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 day’s games.

Well, well, well — how about those Oregon Ducks? Dana Altman and company flew under the radar for a good long while, but they can now rest assured that they will be the ones wearing the target from here on out. Blame an East-Coast bias, recent years of mediocrity, or the resurgence of fellow Pac-12 powers Arizona and UCLA if you want, but for one reason or another, this team has been overlooked for the past three months. A win over previously unbeaten Arizona on January 10turned some heads, but yesterday’s road win at red-hot UCLA should have everyone’s, and I mean everyone’s, attention. This may be news to much of the college basketball world, but the Oregon Ducks are all alone at the top of the Pac-12, and (gasp!) should now be considered favorites to win the league.

Dana Altman Has The Ducks Pointed In The Right Direction

We know what you have done lately Oregon (knock off both conference favorites in the span of 10 days), but why have we not heard about you before? College basketball fans around the country are asking the question, and the Ducks’ body of work over the first two months of the season has no answer for you. The early schedule was relatively weak, but Oregon went 11-2 in the non-conference, which included a dazzling scalp of UNLV in Vegas. Their only losses were to Cincinnati on a neutral court (no shame there) and in triple-OT at UTEP (not a good loss but far from crippling). The rest of the slate featured too many teams with astronomically high RPIs (computer numbers would be much better if the wins had come over moderately bad teams and not the true cellar of Division I), but Oregon did win each of those 10 games by double-digits.

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Andrew Murawa is an RTC correspondent and Pac-12 microsite writer. He filed this report after Saturday afternoon’s UCLA-Oregon game in Westwood.

Three Key Takeaways.

1. The Battle for First Place. In the first Pac-12 match-up between ranked teams in almost four years, both teams brought undefeated conference records into Pauley Pavilion. After an up-and-down first half featuring crisp offense and a good flow, things bogged down significantly in the second half, with shooting percentages plummeting, whistles making a big comeback, and the action regularly interrupted. Still, with three and a half minutes left, we had a one-point game and everybody in the place was on the edge of their seats. From there Oregon hit the offensive glass, scored regularly in the middle and and knocked down free throws while UCLA ran poor offense and committed unforced turnovers, leading to a 14-6 Ducks run to end the game. With wins over both UCLA and Arizona in the bag, Oregon is now the team to beat in the Pac-12.
   

   Former UCLA Commit Dominic Artis Was A Big Reason For Oregon’s Win Over The Bruins (Mason Trinca, Daily Emerald)

2. Pressure. With two freshman guards leading the charge, you’re not supposed to be able to go on the road and knock off a Top 25 conference opponent. But make no mistake, without the play of Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson, the Ducks leave Pauley with a loss. Dotson struggled shooting, making just two threes while missing his nine other attempts from the field, but he chipped in on the glass, did his job in the offense and helped harass Jordan Adams into an 0-of-6 performance. Meanwhile, Artis scored 14 points, pressed the issue on offense and repeatedly found open teammates for good looks on the way to six assists. Perhaps more importantly, he was a constant pestering force on defense, helping to contribute to UCLA’s most turnovers in almost two months.
3. Rebounding. I’ve harped on it before, but UCLA’s rebounding is a serious Achilles’ Heel for the Bruins. The Wear twins, really UCLA’s only traditional bigs, combined for five rebounds in a total of 53 minutes today. While Kyle Anderson has stepped up as a double-double threat on a regular basis (he posted his sixth of the season today), UCLA was exposed in the paint as Oregon was able to grab better than 35% of their own misses while grabbing almost 80% of UCLA’s misses. In particular, Arsalan Kazemi grabbed 11 boards – four on the offensive glass. All told, the Ducks outscored UCLA 12-2 on second chance points and 38-24 in the paint, with senior center Tony Woods, specifically, repeatedly getting great deep position and scoring in low.

Star of the Game. Dominic Artis. The freshman point guard, once a UCLA commitment, came into Pauley Pavilion and tormented his former future school. He ran the up-tempo offense like a veteran, pestered Bruins’ ball-handlers and seemingly attempted to make a play on any pass that stayed up in the air too long. With two first-half threes, he set the tempo for the Ducks and is a big reason why they currently sit atop the Pac-12 standings.

