Conference play is underway, and it’s time to take what we’ve learned from a couple months of uneven schedules and evolving lineups and try to project that forward to a couple grueling months of the conference meat grinder. To wit:

“What trends that we’ve seen developing in the non-conference do you see continuing or changing as we head into the final 18?”

Connor Pelton: Going into the season, if I had told you Oregon would be 11-2 going into Pac-12 play, most would have said E.J. Singler would either be leading the team in scoring or a close second behind Arsalan Kazemi. Instead, Singler has fallen into a role as more of a distributor, now passing up shots he had to take last year. With options like Tony Woods and Carlos Emory in the post, and capable scorers Damyean Dotson and Dominic Artis on the perimeter, I see no reason why the Ducks wouldn’t be able to keep up their success sustained thus far. This is a much more balanced team than in years past, so much so that Singler has been able to sit out nearly four more minutes a game than in 2011-12. With all of this said, the senior has to be able to hit big shots when needed. In Oregon’s triple-overtime loss at UTEP last month, Singler was a complete non-factor in the three extra periods. Not only that, he only hit one shot all game long. If the freshmen up top are freezing in big games late in the year, it’ll be Singler who gets the call. I think he answers it, giving the Ducks a great shot at reaching their first NCAA Tournament in five years.

Oregon Has Had Success So Far, But Needs Singler To Contribute More

Adam Butler: I foresee the improvement of Stanford’s Dwight Powell to continue. Here’s a guy who’s long had the physical tools to be good and in the preseason (both this and last year), we discussed just how good he could be. A season ago he played through injury and, frankly, awkwardness; a hint of a baby giraffe out there. This year he’s begun to assert himself, catapulting his usage numbers into the realm of team leader. He’s put up some insanely impressive games and those have been the one’s he’s sought to be the man. And that’s the trend I expect to see continue. When he’s on, he makes Randle and Bright better. Consistency will be the name of the game for this Canadian and I really think that the routine of a Pac-12 season (Thursday, Saturday, Thursday, Saturday…) can really help these guys get into comfort zones the non-conference slate doesn’t always afford. For Powell, 10 to 15 shots per game will be his sweet spot. It’d also be sweet if he didn’t foul people. He has a tendency to do such. Powell is still improving, which is a scary thought considering he went for 23/8 against CJ Leslie and N.C. State. One other thing I expect to continue is Shabazz Muhammad playing well. And that’s horrifying if you’re not wearing powder blue.

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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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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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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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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?

1. This early season keeps getting worse and worse for the UCLA Bruins. Ben Howland’s team fell 78-69 to San Diego State at the Wooden Classic over the weekend, and the Bruins’ student section wasn’t even there to witness it. The fans have every reason to be unhappy with the product that the Bruins are putting out on the floor and they are making it very apparent by not showing up. It also wasn’t even clear that students knew they could attend the John Wooden Classic in Anaheim, suggestive of a lack of community awareness and communication about the program. Until Ben Howland is no longer in charge of the Bruins, it doesn’t seem like either the fans or the students will be happy with this program.
2. One of the early surprises this year in the Pac-12 has been Oregon, but there is some cause for concern with their senior forward E.J. Singler. Through this point in the season, Singler is posting career lows in field goal percentage (32%), three-point percentage (30%), and the free throw line (78%). However, all the other offensive numbers for Singler are righ in line with his career numbers. It’s still early in the year, but with the excellent start the Ducks have had so far, Singler getting back to his normal level of play could help Dana Altman’s team make a surprise run to the NCAA Tournament.
3. The Washington State Cougars will take on Gonzaga this Wednesday and head coach Ken Bone thinks that Mark Few’s team might be better than ever. He alluded to the fact that they don’t just have good size but that they have multiple players that could end up playing in the NBA. If Washington State wants to pull off the intrastate upset, it certainly would help if they could get DaVonte Lacy back for the first time in two weeks. Bone believes that Lacy will be back from his knee injury if he can practice without any problems, but it’s not clear yet whether he will be 100 percent for the game.
4. Tad Boyle’s Colorado team didn’t play its best last week as the Buffaloes needed double overtime to beat Texas Southern and lost to Wyoming on the road Saturday. Boyle believes that the team needs to toughen up or they are going to keep struggling. Wyoming’s Leonard Washington outplayed Colorado’s frontcourt tandem of Josh Scott and Andre Roberson with ease as he put up 22 points and seven rebounds and Boyle was displeased with the fact that he dove for a loose ball in front of five Buffaloes and not one of CU’s players challenged him for it. The Buffaloes play next against Colorado State on Wednesday and will certainly have to find a way to be tougher if they want to win.
5. The most consistent and impressive team in the Pac-12 so far this year has been the Arizona Wildcats, and in their win over Texas Tech over the weekend, freshman center Kaleb Tarczewski didn’t need the ball to have an impact. He only scored six points during the contest, but he picked up nine rebounds in the first half and ended the game with a total of 13. Tarczewski didn’t mind his limited touches in the post, but Sean Miller prefers differently — Miller would rather have Tarczewski get the ball more down low and said he’ll be getting it more and more as they continue forward with their non-conference schedule.

