Dayton’s run the stylistic gauntlet this month and lived to tell the tale, at least for a few more hours. Just look at the Flyers’ March: They beat Massachusetts in a 71-possession footrace, the type of up-and-down affair the Minutemen love; it toppled Saint Louis – on the road – and its grinding, exhausting, limit-your-threes defense; they methodically took down Richmond’s tough match-up zone, and then, in the NCAA Tournament, Syracuse’s 2-3 zone; and it outdid Ohio State, one of the best defenses in the country with one of the best individual defenders in the country. If not for Langston Galloway’s near-buzzer-beater (and push-off?) in the Atlantic 10 Tournament, they might have defeated Saint Joseph’s too. Archie Miller’s group has won games fast and slow, physical and finesse, tactical and chaotic. And now Stanford looms, a club that mixed 2-3 and 1-3-1 zone defenses on Sunday to utterly baffle Kansas and send the heavily-favored Jayhawks packing for the offseason. Trouble on the horizon for the Flyers? Perhaps. But if their recent play is any indication, it won’t be because they can’t adapt.

Dayton was flying high in Buffalo, but can they beat the Cardinal? (Photo: Jamie Germano)

That adaptability starts with both the depth and versatility of Dayton’s roster. The Flyers ranked second in the A-10 behind only George Mason this season in bench minutes, with reserves accounting for nearly 36 percent of playing time. Among those reserves is Vee Sanford, a team captain and former starter who hit the game-winner against Ohio State in the second round. He, along with Scoochie Smith – a heralded freshman out of the Bronx –point guard Khari Price, and sharpshooter Jordan Sibert, make up a backcourt quick off the dribble and adept from long range. But to suggest that the team’s ‘backcourt’ is easily distinguishable from its ‘frontcourt’ would be a mistake, and almost impossible to conclude if you watch it play. The fact is, most players are able to handle the ball and nearly everyone can run the floor. At 6’7’’, Devin Oliver is the team’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer, tough and physical but also capable of banging home threes. Dyshawn Pierre, the forward who hit clutch free throws in both games over the weekend, fits the same mold. Even 6’9’’ Jalen Robinson can move with ease and drain outside shots. Throw in a few other reserves who provide quality minutes at multiple positions, and Miller is able to mix-and-match lineups on a night-to-night, minute-to-minute basis.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bennet Hayes (@hoopstraveler) is the NCAA Tournament’s South Region correspondent, which begins Thursday night at FedEx Forum in Memphis with Dayton vs. Stanford followed by UCLA vs. Florida. Look out for the West Regional Reset later today and the East and Midwest Resets tomorrow. Make sure to also follow @RTCSouthRegion for news and analysis from Memphis throughout the week.

Billy Donovan Is On The Verge Of Orchestrating Yet Another Florida Final Four Appearance. Is There A Team Remaining In This South Region That Can Disrupt The Gators’ March To Dallas? (Getty)

New Favorite: #1 Florida. Nothing has changed on this front. The Gators looked as overwhelming as ever in their third round defeat of Pittsburgh, and with only one other top-nine seed remaining in the region, the NCAA Tournament’s #1 overall seed is in fantastic shape to make its way to Dallas. The Sweet Sixteen match-up with UCLA won’t be easy, but more on that later – the Gators are still the South region’s clear favorite.

Horse of Darkness: #11 Dayton. This quadrant offered plenty of candidates for the honor, but with apologies to Stephen F. Austin (only one win) and Stanford (too familiar a brand), the Dayton Flyers advancing to their first Sweet Sixteen since 1984 makes for the South Region’s best Cinderella story. We make loyal Flyer fans pretend like the First Four is a big deal annually – and their love of basketball prevents them from failing in this pursuit – so it’s only fair that they finally get something to cheer about from their own team. On February 1, Archie Miller’s club (1-5 in the Atlantic 10 at the time) wasn’t even one of the top eight teams in their own conference, but after a late-season surge and this unexpected Tourney run, the Flyers will play on Thursday for a chance to be one of the final eight teams left standing in all of college basketball. What. A. Turnaround.

Read the rest of this entry »

The opener of the Pac-12 conference tournament was a battle between the eight and nine seeds – Utah and Washington – for the right to keep their faint NCAA Tournament hopes alive and the right to face one-seed Arizona on Thursday. Utah controlled the first half, but then let up and allowed the Huskies back into it, before putting together a 7-1 run in the final minute to provide the final margin of victory. For the Utes, this outcome leaves us with two important questions: 1) can they hang with Arizona on Thursday and 2) what will it take for them to earn an NCAA Tournament bid?