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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.

There are games that every player remembers — their highest-scoring game, their last home contest, rivalry games, conference championships, and bad losses. But not every player gets the chance to be part of a big upset win in front of the home fans on national TV. These games are but a blip on the larger college basketball radar, sometimes netting headlines for a day or so, but for the players, the fans, the building and team staffs and everyone else who was there, it is often the memory of a lifetime.

Carlos Emory drinks in the atmosphere in the closing moments of the Ducks’ win over Arizona. (Photo by Rockne Andrew Roll)

By about halfway through the non-conference season, four power conference teams had gone unscathed through the early season: Arizona, Duke, Indiana, and Michigan. No team has gone undefeated through the regular season since 1976, when Indiana finished the season with a 32-0 record and a national championship, but there’s always hope that another team can do the job, that the stars will align just right. That squad was not Indiana again, as they lost to Butler in overtime near the trail end of the non-conference season. The win put the Bulldogs back into the national spotlight and shattered many predictions that Indiana was a juggernaut. It also elevated the other three unbeaten schools to elite status, the top of the college basketball heap (and polls).

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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.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” –Winston Churchill

At the beginning of college basketball every year, it’s a circus; 340-plus teams criss-crossing the country to play each other, as well as games by Division I squads against their less heralded colleagues from the lower levels of the hoops hierarchy. There are regular season tournaments, featured games like ESPN’s ACC/Big Ten challenge, and (as previously discussed in this column) mid-majors going on the road and getting shellacked by power conference schools to make a few bucks. Buried somewhere in this mix for the big schools are a couple of games that serve as a real test of a squad’s development and capabilities.

The Ducks Have Been a Pleasant Surprise This Season(Photo by Rockne Andrew Roll)

Oregon played such a game earlier this week, ending its non-conference slate against Nevada at home. The Wolf Pack were just such a team; they went 13-1 against last year’s WAC and made the NIT quarterfinals before losing to Stanford. They pressured the Ducks defensively and scored 20 points off Oregon’s 20 turnovers. But Oregon’s defense held Nevada to 13 percent shooting from downtown and just 14 first half points for a final score of 56-43. Singler went on the podium after the game and personally took credit for the turnover problem. “We had been really trying to limit out turnovers, and most of them, it was on me.” The box score agreed; Singler coughed it up seven times during the match. “I’ve got to clean it up a lot, be stronger with the ball. We’re going to need to pick it up once Pac-12 starts.” But even beyond just the turnovers, Oregon’s ball movement wasn’t working, and without good ball movement, Oregon’s offense grinds to a halt. “Offensively, the ball movement just wasn’t there. We’ve got a lot of work to do. I thought we’d gotten some things worked out with out ball movement,” explained head coach Dana Altman. But one of the differences in this year’s Oregon squad is its defense. The Ducks are currently sporting their lowest field goal percentage defense in six years, and regularly force their opponents deep into shot clocks. “We had a couple times we had some great possessions. Our rotations were really good, out adjustments were really good. For the most part, our defense was pretty good.”

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

1. Arizona, 12-0 (-): Technically, the undefeated Wildcats played in week seven, getting that thrilling, 68-67 win over San Diego State over in Honolulu. But due to my Christmas-inspired laziness, last week’s power rankings were delayed, and we already covered that stuff. The #3 Cats haven’t taken the floor since, giving them extra time to prepare for a visit from Colorado on Thursday. With that game in Tucson, and the Buffaloes starting off the season with a 1-2 mark on the road, the Wildcats should be able to shine on national television with their 13th victory of the year. Senior guard Mark Lyons led Arizona through non-conference play with 13.4 PPG. Up Next: 1/3 vs. Colorado.
2. Colorado, 10-2 (^1): After taking an eight-day break, Colorado returned to action without missing a beat, dispatching 7-6 Hartford, 80-52. Led by Josh Scott, the Buffs jumped out to a 26-6 lead and never looked back. Blowout wins are beginning to become a trend under head coach Tad Boyle, who has seen his team win half of its games this season by double digits. As we discussed above, the Buffaloes will venture into the McKale Center on Thursday night, and while they certainly are capable of pulling the upset, the last time they took on a top 10 team on the road, it didn’t go very well. Who can forget last month’s trip to Lawrence, where Kansas jumped out to a 27-8 lead en route to a 90-54 thrashing of CU. Getting a good start against the Wildcats will be key for an upset. Up Next: 1/3 @ Arizona.
   