As the level of competition starts to heat up, it becomes more important to be able to make plays come crunch time. Our Burning Question of the week addresses that issue, as we ask:

Eight ticks left, down a deuce, whose hand do you want the ball in?

Adam Butler: Get that ball to Solomon Hill. I’ve seen him do it before, making clutch plays at Florida and against Washington, and he’s not afraid of the moment. He’s been there and he’s done that and, as the eldest, most experienced statesman on a good team, he knows he’s good. Additionally, he’s smart. He can beat you from the outside if you give him that (39% from deep last year, 38% this year), and he can get you on the dribble – attacking the rim or getting to the line. Options, as it were, allow this dynamic talent to win a ball game. And I haven’t even mentioned his passing. He’ll find the open guy to put the game away if it isn’t an option for himself. And just who is that other guy? Well it could be Mark Lyons, Nick Johnson, Brandon Ashley, Kevin Parrom, or any of the other talented Wildcats. Among all those pieces, however, Hill brings the most broad set of talents and the experience and wisdom to put those skills to dagger-esque efficiency.

Solomon Hill is One Person’s Mr. Pac-12 Clutch…

Parker Baruh: I want California’s Allen Crabbe with the ball. He’s a great shooter and already off to a scorching start this year by scoring 22.o points per game, good for 11th in the nation. He has experience being a junior and I want the ball in someone’s hands who can shoot from anywhere on the floor which Crabbe can do as he has shot 40% from behind the arc and 44% from the field for his college career. Yes, Crabbe has had stretches of inconsistency, but he’s also had games where he couldn’t stop making shots such as last year’s game against Oregon on the road. He had 14 points in three minutes last year against the Ducks in the second half which essentially ended the game. And if Crabbe were to get fouled shooting or going to the rim, he was 84% from the line last year, which would undoubtedly help. Crabbe’s start this year albeit in a small sample size has been full of scoring and what looks to be improved confidence and as long as the Cal guard has that lethal stroke, I want the ball in his hands at the end of the game.

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The weather in Oregon can do strange things. In the week leading up to the Ducks’ home opener against Northern Arizona, the weather shifted from cool and rainy to downright cold, and it was frequently the topic of conversation across the western half of the state. In the span of a day, high temperatures dropped from the mid-50s to the low 40s in what would turn out to be a bit of an omen for the Ducks as they faced Northern Arizona Saturday night.

Willie Moore loses control of his dribble as the Ducks take on Northern Arizona in their home opener.

The weather has been weird throughout the country, with two scheduled carrier games amounting to one half of actual basketball between them (Ohio State vs. Marquette was cancelled before its scheduled tip aboard USS Yorktown, while Florida vs. Georgetown was cancelled just before the start of the second half due to unmanageable condensation aboard USS Bataan), not to mention Hurricane Sandy. But many of the top teams in the country seemed to open up their seasons with some cold moments, even if it was not reflected in the thermometer.

It took a late first half rally and a close second half for No. 15 Missouri to beat Southern Illinois–Edwardsville by 14. Yale dominated the first half of their match against Sacred Heart, taking a 44-28 lead to the break, but went on to lose 85-82 after the Pioneers mounted a monumental comeback. And Arizona struggled to put away Charleston Southern until late, eventually winning 82-73. In early-season games like these, the scene is frequently set the same way: A team playing its home opener against a team it underestimates doesn’t play as hard as they might have against a big-name team. They’ll either come out soft, or build a lead and leave it to take care of itself, slacking off late and not just leaving the door open to a comeback, but propping it wide with a doorstop and hanging a welcome sign over it. On the other side of the coin, opponents come into the big-time arenas ready to go, eager to show their stuff and pushing every possible advantage.

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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.

