The first week of Pac-12 conference play wrapped up on Sunday and here are some takeaways from the first two games of action for each team.

Coming into conference play, it seemed like third place would come down to Colorado and Oregon. After their performance in Corvallis against Oregon State, the Ducks are unquestionably the third best team in the conference and have a legitimate shot to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2008. Dana Altman‘s team went on the road and outplayed a good Oregon State team for 40 minutes and did all of this with its freshman backcourt leading the way, most notably with the performance of Damyean Dotson, who scored a career high 21 points and also added six rebounds. A pressing question for the Ducks heading into the conference season was whether E.J. Singler would break out out of his season-long slump. He certainly looked liked the player that helped the Ducks tremendously last year against the Beavers as he had 15 points, nine rebounds, and three steals in 37 minutes. Singler is still averaging only 10.2 points per game after averaging 13.7 last year, but 15 points was Singler’s second highest scoring total on the season and could prove that the senior is ready to turn his season around. As of now, it looks like Arizona and UCLA are still the top two teams in the conference, but the Oregon Ducks are looming just behind them.

Damyean Dotson led the way for the Oregon on Sunday against Oregon State and the Ducks seem to be the third best team in the Pac-12 right now.

Andrew Murawa mentioned this yesterday, but it bears repeating: Colorado needs to get more production out of its bench this year. But after viewing the first week of conference play, it just might not happen. There are fixable problems on this Colorado team like their horrid free throw shooting and too many turnovers, but the bench is another story. Besides Xavier Johnson, who has had major problems with foul trouble thus far, Tad Boyle doesn’t have anyone else available whom he feels he can go to on his bench. Shane Harris-Tunks, the only true big man among the reserves, has been used sparingly, registering only 8.7 minutes per game and only 1.6 rebounds per game despite his 6’11” stature. Freshmen guards Eli Stalzer and Xavier Talton have looked scared whenever they have played a team with physical guards, and, besides the occasional three from Stalzer, neither has shown an ability to score, averaging a combined 3.3 points per game on the year.

Having no bench would be a problem for any team but it could turn into a bigger problem for the Buffaloes if  they continue to get inefficient shooting nights from Askia Booker. Booker has taken 58 more shots than anyone on the team this year and is also shooting at the worst clip out of all the starters at 41 percent from the field. Boyle had a similar situation last year with leading scorer Carlon Brown, a player who struggled mightily near the end of conference play. However, the head coach was able to replace him with, ironically, sixth man Askia Booker. This year, Boyle simply does not have that option. If Colorado wants to stay near the top of the conference throughout the rest of the season, Boyle might not have any other choice than to play his normal starting lineup and Xavier Johnson for almost the entire game. It doesn’t seem like the ideal situation, but at this point, a fatigued yet talented starting five might be better than a bench that simply cannot compete with most teams in the Pac-12.

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Another week, another group of honors for Pac-12 people and things…

Team of the Week – Oregon

At first glance, the thought was that Arizona State’s 2-0 start, including a win over Colorado, would be enough to earn the Sun Devils this honor. But winning at home in conference play is just something you’re supposed to do. No, we needed to find a road warrior this week, and that left us looking at California, Washington and Oregon. We threw Cal out due to its loss at UCLA and, because we still aren’t really sure if beating USC is that much of an accomplishment, leaving us with a pair of teams that went on the road in-state and came away with 1-0 records in the conference. After briefly considering a tie, Oregon got the nod for its more impressive win against what may be a slightly better opponent and the panache with which they got it done. After trailing by six at the half, freshman guard Damyean Dotson took on the offensive load, while the entire Ducks team stepped it up defensively to take home the first basketball edition of the Civil War.

Damyean Dotson And The Ducks Earn Team Of The Week Honors With A Road Win Over In-State Rival Oregon State

Player of the Week – Jason Washburn, Utah

Despite coming away from the week with an 0-2 record, Washburn was our choice for the best player of the week in the conference. His numbers alone (18 PPG, 14.5 PPG, 3.0 BPG, 55 FG%) give some indication into just how good he was, but the fact of the matter is that in both games he played this weekend against some talented opponents, Washburn was the best player on the floor. Against Jordan Bachynski on Wednesday night, Washburn pulled down a career-high 18 boards, swatted four shots, and nearly willed his team to a win, infuriating the ASU crowd along the way. Then Saturday night, against Kaleb Tarczewski and the highly-regard Arizona bigs, Washburn backed up that effort by going for 17 points, 11 boards and a couple more blocks, again helping to keep his scrappy Utes in the game against more talented competition. While a measly little POTW award isn’t going to make up for his team’s 0-2 start in the conference, Washburn took on some formidable bigs and made tight games out of match-ups that weren’t expected to be too highly contested.

