Over the next two weeks, we’ll be previewing each of the Pac-12 teams as we head into the season.
UCLA Bruins
Strengths. The Bruins’ biggest strength is in their frontcourt, a big and deep group of talented athletes led by 6’8” junior forward Reeves Nelson and 6’10” sophomore center Josh Smith. The two make a rugged duo that can cause matchup problems for most all of their opponents. North Carolina transfers David and Travis Wear (each listed at 6’10”) join 6’9” junior forward Brendan Lane and 6’10” sophomore center Anthony Stover to provide depth. David Wear will spend a lot of time playing out of position at the three, giving the Bruins an imposing frontline that will cause almost all of their opponents fits on the glass. If Wear can handle guarding smaller, quicker wings, the UCLA front line will be a serious strength.
Reeves Nelson And Joshua Smith Make Up A Formidable Frontcourt Duo
Weaknesses. If head coach Ben Howland’s goal is to get his best players on the court, he’ll have to play a guy like David Wear out of position. With so much depth at the four and five spots, there is no way all of those guys could get playing time if some of them didn’t slide over at times. This could open the Bruins up to being exploited by talented, athletic wings. Additionally, UCLA lacks a deadly three-point shooter. Ideally sophomore off-guard Tyler Lamb could grow into that role, but his jumper is not ready for prime time in that area either. If opposing defenses sag in to either deny the ball to the bigs or pester them once they have the ball, the Bruins lack a perimeter threat to serve as a deterrent. Oh, one last thing: the point guard play of Lazeric Jones and Jerime Anderson tends toward the erratic. Those are probably more significant weaknesses than a major conference contender should have. Read the rest of this entry »
Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences as well as a Pac-12 microsite staffer. You can find him on Twitter @AMurawa.
Reader’s Take I
With only two of the ten players named to last year’s All-Pac-10 team returning, the race for the conference player of the year is wide open.
Top Storylines
Twelve Is The New Ten: After 33 seasons, college basketball fans on the west coast are getting used to calling their conference the Pac-12. With Colorado and Utah along for the ride (and currently taking their lumps in football), gone are the days of the home-and-away round-robin schedule on the basketball side of things. But lest the traditionalists complain too much, it could have been much different, as schools from Oklahoma and Texas (obviously the very definition of “Pacific” states) flirted with changing their allegiance for the second consecutive year before heading back to the Big 12.
Fresh Blood: As mentioned above in our poll question, the conference loses eight of the ten players on last year’s all-Pac-10 team, with just Jorge Gutierrez of Cal and UCLA’s ReevesNelson returning. In other words, it is time for a new set of players to step up and take the reins of the league. The most likely candidates are a talented group of freshman guards – names like Josiah Turner and Nick Johnson at Arizona, Tony Wroten, Jr. at Washington, JabariBrown at Oregon, NormanPowell at UCLA and ChassonRandle at Stanford.
Jorge Gutierrez Is A Lightning Rod Of A Guard For Mike Montgomery's Golden Bears, And Big Things Are Expected.
The Carson Show On Hold. A seventh highly-touted freshman guard, however, is stuck in limbo. Arizona State’s JahiiCarsonhas yet to be cleared for practice while an investigation continues into an online course the 5’10” point guard took this summer at Adams State in Colorado. That school has yet to release his course transcript, and until that happens, Carson is unable to practice with the Sun Devils, making an already difficult situation (being regarded as a savior for a team coming off a 12-19 campaign) even worse.
Hard Times for Kevin Parrom: Sometimes, just when everything is going well, life conspires to deal you a set of circumstances that just suck. It’s not bad enough that Parrom took a couple of bullets on September 24 during a home invasion, while in the Bronx visiting his sick mother. But on October 16, Parrom’s mom then passed away after a long battle with cancer. While both incidents will have lasting effects on Parrom, the bullet wounds are the biggest obstacle to him getting back on the court, with bullet fragments lodged in his right leg, a boot on his right foot, nerve damage and his left hand currently wrapped up to protect lacerations sustained in the attack. Parrom is rehabilitating his injuries and as of this writing, no hard timetable is set for his return. But if anybody is due for a good break or two, Parrom’s the guy. Get well soon, Kevin.
We talked yesterday about Arizona landing a real big fish when center Kaleb Tarczewski announced his commitment to Sean Miller and the Wildcats. But there is still one other huge target out there with a number of Pac-12 schools among the favorites. Shabazz Muhammad, a 6’6” small forward from Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas, is the consensus #1 recruit in the 2012 class. A left-handed scorer from the wing, capable both in the mid-range game and attacking the basket, Muhammad has attracted attention from coaches from all over the country, and has been playing the field so far, keeping his options wide open. Earlier in the year, he had listed nine schools among those still in contention for his services, with three Pac-12 schools ostensibly on the radar: Arizona, UCLA and USC.