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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1. Finally, some good news for one of UCLA’s freshmen: Kyle Anderson has been cleared by the NCAA to play this season. The main questions surrounding Anderson’s eligibility had to do with his father’s relationship with agent Thad Foucher, in addition to concerns about who paid for Anderson’s unofficial visits to UCLA (along with how many he took). Though Anderson’s father was confident all along that his son would be cleared to play, assuredly there were more than a few UCLA supporters who heaved a deep sigh of relief Wednesday. It has been a long four months for the Anderson family and UCLA, but there is now one less cloud hanging over the Bruins’ 2012-13 season. All of a sudden, the Bruins’ perimeter lineup looks a lot stronger and bigger, as the 6’9’’ Anderson is known for his great court vision and passing abilities. Now all that’s left is for the NCAA to clear Shabazz Muhammad, the No. 2 overall recruit in the class of 2012 according to Scout and No. 1 recruit according to Rivals. At the very least, the Bruins are in a much better position to live up to the preseason hype as a top 15 team in the country and potentially make a push deep into the NCAA Tournament next spring.
2. Another Pac-12 exhibition contest is in the books as Arizona defeated Humboldt State 108-67 in its exhibition opener last night. If this game is any indication (and it probably isn’t), our Kevin Danna might have nailed it on the head in last week’s burning question when he said Kaleb Tarczewski will be the best newcomer to the Pac-12 this year. The seven-footer had the game’s lone double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds. He seemed to always be in the right spot down by the bucket to collect rebounds and also showed off a very nice drop-step, albeit against a non-Division-I post player. Mark Lyons also looked comfortable handling Sean Miller’s offense and, as usual, he wasn’t afraid to look for his own shot either, finishing with 15 points. Nick Johnson filled up the stat sheet in just about every way imaginable with 14 points, five rebounds, five steals and four assists, as well as throwing down a couple of nice dunks as icing on the cake. If any other school in the conference wants to claim they have the best fans in the conference, then show an attendance figure surpassing 12,431 for an exhibition game. From the best I could tell on the stream (which, by the way, was much less laggy than Oregon’s stream on Monday night), the Wildcat crowd was very into it aside from just showing up in large numbers to a meaningless game on Halloween night. Supporters in Tucson surely sense that Sean Miller has a potentially great team on his hands.
3. And then there are the “secret scrimmages” that never seem to be too much of a secret. Later tonight, Stanford will travel to Moraga to take on the Saint Mary’s Gaels in a game that fans and reporters are prohibited from attending. While many Cardinal followers would prefer this to be an actual game on the non-conference slate, perhaps it could be the first step towards setting up a home-and-home with the Gaels in the near future. In the immediate future, this game will give the Cardinal some sort of idea how they stack up with a team that is more or less thought to be on the same level. Big things are expected out of the junior class that features Aaron Bright, Dwight Powell, Anthony Brown, and Josh Huestis, and this game provides the class with a chance to get some positive momentum rolling into the beginning of the season. A “win” against St. Mary’s in the scrimmage could provide a nice confidence boost, even if it’s not a real game setting and both coaches might tweak the lineups more than usual.
4. The newest CBS Sports list deals with the best defenders in the nation and, unlike previous ones, this one is not ordered. Rather, 30 guys are separated into different categories of defenders, and two of the 30 defenders reign from the Pac-12: Colorado’s André Roberson and Washington’s Aziz N’Diaye. Roberson gets a nod under the “best glass cleaning defenders” category, for pretty much the same reason why Eamonn Brennan tabbed the Colorado forward the best rebounder in the nation. N’Diaye is filed under the “best rim protecting defenders” department. We talked about Roberson yesterday, so N’Diaye is a guy who has done a solid job as a lane-clogger for Lorenzo Romar during his first two years in Seattle, but you would expect a guy his size to finish better than 12th in the conference in blocks as he did last season. No love for Pac-12 perimeter defenders, but right now, there isn’t any guard in the conference that could feel too slighted by not receiving CBS Sports’ recognition.
5. Finally, it’s Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Media Day today, taking place this morning and afternoon in the Pac-12 Enterprises offices in San Francisco. All 12 coaches will be there, along with one player from each team: Solomon Hill, Carrick Felix, Allen Crabbe, André Roberson, E.J. Singler, Angus Brandt, Aaron Bright, David Wear (you didn’t think UCLA would take Shabazz, did you?), Jio Fontan, Jason Washburn, Abdul Gaddy and Brock Motum. Nothing earth-shattering usually takes place at these events, but it will be a good chance to get some more nuggets on Washington’s high-post offense, Craig Robinson’s role in the Obama re-election campaign, and an official “no comment” comment on the Shabazz situation now that Anderson is cleared to play. Most importantly, the preseason Pac-12 media poll will be released. Which team will the media pick to take home the Pac-12 regular season crown: UCLA or Arizona?