The college basketball season isn’t quite over yet but the page has already turned for the Pac-12. Once Oregon was rudely bounced from the tournament by Oklahoma last weekend, it was time for the always exciting period when coaches are hired and fired, players declare for the NBA Draft, and some others decide on a change of scenery. The Pac-12 has been full of these changes in the past two weeks — from Stanford hiring a new coach to Washington’s precocious freshmen hiring agents to a multitude of players transferring — there’s been a lot of action.

Let’s break down some of the moves that have already been announced and what they mean for their respective teams.

Jerod Haase Hired by Stanford

Stanford Coach Jerod Haase Has Won A Lot In C-USA But Can He Do It In The PAC-12 Too?

Stanford isn’t the can’t-miss job that many think it is, but it still feels like the Cardinal reached in its replacement of Johnny Dawkins. Haase came up as an assistant to Roy Williams and made headlines when his team at UAB beat Iowa State last season, but he has only been to the NCAA Tournament once and his three seasons of 20+ wins are as much a result of Conference USA being awful as his coaching prowess. Furthermore, advanced statistics have not been impressed with the Blazers at all despite their several-year win totals. The former Cal graduate and Bay Area native will bring energy and excitement to the Stanford program, but the jury is out on whether he can coach at this level.

Dejounte Murray and Marquese Chriss Declare for NBA Draft

It isn’t surprising that Murray and Chriss have decided to test the waters after excellent freshman seasons at Washington. It also wouldn’t have been surprising if they had decided to stay in the draft after gathering enough information. What is surprising is that both signed with agents almost immediately, effectively ending their college careers before March was even finished. Both players have a shot at at the lottery, which will mean that their decisions are probably good ones. But Washington could have been poised for a special season next year with the duo back in Seattle. Now, Lorenzo Romar’s rebuilding project looks to be moving a bit slower now.

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Every Pac-12 team is now halfway through its conference schedule, and to say that this conference is tight is quite the understatement. There are currently five teams within a game of first place, and conference stalwarts Arizona and UCLA are not among that group. Let’s take a spin around the league and evaluate where the league stands as it makes the turn for the home stretch.

Legitimate Contenders For Regular Season Championship

Chris Boucher, Casey Benson And The Ducks Are Halfway Home To A Pac-12 Title (AP Photo/Chris Pietsch)

Hey, this is easy, right? You just take those five teams sitting at 6-3 or better and boom, we’re done, right? No, that’s too easy. We’ve got to take a stand. So, let’s take a stand and name Oregon, Utah and USC as the biggest threats to take the title. The Ducks, conference leaders at 7-2, are the obvious one. I’m personally interested in bragging about the fact that I’ve had them as the conference favorite since I first looked at the league back in mid-summer, but Dana Altman’s got a combination of experience, upside, athleticism, intelligence, quickness and length that is the Platonic ideal of a college basketball team (little known fact: Plato was a huge hoop-head). As for Utah, it took some early lumps but has taken advantage of a lull in the schedule to reel off five straight wins. They’ve still got tough roadies ahead to the Oregon and Los Angeles schools, but Brandon Taylor is starting to knock in shots and there are few players in the conference who can handle Jakob Poeltl in the post. The final true contender is USC, and that isn’t a phrase that anybody expected to be written this February. But it’s for real. Andy Enfield’s squad is undeniably talented and beginning to figure out how to win. The Trojans’ schedule down the stretch is insane (vs. UCLA, at the Arizona schools, home against Utah and Colorado, at Cal and Stanford, finishing at home against the Oregon schools), but this team has already shown it can play with anybody in the league. Notably missing in this space is two-time defending champion Arizona. The Wildcats aren’t out of it at just two games back, but this year’s group just doesn’t measure up to the type of Wildcats we’ve grown accustomed to.

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As the rest of us file back for what promises to be a dreary work week, conference play in college basketball is well under way. In the opening weekend, Arizona re-established itself as the team to beat while California reclaimed some of its considerable preseason hype. Washington, a team no one picked to do anything this season, is unbeaten after two games. While Utah, a team several analysts picked to win the conference, is still searching for its first conference victory. The opening weekend of action didn’t reveal anything particularly enlightening about any one team, but it signaled to Pac-12 fans that they are in for a wild couple of months.

