Saturday, March 20 (all CBS)
1:05pm - Villanova vs. St. Mary's
3:20pm - Butler vs. Murray St
3:35pm - Tennessee vs. Ohio
5:40pm - Kansas vs. Northern Iowa
5:45pm - Baylor vs. Old Dominion
5:50pm - New Mexico vs. Washington
8:10pm - Kansas St vs. BYU
8:15pm - Kentucky vs. Wake Forest
In our attempt to bring you the most comprehensive Championship Week coverage anywhere, RTC is covering several of the conference tournaments from the sites. One of our RTC correspondents is at the Pac-10 Tournament. In addition to live-blogging select games throughout the tournament, he will post a nightly diary with his thoughts on each day’s action. Here is his submission for the semifinal games.
Washington 79, Stanford 64
It’s not difficult to see why Washington (along with Cal) was picked at the top of the Pac-10 this season. There’s a lot of bounce in those legs. Basketball is such an athletic sport, it’s easy to be enticed when you see a team like UW sailing around the arena like they are on pogo sticks. But it’s a game that also requires strategic use of your resources, and wanton jumping around won’t get you very far against teams that understand the game better than you do.
I referred to this above, but the athleticism that Washington has is among the top fifteen or twenty we’ve seen this year. Lorenzo Romar definitely tries to recruit a certain type of player for his system, which makes their defensive shortcomings all the more frustrating. They’ll turn you over, but they just don’t guard people in the halfcourt like they could or should given the athletes at their disposal. Supposing they committed to defense, they’d be a top ten team and the bubble would be left to other teams to worry about.
Lorenzo Romar was asked about the bubble situation after the game and he said that he doesn’t worry about it much but that he definitely wants to take the decision out of the NCAA Selection Committee’s hands. Personally, I think they’ve done enough at this point, and both Zach Hayes and Lunardi agree.
I know the Stanford band is supposed to be quirky and weird and that’s the point of it all — total irreverence as opposed to what Cal does. But man, it’s almost like they had to have tryouts to find the weirdest-looking bunch they could find over there. The tree, however, is, and remains awesome. Love the tree.
Love the Tree
Highlight of the night was UW forward Matthew Bryan-Amaning tomahawking a dunk in the second half over Drew Shiller. Check it out…
Talk about deja vu. That dunk was remarkably similar to one that MBA threw on Shiller earlier this year. Hey Shiller, stop trying to take charges under the rim, fella! This isn’t Duke.
We’re back at the Pac-10 Tournament for semifinal Friday night at the Staples Center. Unlike most of the major conference tourneys that get to the semifinal stage, only one team — the Cal Bears — is safely into the NCAA Tournament. The other three — UCLA, Washington and Stanford — are looking to steal an automatic bid from another team somewhere out there sweating in bubble-land. For UCLA and Stanford in particular, it’s win or go home, as both teams come into tonight with losing records and will end their season with the next loss. In the first semifinal, Cal will face UCLA in an interesting battle in that even though the Bears are the top seed, UCLA will undoubtedly have the home crowd advantage. Ben Howland teams rarely miss the postseason and the two teams split the season series, so we should expect the Bruins to come hard at the Bears in this one tonight. In the second game, Washington is one of Zach Hayes’ last four teams in at this point, but the Huskies don’t want to put the committee in a tough position with a cinderella like Stanford continuing on to the Pac-10 championship game. For what it’s worth, Lorenzo Romar’s team found the matchups with Stanford very beneficial, beating the Cardinal by 17 in Palo Alto and 33 in Seattle. Join us tonight for a couple of key games with respect to the bubble picture on RTC Live!
In our attempt to bring you the most comprehensive Championship Week coverage anywhere, RTC is covering several of the conference tournaments from the sites. One of our RTC correspondents is at the Pac-10 Tournament. In addition to live-blogging select games throughout the tournament, he will post a nightly diary with his thoughts on each day’s action. Here is his submission for the quarterfinal games.
UCLA 75, Arizona 69
I know that this is a horrific year for the Pac-10, but in terms of the historic caliber of these two programs and the fact that one of them is literally 10.1 miles away from this gym, it’s more than a little disappointing that the lower bowl of the Staples Center wasn’t even filled at tipoff. Seriously, any of the top eight teams has a shot at winning this event, and with it, the auto-bid. Bruins and Cats fans need to step up a little more.