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1. All year long we have seen freshman Damyean Dotson make dazzling plays for Oregon, and last night at Oregon State, he had his best game yet. Dotson scored 15 of his 21 points in the second half, a stretch that saw the Ducks transform as a team in breaking a close game open and scoring 51 points. Taking advantage of Oregon State’s slow rotations and help defense, Dotson would drive and either get a layup or kick out for an open three all second half long. The Ducks’ star in the making has a chance to shine even brighter on Thursday when Oregon welcomes Arizona into Matthew Knight Arena.
2. Although this interview was conducted prior to the start of the 2012-13 season, California Golden Blogs had a great talk with head coach Mike Montgomery. Montgomery says the most challenging part of coaching at Cal is adjusting to the climate of recruiting in college hoops and how kids have changed what they are looking for in a school over the years. They were not able to avoid any NCAA Tournament talk, as he says he’s looking forward to playing in the first round the most, but he also adds towards the end of the discussion that “every game has value, and you should cherish that as a student-athlete.” If the Golden Bears are to go dancing, they will likely need a third or fourth place finish in the conference race to do so. And with the way everyone beat each other up in the initial weekend, that is certainly possible.
3. Remember back in early December, when UCLA had just posted embarrassing losses to Cal Poly and San Diego State? The once top-15 Bruins were 4-3, and rumors were swirling that coach Ben Howland could be fired before season’s end. Since the debacle in Anaheim, however, the Bruins have won seven straight games and have seen terrific play from freshmen Shabazz Muhammad and Jordan Adams. The Bruins are fun to watch again, not only on a regional scale but nationally. Now, we will get to see how Howland can do with his team on the road. UCLA’s first true road game of the season comes Thursday against a suddenly feisty Utah club.
4. Just like it did against Florida and Oral Roberts, and to some extent Long Beach State, Arizona struggled to close out on three-point shooters in the initial weekend of Pac-12 play. And once again, the Wildcats didn’t have to pay for their poor perimeter defense with a loss. Barely. Freshmen Grant Jerrett and Brandon Ashley struggled mightily as Colorado shot at a 47.6% clip from behind the arc, and Utah followed that with a fine 43.8% mark. Eventually, the sloppy defense will cost ‘Zona its undefeated record; the question is whether it will it happen this week on the Oregon road trip?
5. Being one of only four remaining undefeated teams, the Wildcats will have a target on their backs and face hostile crowds for the remainder of the season, as you might expect. The Arizona Daily Star has a cool look back at the team’s 1932 season, when the 16-0 Cats made their way through a snowstorm to meet New Mexico in The Pit. The run would end there, in front of one of the most intimidating environments in college basketball. This year’s version of the Wildcats has nine road games left before Championship Week arrives, including trips to The Inferno, the Dawg Pack, and the Coors Event Center. They will need some more luck, and toughness, to survive each of those battles.

Kenny Ocker (@kennyocker on Twitter) is an RTC correspondent. He filed this report after Sunday night’s Civil War game between Oregon State and Oregon in Corvallis.

After December drags on with a dearth of meaningful games, the first weekend of conference play is a welcome sight for basketball fans. Everybody wants to see how their teams match up against the schools that matter, and are looking for meaningful results to hang their hopes on for the rest of the season. But as tempting as it is to judge how good your favorite squad really is, it’s still too soon to see what each team’s future looks like just yet. That urge to decide what’s in store is magnified when that first game is the 338th edition of the most-played game in college basketball: the Civil War between Oregon and Oregon State.

Oregon forward E.J. Singler seems to be back on track after a slow start to 2012-13. The senior had 15 points and nine rebounds, the second-highest total in each stat this season. (Photo by Rockne Andrew Roll.)