Delon Wright And The Utes Kept Their NCAA Tournament Hopes Alive, But Bigger Tests Loom (Kelley L. Cox, USA Today Sports)

For the first question, let’s give an unabashed “yes.” The last time these two teams met – in Salt Lake City on February 19 – the Utes took the Wildcats to overtime before succumbing by four points. Back in January at the McKale Center, it was a tie game with less than ten minutes to play before the Wildcats turned up the defensive juice and force the Utes to miss eight of their final ten field goal attempts en route to a nine-point win. But on both of those occasions, Utah looked like a team that very much deserved to be on the floor with Arizona. In fact, even last year when the Utes struggled to just five regular season conference wins, they played the Wildcats tight (two losses by a total of seven points). For Utah, the key may be rebounding. In their overtime loss to the Wildcats, the Utes actually got the better end of the deal on the glass, but earlier in the year it was a disaster as the ‘Cats (who still had Brandon Ashley at the time) grabbed 20 offensive rebounds – the difference in an otherwise tight game. Jordan Loveridge, along with the three-headed center of Jeremy Olsen, Dallin Bachynski and Renan Lenz will need to be strong up front against the likes of Aaron Gordon and Kaleb Tarczewski, quite a different challenge than the one they faced on Wednesday against an undersized Washington squad.

As for the second question, the Utes still really need to win this tournament if they want to feel secure on Selection Sunday. Yes, a win over Arizona in the quarters would be a nice scalp, and even a win over Colorado or Cal in the semifinals would be nice. But given the overall weakness of their non-conference schedule, the Utes still have a lot of work to do, resume-wise.

Read the rest of this entry »

Way back before the start of the season, I made the bold prediction that seven Pac-12 teams would wind up in the NCAA Tournament. Some three months later, we’re looking at six teams that can be confident in packing their bags for the Big Dance, while that lucky number seven is still a strong possibility. After a busy week in the conference, below we’ll go through the teams that still have NCAA at-large aspirations, checking in on where they stand both on the court and in terms of their NCAA hopes.

It Has Taken Some Time For Arizona To Recalibrate, But The Talent Level Here Is Still Great (Ralph Freso, Getty Images North America)

Arizona – On Wednesday night, as UCLA was putting the hammer down at California and Arizona was getting fortunate bounces in order to pull out a win at Utah, the sentiment that “UCLA is the best team in this conference” was not an insane statement to make. The Bruins’ impressive collection of talent is congealing nicely in time for the sport’s money month, but remember that Arizona is continuing to rack up wins, starting to adjust to playing without Brandon Ashley, and is still one of the best and most versatile defensive teams in recent history. That isn’t going to go away anytime soon. Sean Miller’s club will continue to make things very difficult for its opponents’ attempts to put the ball in the bucket (only four times in 27 games have they given up more than one point per possession), while their offense will readjust to life without Ashley. This team doesn’t have the offensive upside that it had with their 6’9” big man in the lineup, but things are beginning to get recalibrated, as their 88-point explosion against Colorado on Saturday evening showed. Sure, the Buffaloes are a bad defensive team right now, but that was still the best any team has performed against them all season. The Wildcats just took them apart, getting buckets in transition, getting easy looks at the rim in the halfcourt, and even knocking in eight threes (at a 47% clip) to dominate the Buffs. Oh, and you want one more statistic that sums up just how thoroughly the Wildcats broke Colorado’s spirit? There were about 20 times in the game when, following a Buffaloes’ made basket, the Wildcats took at least 10 seconds off the shot clock. The Wildcats’ eFG% in those 20 possessions? 84.4%, per the great website hoop-math.com. So, basically, Colorado scored, Arizona brought the ball upcourt, worked its offense, and regularly negated the Buffaloes’ previous score. Demoralizing.

NCAA Seeding Outlook: Arizona is still very much in the conversation for a #1 seed, and its remaining schedule is favorable (Cal/Stanford, at Oregon/Oregon State), with every remaining game winnable. Questions about depth may make Arizona something other than the favorite to win the Pac-12 Tournament, so let’s chalk them up for a loss at some point in Las Vegas. And let’s say they go 3-1 in their remaining regular season games. That puts them at something like 28 or 29 wins against four losses, but with all four coming without Ashley. One could see an argument for dropping them to a #2 because of it, but odds remain strong that these Wildcats are a #1 seed come Selection Sunday.