I’ve seen UCLA play live a handful of times this season, and I continue to be amazed at how unathletic this team is. How did that happen so quickly to a team that could boast top-drawer athleticism in the form of Arron Afflalo, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Darren Collison, Russell Westbrook, etc.?
Cool shirt of the day in the Arizona section… “The Streak Matters…” referencing UA’s 25-year streak of consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances that is in dire jeopardy short of a Pac-10 championship this weekend. The guys say that they meet up from all over the country every year to watch the Pac-10 Tournament and have a blast together. The shirts are to make sure that head coach Sean Miller understands that it’s not a ‘new day’ just because he’s in Tucson now — apparently Miller had made some quotes near the start of the season that they found dismissive of their illustrious history. Interesting take from the Arizona fans there.
Arizona Fans Will Need to Start a New Streak
I continue to have a decent-sized mancrush on freshman forward Derrick Williams for Arizona. 16/7 per game on 59% shooting; he’s rarely out of position, takes care of the ball, draws fouls like a mofo, and has tremendous hands. He could be one of their all-timers if he sticks around for 3-4 years.
Nic Wise tweeted after the Arizona loss today… in a word: disappointment. That about sums it up for a senior losing in a tournament setting.
California 90, Oregon 74
Jerome Randle is a really fun player to watch play this game. His bomb from 25 feet followed by a steal and a nifty reverse layup off the ball-around-the-back move was spectacular and happened directly in front of me. I’ve seen a lot of really good guards play this year, but few have the ability to regularly catch fire from all over the court like he does. Nice kid, too.
It’s the Randle show in the first half here at the Staples Center. with 6:30 left, he already has 20 points, which puts him on a pace for a 70-pt afternoon. I don’t think I’ve seen a single shot of his touch the rim yet today. Backcourt mate Patrick Christopher has at least hit rim a little bit, but he’s also blowing up to a certain extent — 14 in the first half on 4-5 threes. When these two guys are on their game from outside, few teams in America can score with them. The problem is that good defenses can neutralize one or both of them for parts of the game. When that happens, the Bears are in trouble.
The question I’ve had all year when watching Cal play is how far can a team that relies so abundantly on four perimeter-style players go into the postseason? It can be done, but it’s not easy. Villanova has proven that a four-guard set can work pretty well so long as your guards are willing to be tough inside and not give up anything easy. But what about Cal? I don’t find their perimeter attack nearly as strong as those Nova teams, nor do they defend anywhere near as well. Still, it’ll depend on the matchup, but I don’t think they can win more than one NCAA Tournament game, if that. They would need to play a team that mirrors themselves in terms of perimeter play; otherwise I think they’re likely one-and-done.
Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-10 Conference.
Final Standings
California (13-5, 21-9)
Arizona State (12-6, 22-9)
Washington (11-7, 21-9)
Arizona (10-8, 16-14)
USC (8-10, 16-14)
Oregon State (8-10, 14-16)
UCLA (8-10, 13-17)
Stanford (7-11, 13-17)
Oregon ( 7-11, 15-15)
Washington State (6-12, 16-14)
Conference Awards
Player of the Year: Quincy Pondexter, Sr, Washington. Pondexter won the Pac-10 Player of the Week award a record five times this season while averaging 20 points and eight rebounds a game (second and third in the conference, respectively) for the third place Huskies.
Coach of the Year: Herb Sendek, Arizona State. After losing two starters from last year’s team to the NBA, the Sun Devils were expected to take a big step back in the conference. Instead, Sendek kept his team in the race for the regular season title until the last weekend and put his squad in position to possibly earn an NCAA tournament bid.
Freshman of the Year: Derrick Williams, Arizona. The freshman from La Mirada High School in Southern California averaged 15.7 point and seven rebounds per game for the Wildcats and connected on 58.8% of his field goal attempts to help coach Sean Miller post a winning record in his first year in Tucson.
Defensive Player of the Year: Seth Tarver, Oregon State. Tarver led the Pac-10 with 2.3 steals per game and led his Beaver squad in rebounding, all while manning the point in coach Craig Robinson’s zone defense.
