1. Arizona just keeps on rolling, and not just because the Wildcats knocked off Big West favorite UC Irvine in Tucson on Wednesday night, but because Sean Miller keeps dialing in elite recruiting classes. He’s already got four signees locked up and is working on adding more to next year’s class , and he’s already gotten a head start on a strong 2016 class with a verbal commitment from San Diego-area power forward T.J. Leaf. Leaf is a 6’9” combo forward with the size to play the four and the skill set to play the three. In fact, he cited Miller’s history of allowing his forwards to display a wide variety of skill sets as a big reason why he chose Arizona over other big-time schools like UCLA and Florida.
2. Tad Boyle is getting to ready to welcome some young talent into his rotation, as freshman point guard Dominique Collier may see his first action in a Colorado uniform against Wyoming this weekend. Collier was suspended for the Buffaloes’ first two games of the season and has been dealing with a nagging ankle injury on top of that, but he’s finally practicing at full speed and ready to contribute. With Xavier Talton acquitting himself nicely in the early going, don’t expect Collier to jump into a huge role in the rotation right away. But the two-time Colorado Mr. Basketball is another talent who should make Boyle’s already deep bench even stronger.
3. UCLA freshman Kevon Looney is another youngster that you’ll get to know a lot about this season. Through two games of his college career, the former McDonald’s All-American from Milwaukee is averaging 19.5 points and 11.5 boards per game for the Bruins, albeit against overmatched competition. Looney’s 7’5” wingspan certainly accounts for some of his naturally-gifted rebounding ability, and the fact that he’s so athletic factors in there too. According to his teammates, thought, what makes Looney so good on the glass are his simple instincts.
4. Oregon State is off to its first 2-0 start since 2000-01, but with wins over the likes of Rice and Corban, it is not advisable to get too excited about this young team. Still, as Gary Horowitz of the Statesman Journal notes, this Beavers program is at least worth watching. With a bevy of athletic wings who can handle the ball, versatile legacy Gary Payton II and a few surprisingly skilled bigs, Wayne Tinkle has his team playing an entertaining brand of ball while laying the foundation for future success. Sure, there are plenty of losses on the team’s immediate horizon, but with a strong recruiting class due next season, this is at the very least a basketball program with a chance at a fairly bright future. One word of warning, however: It is going to get worse before it gets better.
5. There’s another new head coach in the conference who is also in the midst of trying to turn a program around with very little talent. Ernie Kent has sweet-talked all the locals around the Washington State program, but an 0-2 start to the season with losses by an average of 20 points in a mini-tour of middle-of-the-road (at best) Texas schools quickly put a damper on any buzz around this year’s squad. Just watch how the tenor of tweets from the CougCenter contributors went downhill quickly as the Cougars’ 27-point loss to TCU progressed.

The Pac-12 microsite will preview each of its league teams over the next few weeks, continuing today with Colorado.

Colorado Buffaloes

Strengths: Experience can carry Colorado a long way in a Pac-12 with so much turnover. Spencer Dinwiddie is out the door, but the Buffaloes got a head start on life without The Mayor after a midseason knee injury hastened the transition. A combined 157 starts from last season returns to this Tad Boyle‘s roster, headlined by senior guard Askia Booker and junior forward Josh Scott.

Josh Scott returns as the leading scorer on a Colorado team with plenty to like in the starting lineup. (US Presswire)

Weaknesses: While Dinwiddie’s injury caused Boyle to accelerate the future of the program at point guard, questions remain at the position. The team finished 11th in the league in assists (11.3 per game) and sported the worst assist-to-turnover ratio (0.85) in the conference. The narrative necessarily flips from the replacement of a missing star to a program looking for stability at the point. No excuses in Boulder this year.

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At this point in the preseason, it is too soon to argue which player on this Colorado roster will be its most important player, but I can tell you which position he’ll play. If you follow Colorado basketball or the Pac-12 in general, you probably know their biggest question of the preseason: Who is going to replace point guard Spencer Dinwiddie? The Mayor of Boulder tore his ACL in the middle of last season and the Buffs went 9-10 down the stretch — including Pitt running them out of the NCAA Tournament — after he went down. When Dinwiddie subsequently announced his plans to enter the NBA Draft in June, the 2014-15 narrative for Tad Boyle’s team was already set in stone.