Read the rest of this entry »

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

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

We open with a shot that I think is the favorite for this entire tournament. Down 77-74 with 27 seconds remaining against #12 Arizona, Josh Childress buried a corner three off a Matt Lotich steal to pull the second-ranked and undefeated Cardinal even. What happened next will go down in Pac-12 lore, as guard Nick Robinson, known for his defense, stole the ball while Arizona tried to hold the ball for the final shot. Robinson took two dribbles and put up a 35-foot runner as time expired, which hit nothing but twine. The shot set off one of the greatest court rushes in the history of the game, as the blacked-out “6th Man” dog-piled the Stanford players in the corner of the floor. If you look closely, you can even see an on-top-of-the-world Tiger Woods celebrating his team’s 20th straight win in the video below.

Another clip, another buzzer-beater. Four weeks after the above thriller against Arizona, Stanford was trailing Washington State by one in Pullman with 17 seconds remaining. The Cardinal forced a five-second count on the Cougars, giving the still-unbeaten team the ball back with a chance for the win. With 10 seconds left, Stanford lost control of the ball but Nick Robinson came away with it after a mad scramble. He shoveled the ball over to Matt Lotich, who hoisted a deep three at the buzzer. It dropped, of course, to give the Cardinal their 26th consecutive win and stunning the home crowd. Read the rest of this entry »

Adam Butler (@pachoopsab) of Pachoops again will be joining us all year, providing us with his weekly take on our favorite conference, as we begin the March to Las Vegas.

Why do we love this sport? The short answer rests within a month; a present of madness and that anything-can-happen hope few other sports present. The immediacy of that tournament draws us in. It’s a battle of survival, gladiators set forth before us to discover the last man standing. It’s an arena where the end could come at any moment and thus the opportunity to continue on is cherished. Indeed we love that tournament but maybe that’s just because it represents the entire sport. March Madness highlights just how quickly the college experience goes. We learn of these athletes from before they commit and when they join our school they become our guys. Sometimes they stay and sometimes they go but either way we know they’ll only be here for the briefest of times. And then it’s on to the next. For us, the fans, it’s the next recruit. The next kid in a mix-tape we text about and set unrealistic expectations for. But for him, for the kid who has put in the hours and the work and the sweat and the effort, what of him? We enjoy his pursuit of the tournament but he wants that tournament. We might take a long lunch for that tournament but he worked through lunch to get his invitation, if he was ever invited at all.

If Stanford’s Seniors Are Going To Dance, They Need To Finish Strong (Kirby Lee, US Presswire)

And with that note I turn our attention to Stanford and Johnny Dawkins’ 2010 recruiting class. Dawkins invited and signed the 15th-ranked class per Scout’s rankings and every member of that class remains a rostered player for him. That’s both rare and special. But more importantly, it’s ending and that class – those that are healthy – looks to be staring down that reality. On Wednesday night in Berkeley, Stanford seniors accounted for 73 percent of the points, 59 percent of the rebounds, and 92 percent of the assists. That output, in their final trip to Haas, resulted in Stanford beating Cal, 80-69. Begging the question: In their final trip through college basketball, what will this team do?

Read the rest of this entry »

Back by popular demand, your skeleton key into the mind of Bill Walton, as we try to decipher exactly what the most interesting college basketball commentator in the world was talking about last night as Stanford took apart California.

Back For More National Television Hijinks With Bill Walton (Matt Stone)

And, as always, you’ll want some musical accompaniment, so let us kindly suggest the Grateful Dead at the Greek Theatre on the Berkeley campus on a beautiful summer’s Friday night some 30 years ago — July 13, 1984 — a show featuring the band’s first performance on its epic Dark Star in almost three years, and its last performance of the same for more than five more years. Dig in here. And, without further ado, on to the game.

First half

Intro – “What better place to stage this game of the millennium than right here in Berkeley, the epicenter of everything cool, hip and worthwhile. Now, when you beat the #1 team, my computer-like mind tells me that the rules of algebra apply here; now Cal is the best team. The battle is raging; we’re at the turn; who’s going to be able to finish strong?”

Comment: It’ll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls, but Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A Changin’ gets referenced frequently tonight, appropriately enough in Berkeley. Also, note that Walton’s major in college was not math, but rather communications. But you probably could have figured that out.