Stanford tries to keep its undefeated home record intact (5-0) today against the Washington Huskies. The Cardinal needed all its Maples Mojo on Thursday to overcome an 18-point first-half deficit and upend Washington State 60-58, and will be facing a Washington team desperate to hold on to Pac-10 title hopes after losing to Cal 93-81 on Thursday to fall to 6-6 in the conference. Game time is 5 pm Pacific and RTC Livewill be there for our third trip to The Farm this season. We hope to see you there!
RTC contributor and bracketologist Zach Hayes will deliver ten permeating thoughts every Tuesday as the season progresses.
1. Other than Kansas students, graduates, former players and all former or current residents of Lawrence, was there anyone in this fine country of ours rooting for the #1 Jayhawks to beat a depleted Tennessee team, a group of kids and a stunned head coach that just dealt with the suspension and/or dismissal of four of its regular rotation players? All of the events that occurred in that two-hour window in Knoxville Sunday was a release of pent-up frustration and anxiety from a tumultuous week in which Tennessee was considered a prime threat to upend favorite Kentucky in the SEC one day and counted out as a SEC contender that must scratch and claw the final two months for an NCAA berth the next. Renaldo Woolridge banking in a three, the Vols maintaining their lead with Wayne Chism and J.P. Prince on the bench with four fouls, the coach’s son Steven taking a critical charge, a miracle Skyler McBee (one of three walk-ons playing substantial minutes) leaning trey that iced the game, and coach Bruce Pearl aiding the Volunteer mascot in waving the orange Tennessee flag while the sounds of Rocky Top reverberated throughout Thompson-Boling Arena summed up what college basketball should be about. Bill Self pointed this out after the game, but there are some moments during a season when a team officially becomes a team instead of a group of individuals. Even though Pearl would gladly reset the timer to New Year’s Eve and prevent four scholarship players from getting in that car, sometimes it takes a catastrophic occurrence that truly tests the mettle of a unit for them to band together and accomplish lofty goals. I think it’s fair to say Tennessee became a team Sunday night.
2. As long as Mike Anderson is employing his Forty Minutes of Hell hellacious press on demoralized opponents, especially on a home floor where his team has won 30 consecutive games, Missouri should never be totally counted out of the Big 12 race. Losing DeMarre Carroll, Leo Lyons and Matt Lawrence from an Elite 8 squad isn’t easy to overcome, and certainly the ceiling for the Tigers isn’t nearly as high, but the ultra-talented and quick Mizzou backcourt should have enough firepower to carry them to an NCAA berth. Missouri carried an impressive 12-3 record into their Big 12 opener with #10 Kansas State Saturday, yet their overall resume wasn’t incredibly awe-inspiring with their best wins over Old Dominion, Illinois, Georgia and Oregon and opportunities lost in defeats at the hands of Richmond, Vanderbilt and Oral Roberts. The win Saturday was clearly a statement that Missouri will be a contending force in the Big 12 for that #3 spot behind Texas and Kansas. Anderson looks to have a workable combination with experienced seniors J.T. Tiller and Zaire Taylor (evident by Taylor’s tie-breaking 3 with under a minute to play) making plays in late-game situations, a promising sophomore backcourt duo of Kim English and Marcus Denmon carrying most of the scoring load, and a defensive unit that ranks seventh overall in D efficiency, first in turnovers forced and gives Missouri a fighting chance on any night.
RTC Live is making a habit of heading over to Berkeley for games at Cal, but if we keep getting games like we had on Wednesday night at Haas Pavilion versus UCLA — a 1-pt game UCLA won with 1.8 seconds remaining — we’ll keep going back. Tonight the Bears welcome the surprise team of the Pac-10, Kevin O’Neill’s USC Trojans. As you know, USC learned earlier this week that, despite their surprisingly strong pre-conference record, they would not be playing in the postseason this year as a result of the OJ Mayo/Tim Floyd/Rodney Guillory fiasco. Somewhat predictably, they immediately lost their next game by one point at Stanford. Now that the players have had a little more time to digest the news, we’re expecting a much more focused Mike Gerrity, Alex Stepheson and company tonight. As for Cal, they’ll try to recover from a game against the Bruins that they obviously felt they should have won. Jerome Randle will try to get his shooting touch back, as he only had 11 points on 2-11 shooting in 41 minutes of action, and they will undoubtedly have their hands full with the sticky USC defense as both teams seek to avoid a second loss in the conference. Join us tonight (late-night on the east coast) for some Pac-10 hoops!