Shabazz Muhammad Has The College Basketball World Buzzing
Among many recruiting analysts, UCLA has been seen as a slight favorite (with Kentucky and Duke hot in pursuit), but Muhammad himself has played it close to the vest, refusing to name a favorite. UCLA has been encouraged by the fact that 2012 commitment Jordan Adams is friends with Muhammad and has been giving head coach Ben Howland a helping hand in encouraging his buddy to join him in Westwood. And when Kyle Anderson, another top five 2012 recruit, committed to UCLA in September, speculated was rampant that Anderson’s friendship with Muhammad may also sway the top recruit into becoming a Bruin. However, Muhammad’s father, Ron Holmes, a former USC basketball player who has not been shy about giving his opinion on his son’s recruitment, claimed that neither of those events would necessarily influence his son’s decision.
It’s that time of year in college hoops where every time you turn around, somebody new is offering up their preseason previews. Our own RTC Pac-12 preview will be up early next week, but in the meantime, the Tucson Citizen lists the picks of four different preseason magazines. It is no surprise that Arizona, California, UCLA and Washington are the top four in one order or another in each of the magazines, as they will also be in the RTC preview. To show how much of a toss up it is at the top, three different Wildcats were asked to pick the Pac-12 favorite (excluding UofA) and each one picked a different team.
As part of Jon Rothstein’s preview of the upcoming season, he unveiled his list of the top five “glue guys” in college hoops on Monday, and a couple of Pac-12 players – UCLA’s Reeves Nelson and Cal’s Jorge Gutierrez – made the list. Gutierrez is a no-brainer, as he has repeatedly shown his ability to affect the action on just about any area of the floor, but the Nelson selection may be based on perception more than reality. While he’s definitely a hard worker who rarely leaves much on the floor when he is done, he needs to improve his consistency and his leadership to reach the level of Gutierrez or the other guys on this list.
Yesterday we talked about the faster tempo that Arizona State hopes to play at this season, but they’re not the only team with a style change in the making. Up at Oregon, head coach Dana Altman came to campus with a shell of a roster limited by player defections, and as a result, the 2010-11 Ducks had to play mostly zone defense. But now with a full complement of athletes at his disposal, Altman hopes to turn up the heat defensively.
Down in Westwood, UCLA head coach Ben Howland has made a living preaching toughness and hard-nosed defense. There’s little doubt that this year’s squad is getting put through the grinder in practice already, as three Bruins have sustained concussions so far. Freshman guard Norman Powell took an elbow to the forehead and needed three staples to close a cut, then sophomore center Anthony Stover suffered a concussion last Monday. And this weekend, junior wing De’End Parker took an elbow to the head and sustained a concussion of his own during an intrasquad scrimmage. Hopefully for Bruin fans, UCLA has filled its concussion quotient for the year.
Washington junior center Aziz N’Diaye is expected to play a bigger role for the Huskies this season after his first year of Division I basketball in 2010-11. But another big role for N’Diaye is now on display as he is featured in the new documentary “Elevate” about four Senegalese basketball players trying to make it from the poor West African nation to play basketball in the United States. Virginia seven-footer Assane Sene is the other recognizable name of the bunch, but this international take on “Hoop Dreams” will likely appeal to more than just basketball fans. The film opens in Los Angeles on November 4, with other selected runs around the country. Check out the trailer below.
With the the NBA Draft concluded and the annual coaching and transfer carousels nearing their ends, RTC is rolling out a new series, RTC Summer Updates, to give you a crash course on each Division I conference during the summer months. The latest update comes courtesy of our Pac-12 correspondent, Andrew Murawa.
Reader’s Take #1
Summer Storylines
The More, The Merrier: The Pac-10 is dead. Long live the Pac-12. The conference welcomes in Colorado and Utah for their first season in the conference, the first expansion in the West Coast’s premier conference since Arizona and Arizona State were added 33 years ago. Along with the new teams comes a new schedule – gone is the full home-and-away round robin. While there won’t be divisions in basketball like there are in football, each team will play an 18-game schedule with home and away games against its traditional rival, with six other rotating home-and-away series and four additional single games against the remaining teams. For instance, Colorado and Utah will only play the Southern California schools and the Washington schools once each, while they will play the remainder of the conference twice. While neither of the new schools are expected to make a big splash immediately in the conference, their arrival, coupled with other changes around the conference, such as the huge new $3 billion TV deal with ESPN and Fox that begins in the fall of 2012, makes it an exciting time to be a Pac-12 fan.