Askia Booker Is Among The Players Who Will Need To Replace Spencer Dinwiddie’s Production

Who are the main candidates? Really, there are three. The one you probably know is senior guard Askia Booker, who, even when he was not technically “the point guard” at the end of last season, was still the guy initiating the Colorado offense. The problem is that Booker is the team’s best scorer on the wing and, despite his sometimes erratic shooting percentages (I’m being kind here), its best shot-maker. He’s capable of playing the lead guard position, but that involves a complete change of personality. You see, this is a guy like former All-American Russ Smith at Louisville. Sure, Booker is very much a poor man’s Smith, but they’re cut from the same cloth: defend like crazy on one end; get up shots on the other. And it doesn’t always matter if they’re good shots, so long as those shots get up. That’s the M.O. for Booker, and it works to an extent, especially in end-of-clock scenarios where there are few other guys on the team who can create a shot.

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Little story, probably not all that interesting. With the college basketball season due to tip off a week from today, we here around the RTC Pac-12 microsite are finalizing our preseason rankings and all-conference teams and whatnot. So, in compiling those things, I sent out a poll to our writers and friends of the microsite. Tucked away at the very end of the poll was something of an afterthought; it read, simply “Biggest Question Marks – use any criteria.” Now, when I wrote that and when I filled out my own poll, I was thinking of just individual players and I came up with a list that included Robert Upshaw, Sam Singer, Tra Holder, Bryce Alford and Jordan Loveridge. And then when I looked at everybody else’s ballots, I saw more big picture question marks: Oregon’s mental state, new coaches around the league, Utah playing with expectations. And I thought those were some damn good questions myself. Never one to pass up a good topic to write on that I can easily cherry-pick, I’m going to go through some of the biggest questions that my colleagues came up with and ponder their answers as much as I can.

Question Number One For The Buffaloes Is Whether Askia Booker and Company Can Follow Spencer Dinwiddie’s Example (Patrick Ghidossi, BuffaloSportsNews)

Askia Booker and Life After the Mayor

Adam Butler of Pachoops.com listed this as his biggest question mark and it is no surprise. First, Butler absolutely loves writing about Booker (seriously Adam, how many more columns do you think you can get out of ‘Ski in his remaining collegiate eligibility?). Second, if Tad Boyle can find a coherent answer at the point guard position post-Spencer Dinwiddie, the Buffs are maybe the team with the best chance to challenge conference-favorite Arizona. But after Dinwiddie fell from a torn ACL last year, Colorado went 9-10 down the stretch and got run out of the NCAA Tournament in embarrassing fashion. As Butler loves to point out, Booker began to shelve his freewheeling, bad-shot hoisting, basketball-purist infuriating ways and embrace his inner point guard. Still, for the Buffaloes to live up to their ceiling, he needs to play off the ball on a regular basis and become a high-octane scorer. This means guys like sophomore Jaron Hopkins and freshman Dominique Collier will have to prove themselves worthy of earning the majority of those on-ball minutes. The facts that Hopkins struggled in his first season and that Collier is battling ankle problems do not bode well for positive answers on those fronts. In other words, the Booker point guard experiment (a role the 6’2” guard will probably have to embrace if he hopes to earn a long professional career) may continue.