Can USC keep its spot atop the Pac-10 Conference following its self-imposed ban on post-season play? Can Stanford shake off a 92-66 pasting by archrival Cal last week and even up its own Pac-10 record? These questions and others will be answered when 6-7 Stanford hosts Southern Cal and its eight-game, Mike Gerrity-led winning streak on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. PT. The game will be the first since USC announced its own punishment for recruiting violations concerning departed star O.J. Mayo. Before the ban was announced USC ran the table last weekend on Arizona and Arizona State to go 2-0 in conference play. Stanford has been up and down all year, beating Virginia and taking Kentucky to the wire earlier this year, but coming into this game having dropped four of five. It’ll be very interesting to see how the Trojans respond to their disappointing news at Maples Pavilion this evening.
The Debacle in Hinkle. #17 Butler 69, Xavier 68. The story over the weekend was the bizarre and (some say) unconscionable ending to the Butler-Xavier game on Saturday afternoon. If you somehow missed it, check out our post on the subject from last night. We pretty much agree that the referee crew followed the rules as they’re written, but that the rules as they’re written pretty much suck in a situation such as this. RTC Live was there, and as our correspondent wrote at the time:
That would be one ballsy crew to take a full second OFF the clock against a visitor down by 1 point. HUGE controversy WOW…. I have been doing bball for years and I cannot believe that they just did that?!?!?!?!?!”
Ballsy they were, but also correct by the letter of the law. Unfortunately for Xavier and Chris Mack, the Musketeers were left holding the bag when a timing error led them to believe they’d have a final shot to win the game. The NCAA needs to step up and immediately clarify this rule, including what kind of stopwatch can and cannot be used to estimate the time so that we’re not faced with an equally ridiculous ending on a much bigger stage later this year.
Jerry’s Joint. #2 Texas 103, #10 UNC 90. The featured game of the weekend at Jerry’s World known as the new-and-improved-to-a-ridiculous-degree Cowboys Stadium showed why many people are very high on Rick Barnes’ Texas team to cut down the nets in April. UT put four players in the 20+ points column, including huge dub-dubs from seniors Damion James (25/15) and Dexter Pittman (23/15) to go along with Avery Bradley’s 20/4 assts/3 stls and J’Covan Brown’s 21/5/3 assts. Showing the depth that Barnes now has at his disposal, much ballyhooed transfer Jai Lucas (recently eligible) only played six minutes and recorded zero points. He’d start for most of the teams in the Top 25 from day one. UNC’s Ed Davis was the only Carolina player who seemed comfortable with the waves of Texas players inside, as he blew up for 21/9/4 blks for one of his best performances of the year. Texas will get another test on Tuesday of this week as Michigan State visits Austin, while UNC will head back home for a few easier games prior to the start of the ACC in early January. We’re still worried about UNC’s point guard play, but we’d imagine that Texas is going to make a lot of pretty good teams look bad over the course of this season. That team is loaded!
The JumboTron Dwarfs the Court (AP/Tony Gutierrez)
Gonz-awfulness. #7 Duke 76, #15 Gonzaga 41. In a game all too reminiscent of other early-season blowouts that Duke has administered on overrated teams, the Devils completely overwhelmed the Zags defensively to, as Mark Few put it after the game, “woodshed” his team on Saturday afternoon at MSG. Duke’s defense held Gonzaga to a mere fifteen FGs for the game, 28% shooting, a single three-pointer and a quarter-century team low of 41 points. Despite all the hype for the Duke bigs coming into the season, it’s been the backcourt play of Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith, combining for 36 PPG, 7 RPG, and 10 APG that has truly driven this team to have the look as one of the best teams in America this year. Scheyer’s ridiculous A:TO ratio of 5.8 to 1 actually went down after two TOs in this one, but his 20/5/8 assts more than made up for the miscue. Smith added 24/3/3 assts, and we’re going to spare talking about the Gonzaga awfulness since not a single Zag got into double figures on the day.