   In Addition To Pulling Down 10 Rebounds, Josh Scott Led Colorado With 21 Points In A Win Over Hartford On Saturday. (credit: US Presswire)

3. Oregon, 11-2 (٧1): The Ducks and Buffaloes traded places this week, despite UO getting what is largely considered the better win over Nevada. The Wolf Pack were able to hang with Oregon for 30 minutes on New Year’s Eve before the Ducks went on a 14-6 run to lead by 16. Dana Altman‘s squad would cruise from there en route to a 56-43 win. Up Next: 1/6 @ Oregon State.
4. UCLA, 10-3 (^1): Forget Arizona over San Diego State, the conference’s marquee win in week seven came via UCLA, who outlasted Missouri in an overtime thriller, 97-94. In the extra period, Travis Wear drained a jumper to put the Bruins up three with 15 seconds remaining before grabbing the game’s final rebound to seal the upset. Up Next: 1/3 vs. California.
5. Arizona State, 11-2 (^3): It was a pretty simple week for Herb Sendek and the Sun Devils. After dominating Coppin State on Saturday, ASU sat back and watched three teams in front of them either drop games to lesser opponents or nearly escape them. As a result, they enter league play at number five in our power rankings. Up Next: 1/2 vs. Utah.
6. Stanford, 9-4 (^1): Stanford was the other team to take advantage of Oregon State and California’s misfortunes, jumping up one spot with a closer-than-expected victory over Lafayette. Stanford opens Pac-12 play with a trip to Los Angeles, where they’ll need a split to stay in the upper half of our rankings. Up Next: 1/3 @ USC. Read the rest of this entry »

Later tonight, the second leg of the Pac-12 college basketball season begins as conference play tips off with the Battle of the Bachynskis, when Utah travels to Arizona State. After last year’s nightmare of a non-conference slate, this season the conference took major strides, with Arizona’s win over Florida, UCLA’s win over Missouri, Colorado’s win over Baylor, and Oregon’s win over UNLV making up the top tier of the best wins for the conference. Before we turn our complete attention to conference play, we thought we’d hand out some awards based on the season to this point, so Connor Pelton, Parker Baruh, Pachoops’ Adam Butler and myself voted and came up with the following results.

Player of the Year

Allen Crabbe, Jr, California – Crabbe’s 20.9 PPG and efficient all-around offensive game earned three of the four votes for our player of the year, with UCLA’s Jordan Adams receiving the other vote from me. Crabbe has been a rock for the Golden Bears (well, aside from that Creighton debacle, at least), scoring in double figures in every game, helping out on the glass and, thus far, knocking down better than 38% of his shots from deep.

The Pac-12’s Leading Scorer, Allen Crabbe Takes Down The Mid-season POTY Award (credit: Jeff Gross)

Coach of the Year

Dana Altman, Oregon – Despite losing three of last year’s top four scorers, and having the other guy in that quartet – E.J. Singler – struggle through the early part of this year, the Ducks have reeled off wins in 11 of their 13 games. Altman has gotten great production out of his freshman backcourt of Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson, has folded Rice transfer Arsalan Kazemi into the mix seamlessly, and coaxed great improvement out of senior center Tony Woods. As a result, he earned three of our four votes for the COY, while Arizona State’s Herb Sendek got my support.

Freshman of the Year

Shabazz Muhammad, Fr, UCLA – After missing the first three games of the season due to an NCAA investigation into his eligibility, Muhammad has come on strong for the Bruins, scoring in double figures in all 10 of the games he’s played in on his way to 19.6 points per night. He’s just beginning to ease into the best physical shape of the season, so the expectation is that conference play will see an even better version of Shabazz. Once again, Shabazz earned three of our four votes for FrOY, with the lone dissenter (again, me) nabbing teammate Jordan Adams.