Is There A Draft In Here?: Last summer, a big story around the conference was the dearth of Pac-10 players picked in the NBA Draft, as just two players from the conference were selected by NBA teams in 2010. After the 21 players that were picked in the conference between the 2008 and 2009 drafts, that was a precipitous fall. And, back before the season started, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of future high draft picks on the horizon. However, the conference had six players picked in the NBA draft, including three first-rounders and two lottery picks. Derrick Williams, the 2010-11 conference player of the year, led the way, getting snapped up by Minnesota with the #2 overall pick. Unfortunately for teams around the conference, 12 seasons of eligibility were left on the table between those six picks and the two early entries who went undrafted: Stanford’s Jeremy Green and Washington State’s DeAngelo Casto. And as a result, what had looked like a potential big-time bounce-back season for the conference now sees somewhat diminished expectations. Perhaps no team was hit harder by early defections than UCLA, who had Tyler Honeycutt and Malcolm Lee leave a total of three years of eligibility behind to go get second-round NBA draft picks (and the absence of guaranteed contracts that goes with them) at a time when the NBA labor situation is highly in doubt, but Washington State’s loss of Casto and lottery pick Klay Thompson also leaves the Cougars’ situation fuzzy at best.
Replacing Production: Between the early entries to the NBA Draft and departed seniors, the Pac-12 loses its top seven scorers from last season, and 11 of its top 20. Likewise, ten of the top 20 rebounders are gone. However, as always, a new batch of youngsters is ready to show up on campuses this fall and begin contributing immediately. While the Pac-10 inked only nine of the ESPNU top 100 recruits, seven of those players are exciting young guards, all ranked in the top 60 on that list. Arizona leads the way, signing point guard Josiah Turner (#14 overall, according to ESPNU) and Nick Johnson (#21), to go with a couple solid frontcourt signees (Angelo Chol and Sidiki Johnson, #60 and #91, respectively). But Washington (Tony Wroten, Jr., #16), Oregon (JabariBrown, #25), Arizona State (Jahii Carson, #49), UCLA (NormanPowell, #51) and Stanford (ChassonRandle, #59) all have their own big backcourt recruits ready to provide a burst of energy.
Derrick Williams' performances were one of the highlights of the 2010-11 season.
Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 and Mountain West conferences. We will be publishing a series of conference report cards over the next week for conferences that received multiple NCAA bids to recap the conference, grade the teams, and look at the future for the conference.
Conference Recap:
After an awful 2009-10 season in which the Pac-10 had to limp into a second NCAA Tournament bid when Washington hit the gas pedal down the stretch, the four tournament bids the conference received this year was a huge improvement. With Arizona advancing to the Elite Eight, the Pac-10 advanced a team beyond the Sweet 16 for the first time in three seasons, and the conference was a much deeper collection of teams than last year. And without a doubt, that came as a result of the enhanced talent level across the conference. Coming into the season, there were just 17 seniors on rosters across the conference, and the youngsters showed vast improvement this year, notably Derrick Williams (an All-American and national player of the year candidate), Isaiah Thomas, Tyler Honeycutt, and Klay Thompson with several other players making big strides in their games. While the Pac-10 still struggled to gain national respect, it was clear to fans that the level of play is on the rebound from its 2009-2010 nadir.
The Pac-10 was Derrick Williams' personal playground in 2011, and the Wildcats displayed perhaps the most impressive performance of the NCAA Tournament in their dismantling of Duke. (AZ Daily Star/M. Popat)
The big news of the week was clearly Austin Rivers committing to Duke in a move that was surprising not so much for the destination as when he made it, especially given his recent announcement about taking official visits to UNC and Kansas. Coming off last season’s title and with the long list of returning rotation players (including Seth Curry finally becoming eligible) the addition of Rivers has many people in Durham thinking “three-peat”. That might be premature, but it is enough to make people in Chapel Hill and many other college campuses across the nation feel nauseous.
Coming soon to Cameron
John Pelphrey‘s job at Arkansas may be in jeopardy, but the future of the Razorback program seems to be in good hands after Pelphrey landed Ky Madden to go along with a recruiting class that already included B.J. Young and could wind up being a top five class by the time the class of 2011 arrives on campus next fall.
We know that Tom Crean is working hard at getting Indiana back to being a perennial contender in the Big Ten, but we are beginning to wonder about his methods. A few weeks ago we reported that Crean had secured a commitment from James Blackmon Jr., a rising freshman, from near Bloomington. Now, Crean has secured another class of 2014 commitment, this time from Trey Lyles, one of Blackmon’s AAU teammates. To be fair, we don’t know much about Lyles other than the fact that he is 6’9 coming out of middle school, which we are assuming meant that he towered over his competition. Still we find the trend a little disturbing and have delved into this issue two years ago. It will be interesting to see how many of these commitments are actually offered scholarships when their senior year rolls around three years from now. As for now, here’s a look at Indiana’s future below:
We couldn’t actually find any decent footage of Lyles so you will just have to settle for the photo below (he’s the tall one):
Trey Lyles towers over his middle school competition (Credit: IndyStar.com / Joe Vitti)