One game into the Pac-12 schedule, it looks like Oregon is an NCAA Tournament-level squad after taking a 79-66 road win against rival Oregon State in Corvallis. The Ducks have a realistic shot at making the school’s first Sweet Sixteen since an Elite Eight run in 2006-07 led by Aaron Brooks and a host of other shooters. But Dana Altman’s Ducks are a different sort of team than Kent’s free-wheeling, fast-break-loving squad of yore. The 2012-13 version thrives on its defense, led by shot-altering Wake Forest transfer Tony Woods and quick-handed Rice transfer Arsalan Kazemi. Even if the Ducks play at an above-average tempo, they aren’t hanging up the consistent 80-point scores from those days. Instead, they’ve got a stifling defense currently in the top 10 in defensive points per possession, and have enough offense to get by even with senior leader E.J. Singler struggling to regain the form that helped guide the Ducks to the NIT last season. (I’m thinking he shouldn’t have cut his Samson-like locks after last season. His scoring and rebounding are both down this year, as is his once-stellar free-throw percentage, which finally crested 80 percent again Sunday night.)

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Welcome to Oregon Basketball and The Season of New, a weekly Pac-12 microsite column from Rockne Roll (@raroll). His column will focus on the various issues facing college basketball through the prism of the Oregon Ducks, a program ostensibly on the rise with top-notch facilities and coaching but still subject to many of the same problems suffered by many of the other high-major programs around the country.

December is a strange time of year in the world of college sports. There are no classes for student-athletes and, at least for the Oregon Ducks, only a few games in the space of a month leading up to the start of conference play. With the hustle and bustle of regular season tournaments ended, now is the time that teams have to solidify their rotations, offensive strategies and other nuances of the game leading up to conference season. Oregon will have some help in this regard. Between their Global Sports Classic finale (their only loss yet) and the beginning of the Pac-12 calendar, the Ducks play all but one of their games at home, and only two against teams that had a winning record last year. But even though the non-conference schedule for them and most high-major schools is now as tender as a fine Christmas roast, that doesn’t mean this time of year is without obstacles. Even in the course of winning games, there are gaping flaws to be unveiled and problems to encounter that make this time of year nerve-wracking.

E.J. Singler leaps in for a put-back off of Damyean Dotson’s missed three-pointer. (Photo by Rockne Andrew Roll)

Just ask the Michigan State Spartans. They needed a 22-9 run early in the second half to put away Loyola (IL) 73-61 on December 8. “ Tough game,” explained Spartans coach Tom Izzo. “We didn’t play great, but we didn’t play bad. We had some poor stretches and a couple of really foolish turnovers.” This was only the most recent of their troubles, they came very close to dumping a home contest to a very underwhelming Idaho State squad, eventually squeaking out with a 74-70 win on November 20. Kentucky has had some worse problems. After losing to Notre Dame, the Wildcats went into national ranking freefall after a subsequent 64-55 loss to Baylor. “I don’t know what you can say,” head coach John Calipari said in the press conference afterward. “The greatest thing, we had a chance to win the game. But we are still trying to teach them how to finish games, and they don’t know.” Calipari took the opportunity to discuss some of his team’s other near-misses earlier in the season. “We also could have lost to Maryland, earlier this season. We also could have lost to Morehead. Morehead had us on the ropes. What I need our players to understand is, that we are not a very good team right now and we are not individually very good.” Their woes continued in their game against Portland, which they won by a 74-46 final score that belied the fact that the game was tied nine minutes in and the Pilots stayed within 10 for much of the second half until Kentucky finally put them away.

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

1. Arizona, 7-0 (-): Another week, another spotless slate for Arizona. The easier game of the week actually proved to be a road victory at Clemson on Saturday night. The Tigers hung tough for most of the night, but the Wildcats rode a 25-7 run that stretched from around the 11-minute mark in the second half to just under the two-minute point to put down any hopes of an upset. The Wildcats weren’t able to do the same four nights earlier in Tucson against a tough Southern Miss team, as the Golden Eagles hung around and hung around until UA sealed it with some free throws in the closing minutes. Turnovers again plagued Mark Lyons and the rest of the Wildcats in general, as USM forced an astounding 27 miscues in the near-shocker at McKale. Regardless, Arizona is the only team still perfect in the Pac-12, making them the unanimous pick up at the top. Despite their problem with turnovers, I’ve bought into Sean Miller’s club after a full month of play. For the ones that still haven’t, games against Florida, and possibly Miami (FL) and San Diego State in the coming weeks, will give us a good gauge of just how dangerous this team is. Up Next: 12/15 vs. Florida.
2. Oregon, 8-1 (-): Oregon’s only game of the week was an absolute massacre, a 87-35 thrashing of Idaho State in Eugene. Freshman guard Damyean Dotson continued his strong play for the Ducks, leading all scorers with 12 points in just 16 minutes of action. Up Next: 12/15 vs. Nebraska.
   