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1. You know, this week is the last one without college basketball until April. Life is good and the season is nearly upon us. But for Lorenzo Romar and Washington, this is something of a season at the crossroads. Once a fixture near the top of the conference standings and a program that really seemed to reload on the recruiting trail every year, now the Huskies have gone three seasons without an NCAA Tournament appearance. And as is the case all over these days in the sports world, head coaches don’t get all that much rope. Even with a talented recruiting class coming in next season, Romar doesn’t have time to wait. The good news, as Mike Rutherford of SBNation.com points out, is that Romar seems excited about the under-the-radar team he’s put together in Seattle. With a pair of talented and experienced guards leading the way, if the Huskies can sneak into the Big Dance, they’ll be ahead of the game and definitely cool off the pressure mounting around the longtime head coach.
2. Sean Miller has no such worries, although he has different pressures of his own. Still, Miller’s got it rolling so strong down in Tucson that he loses players early to the NBA and just files in a new round of elite players. For instance, as Bruce Pascoe points out, even with Arizona already over their scholarship maximum for next season by two, Miller is still out there looking for more talent. It’s like this: The scholarship max is 13, which is where the Wildcats are right now. Two seniors will graduate, but Miller has four players ready to sign later this month. So, no biggie — you figure Stanley Johnson and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson are NBA-bound after this season, right? That puts the ‘Cats right back at 13 scholarships for next year. But Miller says he’s still looking for a couple more players? It doesn’t take a mindreader to figure out that Miller expects that other guys like juniors Brandon Ashley and Kaleb Tarczewski could be considering forgoing their final year of eligibility also. Well, that and the fact that Miller’s probably already anticipating that there will be some players on a talented team unhappy with their playing time who might consider transferring between now and next year.
3. Over the offseason, we all sort of figured that Colorado freshman point guard Dominique Collier would become a part of the rotation for the Buffaloes; he may not wind up starting, but he’d be in the mix. However, here we are a week and a half before the season tips off and Collier has spent the last three weeks dealing with an ankle injury that has limited his ability to get meaningful reps during practice. Collier’s frustrated; Tad Boyle is frustrated; and the calendar keeps chugging along while chances for much-needed experience go by. Given the fact that Boyle seems very concerned about turnovers, not only in practice but in a scrimmage against Denver this weekend, getting Collier up to speed could be vital for the Buffs.
4. Another very important Pac-12 injury to keep an eye on has to do with Oregon’s JuCo transfer center Michael Chandler. Chandler is “nursing a knee,” according to Dana Altman, but the head coach is hopeful he’ll be ready to practice in a week or two. Matt Prehm of DuckTerritory.com says Chandler isn’t expected to miss any game action, but a week ago Jon Rothstein reported that Chandler hadn’t practiced, was “way behind on conditioning,” and was still learning the Ducks’ sets. With Oregon’s first game now 10 days away, put me on board with the notion of Chandler definitely missing some game action. In other words, guys like Jordan Bell, Dwayne Benjamin and Elgin Cook are going to have their work cut out for them up front.
5. Lastly, again on something of an injury, Oregon State freshman guard Chai Baker has spent his time on a basketball court since practice began just watching. But for a guy that had a “cardiac incident” back in the middle of August that ended with an ambulance trip to the hospital and a pacemaker implanted in his chest, just being able to watch basketball from the sidelines is a good thing. Still, the 6’3” guard from Florida is hoping that a series of medical exams will get him cleared and that he’ll be back on the court again at some point soon.

With basketball season now officially a speck on the horizon, it is time to dig back in and begin the trek that will eventually drop us off at the Final Four in Indianapolis on the first weekend of April. If you, like us, have been away enjoying your summer and you need a refresher on what’s going on in the world of Pac-12 basketball, we’ll get you jump started by trying to sum up every Pac-12 team’s offseason and their big questions for this season in a short paragraph.

Washington State – The Cougars’ big offseason story was etched in stone way back on March 18 when they fired head coach Ken Bone after five increasingly less successful seasons in Pullman. After a tidy two-week search, former Oregon head coach Ernie Kent was named as Bone’s successor. Kent’s got his work cut out for him at the toughest job in the conference, but he’s shown an ability to recruit on the fly, putting together a tidy four-man 2014 class that will at least give the Cougs a chance to surround star senior guard DaVonte Lacy with some decent parts.

Ernie Kent, Now At Washington State, Is One Of Three New Pac-12 Head Coaches (Geoff Crimmins, AP Photo)

California – Likewise, the Golden Bears’ offseason story revolves around a coaching change, what with Mike Montgomery putting an end to his Hall of Fame career following last year’s disappointing season. Athletic director Sandy Barbour wound up with an intriguing hire when he pulled Cuonzo Martin away from Tennessee following his March run from the First Four to the Sweet Sixteen. Martin’s first year in Berkeley will be marked by a short bench, and he’s yet to have any success on the recruiting trail. Furthermore, replacing a fixture like Montgomery is never going to be easy. But Martin immediately gives Cal a completely different feel on the sidelines. Stay tuned.

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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, Colorado.