Worst Way to Finish Off a Game: There is no way that Utah should have lost to Stanford on Friday night, and especially not at the free throw line. But the conference’s best foul shooting team entering the game made just 11-of-24 freebies, including four key misses down the stretch in regulation and two more in overtime to gift wrap a comeback win for the Cardinal. This loss was an especially tough pill to swallow because the Utes subsequently lost to California on Sunday (despite shooting better than 80 percent from the line, incidentally). A loss in Berkeley is understandable on an at-large resume, but Stanford is expected to finish at the bottom of the conference. Utah is now forced to dig itself out of a self-made 0-2 hole — certainly not the way the team wanted to start the 2016.

Jakob Poeltl and the Utes Did Not Start Pac-12 Play The Way  They Envisioned. (AP)

Worst Job of Keeping It Together: At the risk of sounding sanctimonious, Arizona State head coach Bobby Hurley looked a little foolish in his ejection from the tail end of the Sun Devils’ weekend loss to Arizona. Hurley’s passion and fire make an impact on his team and are a big reason why Arizona State is overachieving this season, but his team still had a chance to win until his antics erased that with two quick technical fouls. He shouldn’t have to apologize for his fiery personality, as it is a big part of his success as a coach, but it rings somewhat hollow when he simultaneously claims that he “always wants the spotlight on the guys in the game.” Some may argue that there is a fine line between toning it down and losing their edge, but that notion too rings hollow. Hurley should be able to keep the chip on his shoulder without making a spectacle that overshadows his team’s resilience.

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Here at the Pac-12 microsite we are hardly immune to the allure of a cheesy holiday-themed post, and so in the spirit of the season, we created a wish list for each team in the conference. Although none of the teams are even close to a finished product and it may be too early in the season to thoughtfully examine strengths and weaknesses, everyone has played enough games that we can start to draw worthwhile conclusions from what we’ve seen. As with any holiday wish list, there are some wants and needs that are easier to satisfy than others but hey, you have to dream big when gifts are involved.

Arizona: Another Shooter

Arizona Could Stand To See Mark Tollefsen Dial In His Perimeter Shot. (USA Today Sports)

Even without post anchor Kaleb Tarczewski, the Wildcats have been and will continue to be the conference’s best defensive team. But the offense has been a work in progress primarily because the outside shooting has been ugly. The team is shooting just 31 percent from downtown, down from 38 percent last season and Gabe York is pretty much the only one making shots behind the three-point line with any regularity. York has been much better of late and is one of the most dangerous shooters in the country when he gets hot, but he is pretty much the only one on the roster who can shoot. The big reason why the Wildcats rank near the bottom of the country in 3PA/FGA is because Sean Miller knows his team can’t really shoot it from there. The best hope is that Mark Tollefson rebounds from a slow start and becomes the 36 percent three-pointer shooter he was coming into the season.

Arizona State: a Personal Offensive Coach for Savon Goodman

Goodman is almost as bad at shooting and passing as he is good at everything else he does on the court. He is a vicious dunker, a suffocating defender, one of the better rebounding wing players in the entire country and a good finisher at the rim. But, like many freak athletes on the basketball court, as he moves farther away from the basket, his effectiveness disappears. Goodman has missed all seven of the three-pointers he has attempted in his collegiate career and he is a career 57 percent free throw shooter. Also, his assist rate is below 5.0, which means once he gets the ball, he isn’t looking to get rid of it again. Goodman’s offensive issues are a good microcosm for Arizona State’s offensive issues. The team is athletic and defends hard, but they don’t have any truly skilled offensive players. Goodman will likely never become a consistent three-point threat but imagine how good he and the Sun Devils could be if he develops some feel for his shot.

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When it happened in a season-opening win against Texas, it was okay because it came in an exciting early victory. When it happened again a week later in a blowout win over Penn, it didn’t seem like a big deal because, well, it’s the Ivy League. But then it happened in a loss to Gonzaga, and it started to seem like it actually mattered. When, the very next day, it happened again in a loss in the rematch with the Longhorns, there was no denying the problem. And now, as the team enters the soft part of its non-conference schedule, it’s time to stage the intervention. The first step is admitting the issue, so let’s come out and say it plainly – Washington has a fouling problem.