   Damyean Dotson Is Averaging 11.3 PPG In His Inaugural Season With The Ducks (credit: NW Sports Beat)

3. California, 6-2 (^1): Despite dropping its only game of the week, California rises a spot in this week’s rankings. That’s mostly thanks to a strong, albeit frustrating, showing on Sunday afternoon against UNLV, but it also helped the Bears that the teams around them either faced poor competition or got blown out last week. The Golden Bears need to break this current losing streak on Saturday against yet another tough opponent. Up Next: 12/15 vs. Creighton.
4. Oregon State, 5-2 (^2): I’m still not completely sold on this Oregon State team, but it appears that the fact its two losses have come by a combined nine points, both against teams that will likely be dancing come March, has had an effect on the rest of the panel. The Beavers took the week off for finals before hosting an awful Grambling State team on Saturday afternoon. The result was an 85-54 win, a margin that would have been much bigger if not for a 24-4 Tiger run late in the second half. Junior guard Roberto Nelson led the way for OSU, going 5-of-6 from three-point land en route to a 26-point performance. Up Next: 12/12 @ Portland State. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Gonzaga’s last second win over Washington State on Wednesday night goes down as one of the best games of the young season so far, and while Ken Bone and the Cougars aren’t big on the concept of the moral victory against a bitter rival, there are some good things they can take away from that game. First and foremost, their stars stepped up in a big way. Brock Motum and DaVonte Lacy combined for five threes in a four-and-a-half minute stretch to bring the Cougs back from an 11-point deficit to tie the game and set up the final scramble. And if WSU has any plans to turn around a slow start to the year, it will need to be on the backs of those two. The other big thing is that, while this team will be without a traditional point guard the whole year, Bone seems to have cobbled together a workable solution. Mike Ladd seems to do most of the play-making in the halfcourt set, but guys like Royce Woolridge, Dexter Kernich-Drew and Lacy have all pitched in and assembled a good point-guard-by-committee group that is doing an excellent job limiting turnovers and getting WSU into their sets. It was bumpy at the start of the year, but the Gonzaga loss proved to me, at least, that the situation is workable.
2. Meanwhile, Utah, another team expected to finish near the bottom of the conference, was able to come up with its best performance of the year in blowing out Boise State. On a night when the Utes honored former head coach Rick Majerus prior to the game, Utah center Jason Washburn said “we felt like Coach Majerus was with us all night; he was right on the bench with us, smiling down.”  Washburn went 6-of-6 from the field to pace an incredibly hot shooting night for the Utes, in which they shot a ridiculous 78.8% eFG. Block U calls the win the best by the program in the last four years, and, although I could nitpick, it is being taken as a sign by the Ute faithful that Larry Krystkowiak has got this ship headed in the right direction.
3. We’ve talked a lot about Mark Lyons over the last few days, and Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News has his own take on his transition to the point, which includes the unconvincing argument of “hey, they’re beating a lot of bad teams by a lot of points!” But, DeCourcy does make the point that Lyons is never really the sole ballhandler on the floor for Arizona and that Sean Miller is quite pleased with Lyons’ production. I would maybe go even one step further and say that, while Lyons is the closest thing to a point guard on the team, very rarely is he tasked with being the initiator of the halfcourt offense, a role that just as often falls to either Solomon Hill or Nick Johnson. Lyons may spend a bit more time with the ball in his hands this year than he did last year playing with Tu Holloway at Xavier, but really, Miller hasn’t exactly tried to rebuild Lyons from the ground up.
4. Even with UCLA’s struggles out of the gate, Shabazz Muhammad still thinks his team is going to make an impact in the Pac-12 this season, even if it has been relegated to sleeper status by their early losses. He told the Petros and Money show on Fox Radio on Wednesday how he feels about the rest of the season. But, the big takeaway from Muhammad’s comments (other than the overwhelming use of the word “really”) may be that Ben Howland has “become a players’ coach.” Muhammad ties that comment to the change that encourages the team to get out in transition more, and it is true that UCLA’s averaging about three more possessions per game this year than last, but certainly Howland is still trying to figure out the sweet spots on both ends of the floor for this team.
5. Another team that has earned the title “sleeper team” in the Pac-12 is Oregon, off to a 7-1 start behind the production of an all-freshman backcourt of Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson. While senior leader E.J. Singler is quick to praise his younger players, Dana Altman, ever the coach, sees the need for better consistency and better shot selection out of the backcourt duo. Still, he sees them as key cogs in the long-term plans for the Ducks. And, an already deep and talented team expects to get even deeper and more talented, when freshman Arik Armstead is expected to join the team in January. Armstead, a defensive tackle for the Ducks football team, won’t join the team until after Oregon’s appearance in the Fiesta Bowl (January 3 against Kansas State) and it’ll take some time for him to get into basketball shape and learn the ins and outs of the teams’ sets, but he’s been spending a bit of time working with team managers. Just how much of an impact he’ll have is unknown, especially with a now deep Ducks big man rotation, but you can never have too much talent, can you?