Shot of the Weekend. Cornell 91, Davidson 88 (OT). Ryan Wittman’s 30-footer at the buzzer in overtime gave the Big Red its eighth win of the year and a shot at a Big East team (St. John’s) on Monday night at Madison Square Garden. Lost in the heroics and glee of Wittman’s shot was the fact that it wouldn’t have even been possible had Louis Dale not hit a driving layup with 0.7 seconds remaining in regulation. Cornell’s only two losses this year were against Big East teams (Seton Hall and Syracuse), so this will likely be the Ivy League favorite’s best chance to get a huge win this season (Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse is not realistic). We haven’t been able to locate a video of this shot yet, but if you see one, let us know.
SEC Sucktitude. A week ago, we were ready to start believing that the SEC is much-improved this year. Then the SEC East craps itself on Saturday and Sunday. We’re reserving judgment for now, which of course means we really think this league is terrible and deserves only one bid (ok, not really).
Northwestern attempts to continue its miracle season on Saturday against Stanford. Yes, the Wildcats have never been to the NCAA Tournament, but an 8-1 record has caused the dream to live on in Evanston this season. Welsh-Ryan Arena is hosting two schools noted more for their academics than their athletics. Stanford has struggled to a 5-4 record this season, but the Cardinal are coming off a close loss to Oklahoma State earlier this week. Forward Landry Fields is a do-everything forward that can light up the scoreboard, he leads Stanford with 22.9 points per game and 8.8 rebounds per game. Northwestern has been bombing opponents out of the gym lately by dropping a plethora of threes. Outstanding junior guard Michael Thompson leads the team in scoring at 17.2 points per game, but it’s a balanced attack that gets the job done for the Wildcats. You could watch this exciting game on the Big Ten Network, but no matter what you should follow along here for an entertaining look at the game and the post-game press conference.
Upset of the Night.UAB 64, Cincinnati 47. Hangover, anyone? Three days after playing the game of the year in the Crosstown Shootout against Xavier, Cincinnati travels to Alabama, shoots miserably, and falls 12 points short of their previous season low. No disrespect to the Blazers, though; they were responsible for more than their share of the Bearcats’ lackluster showing. UAB was obviously the fresher team, coming off of a 12-day stretch with no games, a time they used to improve themselves on the defensive side of things. UAB coach Mike Davis said afterward, “We knew how important it was for us to come out and really play with a lot of intensity on defense. It was the best performance we’ve had all season on defense.” The combination of fatigue (both mental and physical) and UAB defense forced UC into a 31.7% shooting night, including an atrocious 3-22 (13.6%) from behind the three-point arc. The Blazers weren’t exactly lacking on offense, either. Elijah Millsap was formidable, stepping up with 22 points and 15 boards, and Howard Crawford added 14/5. Dion Dixon, the Bearcats’ only player in double-figures (13/3), minimized the possiblity of a post-Xavier hangover when asked about it after the game, saying, “That didn’t have anything to do with it. We’re a young team, we haven’t played many games on the road.” Really? It’s true, not all of them are major contributors, but eight of UC’s 14 players are juniors or seniors. And five of their nine games this year have been away from their home floor. The most damning evidence that the Bearcats’ minds and bodies weren’t totally into this one, though, is that Cincy came in as the 10th best rebounding team in the nation, averaging 40.2 a game. UAB ranks 179th (32.6 RPG). Tonight UAB owned the boards, 44 to 29. No doubt, Cincinnati will be back, but it was UAB, now 9-1, who served notice to the rest of the nation tonight.
UAB Drove Around Cincy All Night (AP/Butch Dill)
RTC Live. Oklahoma State 71, Stanford 70. RTC Live visited Maples Pavilion for the first time this evening, and although the fans weren’t all that excitable throughout the game, we were treated with a near-miraculous finish as Stanford hung around just long enough to have a shot in the air to win this one. It didn’t happen, as Andrew Zimmermann’s drive to the left and subsequent shot attempt went long and fell harmlessly off the glass into the hands of an OSU player, but for most of this game it appeared that the Cowboys were the far superior team, so the fact that Stanford was even in that position had to be a positive for Johnny Dawkins’ team. The two stars for the respective teams both had big nights — OSU’s James Anderson dropped 28/6/3 assts, including several very difficult three-point plays the old-fashioned way and a few deep threes the modern way in the second half. Stanford’s Landry Fields had 22/12/4 assts to keep the pace, and it was his playmaking down the stretch that led to open looks for Stanford to crawl back into the game. Dawkins has to be kicking himself a little bit, though, as the Cardinal committed 11 fewer fouls than Oklahoma State, shot thirteen more FTs, yet only earned four more points from the stripe — that’s what 12-24 will do to you. It was OSU’s second-half three-point shooting (6-12) that gave the Cowboys as much as a 15-pt lead, but Stanford’s Jeremy Green (19/7) stepped up with a few timely shots to keep his team within striking distance. We came away not very impressed with either team tonight, but clearly Oklahoma State should feel good about itself in getting a road win, even one against a Pac-10 team with half the fans not in the building tonight.
