1. By now you should know that we are not surprised by Craig Robinson getting fired even if we are a little surprised by the timing. Robinson’s time in Corvallis was highlighted by the fact that he is the brother-in-law of President Obama. Unfortunately for Robinson and Oregon State fans his team actually had to play games. With the exodus of talent from Corvallis following a 16-16 season things were not looking good so it makes sense that they would cut ties. Our only question is the timing this late in the recruiting season and less than a week after Nick Faust committed to play there. Late last night, Jeff Goodman reported the Oregon State players were making a push with the school’s AD to hire ex-Oregon State & current UCLA assistant David Grace and even mentioned the possibility that Hallice Cooke might return to Corvallis if Grace is named head coach.
2. Oregon State was not the only school in the state to make headline es yesterday. In Eugene, news broke that Dominic Artis was transferring while Brandon Austin and Damyean Dotson were no longer participating in team activities. While the team has not released any information on this, The Oregonian uncovered a police report from two months ago implicating the three took part in an alleged rape (full report here–warning: graphic descriptions). The police did not go forward with the investigation because of a lack of evidence, but it might be enough to finish their time there. Artis appears to be the first to exit following a rough sophomore season highlighted by a nine-game suspension to start the season. Despite a bad season he was expected to be the team’s starting point guard. Although Austin has not made any comments about leaving we would assume that he does not have much leeway after transferring from Providence following a suspension for a report of sexual assault. Dotson’s background is not quite as controversial, but it will be interesting to see how Dana Altman handles this situation since he is already losing so much of his team from last year.
3. Speaking of programs spiraling out of control, Mark Turgeon came out yesterday and “took responsibility” for the transfers. Honestly we have no idea what that even means other than Turgeon admitting that a lot of players are leaving Maryland. Unless Turgeon is stepping down or identifying an area that he will change that might make a difference (winning would be a start) we can’t really take too much from this. As we have stated before we would be surprised if Turgeon has more than a year or two left in College Park unless he turns this thing around and the only reason we would give him two years is because they are moving to the Big Ten and the administration is already busy with that.
4. We will give Donnie Tyndall a bit of a pass as he continues to lose players from his Tennessee roster since he just inherited the team. The latest players to look elsewhere are Darius Thompson and A.J. Davis. At this point, both players have asked for their release and although Tyndall says the players might still come back to Knoxville we think that is wishful thinking. Neither player would be considered a significant contributor although Thompson started 10 games last year (averaging 2.6 points, 2.4 assists and 2.0 rebounds per game last season), but he was just a freshman and could have been a steadying influence as Tyndall tried to build his own team. With the way things are going for Tyndall we would not be surprised to see open tryouts in Knoxville pretty soon.
5. Everybody talked about New York City being the center of conference tournament action with conference realignment, but there appears to be quite a bit of action down in Washington, DC. The ACC has already committed to playing at the Verizon Center in 2016 and now the Big Ten will be playing its conference tournament there in 2017. The deal is reportedly an attempt to bring their brand to the East Coast with Maryland and Rutgers joining the conference. With the importance of these areas for recruiting we would not be surprised to see more conferences attempt to make the move to the area to get exposure to the high school players there.

Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll go through each Pac-12 team one by one and recount the season that has just completed and begin to turn the page to what we might see next season. Today, Oregon.

What Went Right

Bringing in offense-first transfers like Joseph Young, Jason Calliste and Mike Moser, it became clear that this was going to have to be a team that outdid opponents with relentless offense before the Ducks even played a game. And, for the most part, Dana Altman’s squad did just that. With little in the way of an offensive post player and few on the roster interested in hard-nosed defense, this became a team that wanted to get up and down the floor, find early looks for any number of shooters, get to the line on a regular basis, and score, score, score. When it worked, which it did often, the result was an entertaining, if at times frustrating, display of basketball.

Joseph Young Led The Way For The Offensive-Minded Ducks (AP Photo)

What Went Wrong

As good as this team was offensively, the Ducks were pretty bad defensively. In 21 of 34 games, the Ducks allowed their opponent to score better than a point per possession and Oregon went just 11-10 in those games. Only five times all year did it hold a top-100 KenPom team under a point per possession. Part of this was a result of the make-up of the roster – undersized players and offense-first (if not –only) mindsets – but part of it also had to do with circumstance. Sophomores Dominic Artis and Ben Carter were suspended for the first nine games of the season for receiving improper benefits, and those two guys, particularly Artis, may have been among the team’s three best defensive players. In the end, while the Ducks poured in a superb 1.18 points per possession against a good Wisconsin defense in the NCAA Tournament, their own lack of defense was their downfall, as they allowed the Badgers to score 1.31 points per possession to win the game. Read the rest of this entry »