Washington’s Foul Trouble Is Not Fun For Lorenzo Romar. (The Seattle Times)

Let’s start with the basics. As a team, the Huskies have committed 167 personal fouls through six games. Focusing specifically on the rotation (anyone playing at least 10 minutes per game), nine players are responsible for 163 of those personal fouls and when we do the math (18 fouls per rotation player and six games played), every member of the Washington rotation is essentially committing three fouls per game. As a result of all this hacking, the Huskies have allowed opponents to shoot an unacceptable amount of free throws. At this point in the season, the national average for free-throw rate (FTA/FGA) is 37.1 percent. The free throw rate for Huskies’ opponents this season has been 50.3 percent, which is 312^th in the country. Only three teams in Power 5 conferences (TCU, Missouri and West Virginia) have been more generous when it comes to letting opponents camp out at the charity stripe. Read the rest of this entry »

The season is back and it is time for what will be a recurring Monday feature here — Bests and Worsts. We usually prefer to spend our weekends watching basketball and save the analysis for the following week so we figured this is the best way to recap some of the good and bad of each weekend. For starters, two teams (UCLA and Stanford) played two games this weekend and everyone else played a single one. One team (Washington) won a potential resume-builder while two other teams (Arizona State and UCLA) lost games that they hope everyone will forget by early February. Let’s take a look at what went down.

Jakob Poeltl Picked Up Where He Left Off In A Season-Opening Win. (Utah Basketball)

• Best Early Case For Player of the Year Honors: There is little doubt at this point that Jakob Poeltl is going to be a lottery pick as soon as the end of this season, but for now, let’s make sure to celebrate his outstanding versatility before he is gone. The sophomore filled up the box score with 26 points on 10-of-13 shooting, 11 rebounds and four blocks as the Utes’ frontcourt overwhelmed intrastate foe Southern Utah. The Thunderbirds will probably be one of the least physically imposing teams Poeltl goes up against this season, but if his teammates can continue to shoot well from behind the three-point arc, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a Poeltl 20/10 become a regular occurrence in Salt Lake City.

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The first weekend is in the books. Everybody’s played at least once and some teams have even gotten a couple games under their belts. There were some positive surprises (hello, Washington!) and some early disappointments (oh, UCLA), but we’ve got already plenty to talk about. Let’s take a spin around the conference and give a sentence or two on every team, while expanding on those teams that have done something — whether positive or negative — to deserve a little more.

Arizona: Ater ofnly one game against middling competition, I’m ready to call the battle for the Wildcats’ starting point guard position over. In something of a surprise, it’s Kadeem Allen. The former JuCo Player of the Year was known as a scoring off-guard coming to Tucson, but after spending his redshirt year playing the point, he’s leaped over sophomore Parker Jackson-Cartwright on the depth chart. There will be some bumps in the road for the new team orchestrator, but at 6’3” (compared to Jackson-Cartwright’s 5’9”), he allows Sean Miller to put more talent on the floor.

Kadeem Allen Is The One at Point Guard U?

Arizona State: The Sun Devils’ 2-of-17 mark from beyond the three-point arc stands out in their opening night loss against Sacramento State, but more concerning might be the fact that they were outrebounded by a team that was awful on the glass last season. Still, we may look back on this game in three months and see it as just a weird blip.

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In the next three weeks leading up to season tipoff, the Pac-12 microsite will be evaluating each of the league’s 12 teams. Today, we head to Seattle.

Washington Huskies

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been a little too intimidated to start a preview on the Huskies until now. With eight newcomers and just three returnees on the roster, just about everything is going to be new in Seattle this season. Back in 2011-12, Washington won 14 league games en route to the Pac-12 regular season title yet still missed the NCAA Tournament. From there it has been all downhill: back-to-back 9-9 seasons were followed by last year’s 5-13 disaster. In other words, wiping the slate mostly clean and starting over may actually be the best thing head coach Lorenzo Romar can do to save his program.

Blowing It All Up And Starting Over May Have Been Lorenzo Romar’s Best Bet (Elaine Thompson, AP)

Strengths/Weaknesses. Previews typically break into two categories for strengths and weaknesses: one detailing what a program can lean on; one detailing what they need to shore up. In this case, the biggest thing going for Washington may also be its biggest weakness: this complete reboot. Last year’s team was plagued by poor chemistry, infighting and, perhaps worst of all, mediocre talent. In comes that group of eight newcomers to join two sophomores and a senior. If everything goes right, it can be an empowering experience for this new collection of players because there is a lot of talent here. They don’t enter a program where roles have been predetermined and a culture already established. This new group can create the foundation for a new era of Huskies’ hoops. It’s a gamble for sure, but success means setting the table for Romar’s second act in Seattle. If it fails? The show will be closing and Romar’s next role will be in a new theater. Read the rest of this entry »