Now that we’ve got games coming fast and furious, every team around the conference has a story to tell, and often we don’t have time to get to them all. So, in the interest of checking in semi-regularly with every team, we’re going to take a quick spin around the conference and check the temperature of each team, beginning with the spots that have gone the most terribly wrong and working backwards to the success stories.

UCLA – More or less a co-favorite heading into the season, the Bruins are likely the biggest story going in the Pac-12 right now – and not for anything good. Sunday night’s blown 18-point second-half lead en route to a loss to Cal Poly is one (terrible, horrible, atrocious) thing, but the fact that this team is doing this kind of thing with a the level of talent they’ve got is unforgivable. If Ben Howland is going to stick with more or less this personnel in his rotation (you know, the Wear twins, Larry Drew and a pair of wings), he’s gotta just break down and play a ton of zone. Really, this will do two good things: (1) minimize the effect of this team’s low level of overall athleticism, and (2) give them plenty of work on their zone offense in practice, something they desperately need. The other thing that absolutely has to happen for UCLA to even get within shouting distance of its potential ceiling is to find a way to get Kyle Anderson comfortable in this offense, and really that means putting the ball in his hands and letting him create, at least in the halfcourt. Drew has been excellent running the show and in no way should be scapegoated for UCLA’s struggles, but this team needs Anderson to be a factor and, while he’s shown his versatility, his defense has been bad, his shooting has been worse, and he hasn’t done enough elsewhere to make up for those serious drawbacks. There is still plenty of time for this team to turn things around, but UCLA fans have rightly run out of patience with Howland and are demanding immediate success. If this team doesn’t get drastically better, the big story come March will be whether UCLA’s legacy will be enough to pull either Shaka Smart or Brad Stevens away from their current jobs.

Ben Howland Needs To Find a Way To Get Kyle Anderson Comfortable, Or He’ll Be Looking For A New Job

Washington – The thinking at the start of the year was that maybe, minus a pair of talented but conflicted wings, the Huskies could be a textbook example of addition by subtraction. Minus Terrence Ross and especially Tony Wroten Jr., the remaining members of the team would know and accept their roles better. Well, somebody forgot to tell guys like Desmond Simmons, Jernard Jarreau and Martin Breunig that a big part of their roles would be to clean the defensive glass. While the Huskies have more or less won the battle of the boards against lesser teams, versus Ohio State and Colorado State they were dominated – in fact, against the Rams, the Huskies actually grabbed fewer defensive rebounds than CSU grabbed offensive boards. Sure, it sucks that Shawn Kemp Jr. went down with an injury just before the start of the year, but either Jarreau or Breuning needs to be ready to step in and do some of the dirty work, lest they be not asked back next season.

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

1. Colorado, 5-0 (-): After a 4-0 opening week that got Colorado into the national Top 25 rankings, the Buffaloes only played one game in week two. It wasn’t always easy on Sunday night against Air Force, but Tad Boyle’s squad went on a 13-3 run halfway through the second half to put away the Falcons and cruise to a 15-point victory. Freshman forward Josh Scott led the way with 20 points for Colorado. This was a nearly unanimous pick, with only Drew not picking the Buffs at number one. They now have a warm-up game against Texas Southern before traveling to play a good Wyoming squad on Saturday. Up Next: 11/27 vs. Texas Southern.
2. Arizona, 3-0 (-): Just like Colorado, it was a one-game week for Arizona, who has only played three games since the nationwide opening night back on November 9. But the Wildcats continued their winning ways, throttling a Long Beach State team that hung with North Carolina for 30 minutes. An 18-3 run late in the first half erased any doubt about the outcome, and UA cruised to a dominating 94-72 win. The Cats easily managed their way through their first three mini-tests, dispatching Charleston Southern and UTEP before the 49ers. The 3-0 start has been good enough to boost them to ninth in the nation in the AP/Coaches polls. Zona now gets a small reprieve against in-state rival Northern Arizona before going into a rough four-game stretch through early December. Up Next: 11/28 vs. Northern Arizona.
   