Hello again everybody, it feels like it’s been a long layoff since we last did an RTC Live, but truth be told, it’s only been three days. Still, by our count, this will be our 49th RTC Live game of the season, and we’re only about five weeks strong. Tonight we’ll be heading to a new venue (for us), Stanford’s Maples Pavilion, for the eleventh game of the Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series, which so far the Big 12 has dominated by a score of 8-2. Both of these teams come into tonight’s game with question marks. For the home team, Stanford has played up and down all season, losing games at San Diego and vs. Oral Roberts, yet taking the now-unbeaten and super-talented Kentucky Wildcats to overtime in the Cancun Challenge (a game that Stanford should have won). Senior forward Landry Fields is their do-it-all player, coming into this game averaging 23/8/3 assts/3 stls per game as a high-volume contributor in both minutes and shots. Sophomore guard Jeremy Green has become Johnny Dawkins’ second option, coming into this one averaging 15/4 and over three treys a game this year. As for Oklahoma State, the Cowboys come into this game at 8-1 overall, but they lost their only true road game badly at Tulsa two weeks ago. James Anderson is the foil to Landry, averaging 20/7 from the wing and featuring a vast array of athletic moves that create scoring opportunities. That matchup should be an interesting one all night. Maples is not an easy place to play when the fans are engaged, so this one (simulcast on FSN) should be a great environment for some December college hoops. Join us for all the action tonight.
Who Else is Rooting for 12-0? The Big 12/Pac-10 Hardwood Series started tonight (ok, officially it started Sunday when Nebraska defeated USC 52-49, but the bulk of games are over the next four days), and given just how horrible the Pac-10 has been so far this year, there is nothing at all surprising about the Big 12 sweeping tonight’s games to go to 4-0 in the Series. Can the Big 12 sweep this entire event? It would be one of the all-time PWNDs if the west coast ballers fail to win a single game, and from our quick analysis, this is a possible, if not plausible, scenario. In looking at the remaining schedule, there are a couple of sure losses (Kansas at UCLA; Oregon at Missouri), one likely loss (Washington State at Kansas State), three more games where (according to Sagarin’s predictor) the Big 12 team will be favored (Arizona at Oklahoma; Oklahoma State at Stanford; Colorado at Oregon State), and two other games where — admit it — you wouldn’t be shocked if the Big 12 team pulled out two road wins (Iowa State at California; Texas A&M at Washington). Our curiosity got the better of us thinking about this (see below), and using the Sagarin spreads (which we realize are not fully interrelated yet, but should still give a decent ballpark estimate), we determined that there’s a <1% chance of the Big 12 sweeping the remaining games. It’s the Iowa State and Texas A&M road games that really hurt, but honestly, we don’t have a lot of faith in any Pac-10 school at this point. Anyway, that’s the math, but our general sense is that the odds of a sweep are in reality a little greater than that.
Make Mine a Double (RTC). Texas Tech 99, #10 Washington 92. There weren’t many games tonight, but the matchup between Texas Tech and Washington in Lubbock tonight was a classic. The game was so nice, the students rushed it twice. Or something like that. After TTU’s Mike Singletary rebounded Elston Turner’s second straight miss at the foul line with five seconds remaining, he dribbled it upcourt and appeared to beat the horn with a running three-pointer (see the 1:50 mark in the below video). The students rushed the court and started celebrating only to be told by the refs that the shot would not count and we were heading to overtime. After a bizarre interlude waiting for the robotic vacuum to clean off the floor, the players reconvened for the extra period where Texas Tech used a late 6-0 run to pull away and finish off the previously unbeaten Huskies (the last team in the Pac-10 to lose a game), after which the students RTC’d again (good for them). John Roberson had 25/7 and Mike Singletary had 16/12/4 assts in the winning effort, while Quincy Pondexter dropped 31/5/3 stls for UW. Quick question — has anyone seen Abdul Gaddy this year? The freshman phenom had a ridiculously bad 0-point, foul-plagued 10-minute performance tonight, which dovetails nicely with his season averages of 5/3 on 28% shooting (10% from three). Ouch. Washington will not reach its goals this season without more production from this talented guard. As for Texas Tech, the Red Raiders are now 8-0, but tonight was by far their best win of the season. Still, the defense has been solid, and if they can get through several difficult road games coming up (@ TCU, @ Wichita State, @ New Mexico), then they could be well positioned from an NCAA bid standpoint heading into the Big 12 season.