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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.

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. 

Christmas has come and probably gone by the time you read this, so instead of focusing on “the spirit of the season” and joy and all that, it’s time to discuss the real reason that Christmas is such a popular holiday: gifts. Everyone likes receiving gifts, and college basketball coaches are no exception. Quite a few coaches have been reveling in the gifts they received from Recruiting Claus way back in the offseason as their freshman prospects have blossomed into powerhouse college players. But gifts come in all shapes, sizes and amounts of remaining eligibility for coaches. As the season has unfolded, a number of seniors that were previously talented but not quite superstar players have emerged as unexpected studs that have propelled their teams to unexpected success.

The most prominent example of this phenomenon nationally has been Mason Plumlee.  Notching just over 11 points and nine boards in last year’s campaign, the middle of the Plumlee brothers was expected to headline the Blue Devil’s frontcourt this year, but not to factor into the hunt for national honors nor was Duke seen as a serious national title contender. How times change: Plumlee now averages nearly 20 points per contest and is the leading scorer and rebounder for the best team in the country. “Mason Plumlee’s improvement in a year’s time is extraordinary,” Elon coach Matt Matheny told reporters after Plumlee scored 21 and notched 15 boards in Duke’s 76-54 win over the Phoenix at Cameron Indoor Stadium. “He has done a tremendously good job of developing into a really, really good college player.” “Really good” is an understatement here, as Plumlee has gone from potential All-American to the short list for the Naismith Award.

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Last week it was all about negativity, as we dwelled on the biggest disappointments in the Pac-12 this year. This week, with the holiday season in full swing, it’s all about happiness and light, as well discuss the year’s biggest surprises.

“Which team, player, or other entity, has been the biggest surprise thus far this year?”

Andrew Murawa: Everybody loves to see a kid succeed against the odds, and I’m certainly no different in that respect, which is why Stanford’s Andy Brown has been one of the highlights of the season for me. After three torn ACLs in his left knee over the course of three seasons, there was very little chance that Brown would ever make a significant contribution on the basketball court for the Cardinal. Through no fault of his own, I’d certainly written him off. But this season, he has been Johnny Dawkins’ most consistent contributor off the bench. He’s played in all but one game and averaged better than 20 minutes per night when out there, including better than 20 in each of the last six games. He’s shown a nice three-point stroke, a great ability to poke a ball lose every now and then and a hustle and savvy that any ball club could use. And, best of all, he’s shown no ill effects from his previous injuries out there. Watching the kind of season that Brown is having in what is technically his senior year (academically at least, he can probably play a couple more seasons for Dawkins if he so desires) is not only the biggest surprise in the conference, it is also exactly the kind of thing that keeps me coming back to college athletics.

Andy Brown’s Return From Three ACL Tears Has Been One Of the Pac-12’s Nicest Surprises (AP Photo)

Adam Butler: There have been some surprises this year to be certain. In answering this BQ I’m quick to hat tip the State of Oregon, Jordan Adams, and the Utes. Each of these entities has exceeded early expectations – if we even bothered to have any in Utah’s case – and should be commended for such. However, the biggest surprise thus far, to me, has been the progress of ASU’s Jordan Bachynski. The big man has nearly doubled his rebounding and scoring numbers from a season ago and, most impressively, has been swatting shots away at an alarming rate; 17.6% to be exact (4.6 per game), good for fourth in the nation. His triple double (13 points, 12 boards, 12 blocks) was the first in the conference since 2007 and the first ever at ASU. He’s an integral piece to the Sun Devils’ surprising 9-2 start. We were pretty aware of what Jahii Carson and Carrick Felix were going to bring to this team. We even had a clue what Evan Gordon could deliver. But really for this squad to improve on their 10-win 2011-12, they were going to need to see some improvement from the existing pieces of this roster. They’ve received such from Bachynski and Jonathan Gilling. While ASU hasn’t quite been challenged yet and flopped in their biggest test to date (DePaul), any time you’re getting this kind of production out of a seven-foot-two-inch man, things tend to go surprisingly well.

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