   Freshman Forward Brandon Ashley Leads The Ninth Ranked Wildcats With 13.7 PPG (credit: John Miller)

3. California, 6-0 (^1): The team that has won the most games so far in 2012-13 comes in at number three after two weeks of play. All three of California’s week two wins came in the DirecTV Classic, where it got two less-than-impressive wins before dominating a solid Pacific team in the classic final. Justin Cobbs was undoubtedly the player of the week in the conference, averaging 19.3 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game in Anaheim. The Golden Bears’ perfect record will be put to the test in their next three games, when they go to Wisconsin and host UNLV and Creighton in Berkeley. Up Next: 12/2 @ Wisconsin.
4. Oregon, 5-1 (^1): Oregon got maybe the conference’s biggest non-conference road win in what, two or three years, on Friday? The Ducks went into one of the most hostile environments in the country and pulled out a 83-79 win against UNLV, building their record to 5-0 on the season. They’d eventually lose a hard-fought battle with Cincinnati the next night, but the fact that they were a couple bounces away from knocking off back-to-back ranked opponents in the same weekend was enough to boost them up a notch in this week’s rankings. Freshman guard Damyean Dotson was the surprise of the weekend, averaging 14 PPG. If he can continue that kind of production in the coming weeks, Oregon’s schedule sets up so it can escape non-conference play with only one loss. Up Next: 11/29 vs. UTSA.
5. Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to Oregon Basketball and The Season of New, a weekly Pac-12 microsite column from Rockne Roll (@raroll). His column will focus on the various issues facing college basketball through the prism of the Oregon Ducks, a program ostensibly on the rise with top-notch facilities and coaching but still subject to many of the same problems suffered by many of the other high-major programs around the country.

College basketball is frequently a topsy-turvy world. Indeed, one of the great draws of the NCAA Tournament is its unpredictability. Just ask fans of Lehigh or Norfolk State, who saw their teams upset two-seeds in the first round last year, or supporters of Syracuse, a team that needed a late rally to avoid being the first #1 to be picked off by a #16 in the 64-team era. But at the outset of each year, before the “season” has even technically begun, there’s more of an order to things. For these exhibition games, teams from Divisions II and III and the NAIA hit the road to play in gyms that can hold their entire student body five times over. These schools receive a healthy payday in exchange for the chance to start their seasons getting trounced by a high-major Division I squad. There are big benefits to these games for their big-time hosts. Besides selling tickets (and concessions and merchandise and et cetera) a team can try out new lineups, new plays, and new people, in a fairly risk free environment. The beauty of the exhibition game is that it doesn’t count win or lose; if everything goes wrong, the only thing lost is pride.

Dominic Artis led the way with 15 points for the Ducks.

Or is it? For the past few years, at least one Division I team has dropped an exhibition match. Some take it in stride like the 2010-11 Xavier Musketeers, who bounced back from an exhibition loss to nearly run the table in the A-10 and take a #6 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Others, like Tennessee the same year, go on to finish .500 in conference play and sneak into the Big Dance only to suffer a 30-point loss in the first round. It happens more than you might think. Over the past 15 years of regular season play (not counting exhibitions), Division I teams have dropped 232 games to non-Division I opponents.

Coming into last Friday night, the Miami Hurricanes were predicted to have one of their best seasons ever. There was little to no concern about their sole exhibition match against Division II Saint Leo University. That is, except from ‘Canes head coach Jim Larranaga. “You play like you practice, and if we play like this tomorrow night, you guys are going to be very disappointed in the results,” he said to his team after one practice. The Lions were kind enough to demonstrate the point for him. After jumping out to an early lead, Saint Leo held on through a Miami comeback, and eventually earned a 69-67 win.

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