saw a steep decrease in playing time compared with his sophomore and junior years. Due to Randle playing as a slash-and-score one, it appeared at times that Mann didn’t seem comfortable in his new role, which would led to indecisiveness both in passing the ball and scoring.

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Things were looking good for Stanford after the 2010-11 season came to a close. It wasn’t a great year by any means, but the Cardinal finished the regular season with a winning percentage of .500, picking up wins against #18 Washington and at Washington State along the way, all without a senior on the roster. Things took a turn for the worse, though, when leading scorer Jeremy Green announced he would be forgoing his senior season in Palo Alto to enter the NBA Draft. But instead of going somewhere like Sacramento or Dallas, Green ended up playing three games for the D-League’s Los Angeles D-Fenders before moving to glamorous Erie to finish the final 21 games of his inaugural pro season. Meanwhile, back on the Farm, the Cardinal was making some noise without him. Stanford won 15 of its first 18 games, led by sensational freshman Chasson Randle.

Randle Introduced Himself To Pac-12 Opponents Early And Often In 2011-12, Including In Stanford’s Four-Overtime Win At Oregon State (credit: Rick Bowmer)

Taking Green’s place in the starting lineup, Randle made an immediate impact for Stanford. At times early in non-conference action he struggled to score the ball consistently, which is expected for a freshman when facing opponents like Oklahoma State, Syracuse, NC State, and Butler. But he made up for his lapses on the defensive end, constantly bugging opponents with his ability to poke the ball away and get the occasional block.

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