Read the rest of this entry »

Periodically throughout the next two months, the Pac-12 microsite will be taking a look at the league’s postseason outlook. We start today.

NCAA Tournament

• Arizona (#1 Seed): Arizona has been atop the national rankings for five consecutive weeks now, and while some dispute whether it should be the top overall seed, no one has the Wildcats below the one seed line right now. They currently boast quality wins against San Diego State, Duke, Michigan, Washington and UCLA, with four of those coming away from home. The Cats remain one of three unbeatens across the land and have another chance at a good win on Thursday against Arizona State.
• Colorado (#4-#6 Seed): The Buffaloes have a pair of top 10 victories going for themselves, but that’s about the only positive they have to look at right now. Head coach Tad Boyle lost his leading scorer for the remainder of the season and another member of his typical nine-deep rotation until mid-March all in 40 minutes at Washington on Sunday, so while the Buffs’ résumé currently looks in the #4-#6 seed range, anything better than a #7 come Selection Sunday would make Colorado fans very happy. Staying on that line instead of the #8 or #9 would be crucial if it hopes to advance through the opening weekend, as that’s the difference between say, Virginia and North Carolina in the opening round as well as avoiding a #1 seed in the second game.
• Oregon (#5-#7 Seed): Sure, Oregon is sliding hard and fast right now, but the Ducks will be fine so long as this three-game losing streak doesn’t go beyond that. The Ducks need to keep these losses in a vacuum, and while it will definitely be a black mark the rest of the way, wins at Washington and against UCLA back in Eugene could make this skid a distant memory by the first of February. They will need to shore up their defense some in order to remain in the upper half of the NCAA field. Oregon ranks 306th in the nation in points allowed per game, and finding a way to keep their opponents below 80 will be key.

Joseph Young Leads Oregon’s High-Flying Offense With 18.8 PPG, But The Ducks Need To Shore Up Their Defense In Order To Remain On The Eight Line Or Higher (AP)

• UCLA (#8-#10 Seed): The jury is largely still out on the Bruins, who have won 13 games but only one of which can be classified as a “quality victory.” With four of their final five games this month either against teams that are locked into the NCAAs or on the bubble, that can change in a hurry but they’ll need to be ready to take advantage of those opportunities every night out.
• California (Bubble IN): Going into conference play, California was typically a middle-of-the-road NIT team according to bracketologists around the country, and that was with some slack being cut since it had lost Ricky Kreklow and Jabari Bird for an extended period of time. Boy, what a difference two weeks can make. The Golden Bears have worked their way into the NCAA field, possibly as high as a #10 seed, thanks to three road wins to start Pac-12 play. With the three-game road trip now out of the way, and the fact they don’t leave the state of California again until February 12, things are definitely looking up for the Bears.
• Arizona State (Bubble OUT): The Sun Devils, like UCLA, have been tough to figure out so far. They only have one quality win, and while there is only one bad loss to their name, performances like the ones they put up against Creighton and Washington won’t be convincing anyone that they’re ready for the field of 68.  Read the rest of this entry »

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

Oregon 70, Utah 68 (OT)

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

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

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s the unofficial (and un-mathematically correct) halfway point of the college basketball regular season. Non-conference play is, for the most part, in the past, and we’re getting ready to jump right into conference play with a full slate of Pac-12 games beginning today. So, as we look back at what we’ve learned so far and look ahead at what we think might happen from here until we all head to Las Vegas in early March, today we’re going to take a look at what each team has done and pin some rough odds on their chances of making the NCAA Tournament. Teams are ranked below in order of how impressive their resume is to this point.

Following A Successful Non-Conference Slate, The Wildcats Have Put Themselves In A Good Position To Earn A Good NCAA Seed (Casey Sapio/USA Today Sports)

• Arizona (13-0, RPI: 11, Best Wins: at Michigan, neutral site vs. Duke, at San Diego State) – The Wildcats may be third in the Pac-12 in RPI at this point, but they’re #1 in the polls and deservedly so. They’ve challenged themselves with a tough non-conference slate featuring a pair of tough true road games, a pair of good neutral-site NIT Tip-Off wins, and some solid visitors to the McKale Center. But even more important than these accomplishments is how good they’ve looked doing it — displaying one of the nation’s best defenses and an offense that still has plenty of upside for a young team that should be much improved by March. At this point, it is hard to imagine a scenario where the Wildcats are left on the outside looking in come Selection Sunday. Odds of Making NCAA Tournament: 99.9%

Read the rest of this entry »