1. It’s been another rough season on the Palouse for Washington State and head coach Ken Bone. Last year, Bone’s job was saved after a disappointing season in part because of a large buyout. But this time around, expectations are that athletic director Bill Moos is going to have to move on from Bone and bring in a new head coach. The question is, who? Vince Grippi of The Spokesman-Review suggests a plan is already in place, but it remains to be seen if it will be a retread coach (Ben Howland makes a lot of sense in a lot of ways), an assistant from some big-time job earning his first head spot, or a mid-major guy taking a big step up.
2. Oregon is still very much alive in terms of their chances to earn their way back onto the right side of the NCAA Tournament bubble. But, according to Steve Mims of the Eugene Register-Guard, various people from around the conference peg the Ducks as a strong candidate to repeat as the Pac-12 Tournament champions and earn the conference’s automatic bid. Both Ernie Kent –an analyst with the Pac-12 Networks – and Mike Montgomery note that Oregon’s ability to get hot and score in bunches could be a major advantage when it comes to having to win four games in four days.
3. While nothing is official yet, it appears that sophomore guard Damyean Dotson will play for Oregon on Thursday night when the Ducks travel to UCLA. Dotson, who missed Sunday’s game against Washington State after being cited for using a fake ID at a Eugene Bar, had started the previous 60 games for the Ducks. Head coach Dana Altman reports that no decision has been made yet, but that the situation is “moving in the direction” of Dotson being available to play against the Bruins.
4. After a weekend where junior point guard T.J. McConnell had 16 assists and no turnovers while leading his team to a pair of road wins, there were hopes around Tucson that he would wind up with the Pac-12 Player of the Week award. That was not to be, but head coach Sean Miller made it clear on Monday how much he values McConnell’s contributions to the team, praising not only his effectiveness at running the offense, but also his defensive prowess.
5. As for the Wildcats’ in-state rival Arizona State, despite getting swept last week by the schools in the Rockies, the Sun Devils are still in good shape to make the NCAA Tournament, according to Doug Haller of AZCentral.com. Their RPI is still rock solid, they’ve got three wins against teams in the top 50 of the RPI and, given the struggles other teams in contention for NCAA Tournament consideration have gone through, they’re pretty comfortably in the field. But, Haller points out five areas where the Sun Devils need to improve between now and Tournament time: urgency, shooting, leadership, consistency and… Jahii Carson. Much as we talked about most recently on Monday, while Carson has been good this season, he hasn’t approached the elite level of play he turned in regularly during his sparkling freshman season.

1. ESPN visited Pac-12 country this weekend, bringing its pregame show GameDay to Boulder on Saturday in advance of Colorado’s battle with Arizona on Saturday night. Students waited in line overnight, through the type of weather that only college students should try to endure, in order to be among the first inside the Coors Events Center. And while all was good and fun for those fans and the Colorado program certainly enjoyed the national exposure, the game itself didn’t turn out so well. Despite sophomore forward Xavier Johnson predicting a 20-point blowout win for the Buffs, it was the Wildcats that ran roughshod. Colorado missed its first 15 field goals, and then somehow it got worse from there as the Wildcats made 22 of their 26 shots in the second half. As for Johnson? Well, he probably learned that all that talking puts undue pressure on you, pressure of which he didn’t respond well — he was 1-of-10 from the field.
2. Another Arizona school was involved in a blowout this weekend, as Arizona State went to Utah and wound up on the wrong side of a 23-point margin. Dave Dulberg of ArizonaSports.com breaks down the loss by the numbers, noting that, among other things, Utah blocked 18.4 percent of Arizona State’s field goal attempts on Sunday. To convert that number to KenPom speak, that’s actually a blocked-shot percentage of 31.5 percent, since that stat only takes into account two-point field goals attempted. Speaking of which, I’d add one additional number to Dulberg’s effort: 27. That’s the number of three-point field goals the Sun Devils put up in this game, many of which were wild second-half attempts to erase a 20-point deficit with a single shot.
3. Oregon played its game on Sunday evening against Washington State without the services of sophomore guard Damyean Dotson, who was busted early Saturday morning for attempting to use a fake ID at Taylor’s Bar and Grill in Eugene. Yup, get this. The security staff at this bar saw through Dotson’s fake ID, and then rather than just turn the guy away, they actually held him and called the cops. Dotson was detained there until the police arrived, at which time he was cited and released. Dotson, as a result, watched the Oregon win from the bench.
4. Just in case you didn’t realize how deep into the college basketball season we really are, here’s some perspective: Senior Days in the Pac-12 are already officially underway, after Colorado honored its pair of seniors – little used Ben Mills and Beau Gamble – prior to Saturday night’s game against Arizona. Neither guy has had a huge impact on the court, but each has made an impact on his team. We’ll have more on some of the high-profile seniors from here to the end of the regular season, but even though these two aren’t guys we’ve written extensively about, we wanted to recognize them before they head out into the real world.
5. One senior we’ll certainly highlight in the coming weeks is Stanford’s Josh Huestis, the pride of Great Falls, Montana. The Cardinal forward is now the school’s all-time leader in blocked shots, and Jesse Geleynse of the Great Falls Tribune has a great feature on their city’s native son. It’s 10 pages long and you’ve gotta click through every one, but it is very much worth the effort.