What Went Wrong

On the morning of Sunday, January 12, Colorado was getting ready to play Washington in its fourth Pac-12 conference game. Up to that point, the Buffaloes had gone 14-2 on the season, won all three of their previous conference games, and were rated 31st in KenPom, down a bit from their season high of 28th (following their non-conference finale against Georgia). And then, late in the first half against the Huskies, junior point guard Spencer Dinwiddie took a false step on a fast break, his left knee buckled, and everyone’s worst fears were confirmed as a torn ACL was later verified. The Buffaloes went on to lose four of their next five games, and posted a middling 9-10 record the rest of the way, stumbling ever-steadily to a KenPom low of #68 by the end of the year. Tad Boyle and company could never truly recover from the loss of their best player and team leader.

Colorado Was Never The Same After “The Mayor” Went Down With An Injury

What Went Right

Following the loss of Dinwiddie, the team did its best to rally together, with junior guard Askia Booker in particular deserving extra praise. Booker had been known as  an inveterate gunner who had never seen a shot he didn’t like with Dinwiddie alongside him. But down the stretch of the season, Booker took over the bulk of the point guard duties and played the part of good teammate, looking to get everybody involved. Sure, he wasn’t always particularly effective in that new role, but the Buffs fought the good fight the rest of the season with him in the lead.

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1. Let’s jump right into the bad news, something that we have suspected for a few days now: Jernard Jarreau’s 2013-14 season lasted less than two minutes. Jarreau, a 6’10″ sophomore forward from whom Washington was expecting big things, was helped off the court early on Sunday night in the Huskies season-opener against Seattle with an apparent knee injury. He had to wait a couple days to undergo an MRI and then we had to wait an additional day for confirmation, but the results are in, and are no fun: torn ACL. Jarreau will be out for the year, although he will be eligible for a medical redshirt. With the Huskies already down Desmond Simmons, who is out for about another month with a knee injury of his own, and Perris Blackwell, who may return as early as tonight following a concussion, a once deep Husky frontcourt is now perilously thin.
2. Colorado, meanwhile, had a very nice Wednesday. Aside from ending a six-game losing streak against border rival Wyoming, head coach Tad Boyle also got his first pair of commitments for his 2014 recruiting class. ESPN Top 100 recruit Dominique Collier is the headliner, a four-star point guard is a Denver product, and his signing continues Boyle’s recent history of locking up the best recruits from the home state (Josh Scott, Wesley Gordon and Xavier Talton being other recent examples). If junior point guard Spencer Dinwiddie decides that he’s off to the NBA after this season, Collier will probably be the favorite to start at the one for the Buffs next year. The other signee is three-star power forward Tory Miller, a 255-pound force in the middle who will help add beef to a relatively thin front line.
3. Meanwhile, more big recruiting news is due on Friday when Stanley Johnson, one of the elite recruits in the 2014 class will decide between Arizona, USC, and Kentucky. Now, sure, John Calipari isn’t really in the habit of losing out in his pursuit of elite recruits, but the scuttlebutt is that the two leaders for Johnson’s services are the two Pac-12 schools. Sean Miller and the Wildcats have long been considered the favorite, but Andy Enfield and the Trojans are making a big push. With a couple of four-star recruits already committed, a signing from Johnson would again push Arizona up near the top of the recruits rankings, while a choice in favor of USC would cement Enfield’s credentials as a difference-maker. Editorial comment: make Arizona the even money favorite, with Kentucky at 2-1 and USC the longshot at 5-1. Place your bets, but leave me the juice.
4.  At Utah, junior college transfer Delon Wright is already making a big impact for the Runnin’ Utes, coming up three assists and three steals shy of the first-ever recorded quadruple-double in program history with a line of 17 points, ten boards, seven assists and seven steals. Wright has already made it known that he hopes to dial up what would be just the third-ever recorded triple-double from a Ute player, with Andre Miller and Alex Jensen the other two to have accomplished that feat.
5. Lastly, the preseason watchlist for the Wooden Award was announced on Tuesday, and among those included on the 50-player list are six Pac-12 players. UCLA leads the way in the conference as one of only 11 schools with more than two players included, namely sophomores Kyle Anderson and Jordan Adams, while Arizona freshman Aaron Gordon (this is the first year the preseason watchlist can include freshmen and transfers), Arizona State sophomore Jahii Carson, Colorado junior Spencer Dinwiddie and Stanford senior Dwight Powell rounding out the conference’s selections.