As Brian Otskey noted earlier this week, January losing streaks have caused a number of once-top teams to tumble down, and in some cases, out of the polls. The rigors of conference play have deflowered those gaudy late December records, prompting a number of far-sooner-than-expected reality checks. Past history will tell you that some of these January slumps will be reduced to mere blips on the radar by March (e.g., the defending champion Louisville Cardinals lost three in a row in the first month of 2013), while others are indeed the beginning of a fade into college hoops oblivion. Wondering about future prospects for fading powers? Here’s a look at where the panic meter should be (10=High Panic, 1=Nothing to worry about) for five of college basketball’s most downward-trending squads.

Georgetown: Panic Meter=10

John Thompson III, Markel Starks And Georgetown Suddenly Have Their Backs Against The Wall

With Jabril Trawick not expected back anytime soon (broken jaw), and Josh Smith out indefinitely due to academics (don’t forget that Greg Whittington’s “indefinite” academic suspension a year ago eventually caused him to miss the Hoyas’ final 19 contests), Georgetown is clearly undermanned right now. D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera has been brilliant, and Markel Starks intermittently so, but finding offensive contributions from players who aren’t 6’2” guards has proven impossible since Smith‘s suspension began. With the 10-day forecast looking especially gloomy — top-15 teams Creighton, Villanova and Michigan State are up next for JT3’s club – Georgetown’s season could be very close to finished by the time Super Bowl Sunday arrives. Even if the Hoyas can get Smith and Trawick back by early February, a challenging closing stretch awaits: Six of Georgetown’s final seven opponents are currently ranked in KenPom’s top 75. It’s probably not the way Georgetown wanted to find March peace, but Hoyas’ fans may finally avoid their annual NCAA Tournament heartbreak.

Wisconsin: Panic Meter= 1

If you play basketball in the Big Ten, you are going to lose games. The league is simply too strong top-to-bottom to cruise the entire winter without resistance. Yes, Michigan and Michigan State – losses are coming for you as well (beginning for one of the two on Saturday). In any case, Wisconsin should be just fine. Aside from some struggles from three-point range (likely temporary), the uber-efficient Badgers’ offense has continued to roll, even through their current three-game losing streak. The defense could stand to improve marginally (55th nationally in defensive efficiency), but there is just too much offensive firepower in Madison for Bucky’s train to go too far off the tracks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last month we introduced our new project, which is centered around determining the top YouTube moment in Pac-12 basketball history. We continue the nomination portion with Oregon.

[ed note: These are just the top moments we could find on YouTube, which has a vast number and array of videos, but we won’t be able to cover the entire 99 years of the conference.]

In what was a very entertaining night of basketball around the Pac-12, here are a number of semi-interesting thoughts for Thursday’s five games.

Oregon 70, Utah 68 (OT)

Despite A Step Up In Competition, Delon Wright Continues To Produce Across the Board (George Frey, AP)

• Plenty of words have already been spent dissecting Utah’s final possessions in regulation and then in overtime, but those two possessions took up about two percent of the entire game. There is more to be gleaned from the other 98-ish percent. So let’s spend some time digging into that game. The biggest question coming into it was: “So, are the Utes really any good?” Well, Utah answered that question with a resounding: “I dunno. Maybe!?! Probably?!? Aw, who knows?” Delon Wright wasn’t as athletically dominant against more worthy competition, but still wound up with 14 points, six boards, four blocks, a couple steals and dimes. And, if anything, he was underused. Oregon got the memo about his unreliable jumper and often backed off him, went under screens, and dared him to knock down jumpers, which he did on a couple of occasions. But that’s still far preferable to letting him get to the rim, which he can do against all but the most capable defenders.
• Elsewhere, Dallin Bachynski really answered the call in the middle (despite that unfortunate play at the end, which can hardly be blamed on him) and was probably the best big on the court throughout the game, something that wasn’t expected.
• While the Utes played very well as a whole, Jordan Loveridge was not at his best Thursday night, settling for jumpers too often and, worse yet, settling for long jumpers; he took six of his 23 shots from three-point land and made just one of them. While Loveridge is capable inside and out, he relied far too much on his outside game and shunned the inside portion. Perhaps some of this was part of a game plan to keep Mike Moser from being an interior defensive presence, but there were too many times where Loveridge floated to the three-point  line while Wright was clearly trying to set up a post feed.

Read the rest of this entry »

First things first: the job Larry Krystkowiak has done at Utah has been absolutely remarkable. This team had by far the worst assemblage (or lack thereof) of talent in major conference basketball just a couple years back. He’s scrambled to remake this roster from the smoking ruins that his predecessor Jim Boylen left behind, and he has done a terrific job, so much so that this year (and well ahead of schedule) he’s got his Utes not just very competitive but fun to watch. With a roster that will likely return its most valuable players and with more talent due in the Huntsman Center next year (and likely beyond that), the future that Krystkowiak is constructing in Salt Lake City is bright indeed. What’s more, he’s a terrific coach who gets the most out of the talent that he’s cobbled together and he’s a great game-planner. Fill in whatever other compliments you would like to heap on Krystkowiak here – he’s a fine dresser; his breath probably smells like peaches and his hair like roses; he’s a crime-stopping, upstanding citizen – yes, all this and more is probably true.

I dunno coach, I just don’t know (Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)

But, man, did he screw up the end of that game last night against Oregon. Twice.

Credit where credit is due: He kept his squad fighting when it looked like the Ducks were going to pull away, and he was right there with his team, scrapping and scraping to get his team in a position to take home a W in the conference opener. But, let’s start in regulation. Read the rest of this entry »

The Oregon Ducks have gotten off to their undefeated start in 2013-14 primarily on the strength of their staggeringly efficient offense. The Ducks ranked third in the nation in effective field goal percentage and were seventh in the nation in free throw rate before Saturday night’s game against Illinois at the former Rose Garden in Portland.

Oregon Stayed Unbeaten on Saturday Night in Portland

Aspects of Oregon’s defense are also strong, including a top-50 steal rate and a top-75 block rate. But one thing stands out in the Ducks’ statistical profile: a lack of proficiency on the defensive glass. Despite only playing one top-25 offensive rebounding team this season (San Francisco), Oregon ranks a pedestrian 235th in defensive rebounding rate. Against the Illini, that vulnerability showed up early – six offensive rebounds surrendered in the first half, which ended tied at 32 – and late, when they got a rebound putback from Joseph Bertrand to close the game within three points with less than a minute to go. But Oregon’s scoring was able to again cover for its defensive rebounding deficiency in a 71-64 win.

Oregon (9-0) certainly misses graduated senior transfer Arsalan Kazemi, who led the nation in defensive rebounding rate in 2012-13, but another senior transfer is attempting to fill that void. Mike Moser – a Portland native who previously played at both UCLA and UNLV – has led the Ducks on the defensive glass all season, including a team-high eight Saturday night, which also came with 14 points, tied for the team lead with fellow senior transfer Joseph Young. The performance of the 6’8” power forward Saturday is made more impressive when considering that Illinois’ starting frontcourt of Nnanna Egwu, Jon Ekey and Joseph Bertrand each gather eight percent or more of available offensive rebounds, and the Illini ranked 36th nationally in offensive rebound rate before the game.

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Later today, maybe even by the time you get around to reading this, there will be real live full-fledged regular season basketball to watch. It’s a beautiful thing. As our last little bit of preview before we get into five months of madness (don’t let the marketing geniuses fool you into thinking that only happens in March), we’ll roll out three teams strong (and just five players per team – please take note conferences of all stripes) of All-Pac-12 personnel.

Here goes nothing:

First Team

Arizona State Sophomore Jahii Carson Is A Unanimous Choice As Pac-12 Preseason Player of the Year Among RTC Voters. (USA Today)

• Jahii Carson, Sophomore, Arizona State – Carson is a unanimous selection among our voters as the best player in the conference, topping all three ballots submitted. After averaging 18 points and five assists as a freshman, Carson is hoping an improved jumper, a faster tempo and a deeper roster will help the Sun Devils’ star wrap up his time in Tempe with an NCAA Tournament appearance.
• Spencer Dinwiddie, Junior, Colorado – Dinwiddie’s three-point percentage dipped precipitously as a sophomore, but his aggressiveness and overall effectiveness increased, as he turned into a significantly better finisher and play-maker in his role as lead guard. If his jumper from range returns to anywhere near his freshman year levels, watch out.
• Jordan Adams, Sophomore, UCLA – Even though Adams was clearly overshadowed by two, if not all three of his UCLA classmates prior to last year, the wing out of Atlanta was arguably the best of the group. He was second on the team in scoring, with 15.3 points per game, but brought along a game varied enough to have a positive impact even when he wasn’t scoring.

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