Other Big 12/Pac-10 Games.
#2 Texas 69, USC 50. Texas’ defense continue to impress, as the nation’s #1 stoppers (according to Pomeroy) held an obviously outmatched Trojan team to 30% from the floor and 10% from behind the line. Damion James had 19/9 and Dexter Pittman dominated the interior for 13/5/7 blks, including a complete emasculation of USC’s Alex Stepheson (0-8 FG). UT’s freshman corps didn’t even play well (6-23 FG), but they really weren’t needed tonight, which goes to show just how deep and talented this Longhorn team is.
Baylor 64, Arizona State 61. Baylor’s Tweety Carter remains scorching hot from outside, as he nailed 7-9 threes tonight for 27/4/3 assts in an evenly-matched game between two middling major conference teams. This gives Carter thirteen treys in his last two games, as he hit six against Xavier the last time out. ASU led for much of the second half before a 4-minute drought at the 9-minute mark allowed Carter to do his thing, giving the Bears a lead that they would hold onto through the remainder of the game. Baylor leading scorer LaceDarius Dunn had only 7 pts on a poor 3-10 shooting night.
Was This Really Necessary?Marshall 119, Salem International 35. We know that it’s not Marshall’s fault that Salem Intl. is going through an especially tough season in terms of breaking in a new coach, suspended players and so on… but did Marshall really need to embarrass them by 84 points tonight? Even though the Marshall starters barely played, it may have been a good idea to run the clock on possessions after the lead blew up to, oh, say 70 or so. Can anyone defend this score? Why is a CUSA team playing a D2 team anyway? Color us unimpressed. If there’s any justice in this world, maybe UNC will beat the Thundering Herd by 60 when they visit Chapel Hill in three weeks.
Other Games of National Interest. After about 100 last night, we had one tonight.
Seton Hall 89, Hartford 56. The Hall has been very quiet in the first month of the season, in part due to their weak schedule, but the Pirates stayed undefeated behind Robert Mitchell’s 15/9 and Jeremey Hazell’s 15/2.
Sean McDonough Rips Karl Hess. Rarely will you hear an announcer publically call out an NCAA basketball official by name for a terrible call, but during the second half of the Vanderbilt-Arizona game tonight in the Maui Invitational, ESPN play-by-play man Sean McDonough ripped Karl Hess a new one for calling a bizarre quick-trigger technical foul on Arizona coach Sean Miller for protesting a cheapie on one of his players. Another blog gives a much more detailed take than we will here, and we’re not really buying the gambling angle they suggest, but McDonough’s comments were without question incendiary and had us thinking that he might even face some sort of internal administrative censure for going after Hess so vigorously. McDonough’s specific comments were that:
Karl Hess, he was involved in the 54-foul game the other night, and he’s one of these officials, unfortunately, who always finds a way, it seems, to be at the center of the action. You don’t come here to watch him officiate, but more often than not, he finds himself at the center of attention. And here he goes again over the scorer’s table to try to sort something out…
We found a video of the situation and posted it below — the relevant parts begin after the 2:00 mark, but there are comments throughout leading up to it.
OT Exotica. We head into the Thanksgiving holiday weekend with a couple of nice overtime battles in exotic locations for tournament titles. Both were unexpected for completely different reasons.
#5 Kentucky 73, Stanford 65 (OT). Even with Kentucky’s apparent growing pains in terms of defense and turnovers, nobody could have predicted that a team picked tenth in the Pac-10 that already has losses to San Diego and Oral Roberts would be able to hang with John Calipari’s stable of Wildcat stars in the finals of the Cancun Challenge — even for a half. Yet there was Johnny Dawkins’ Cardinal with a chance to seal the game away at the line as Jarrett Mann stepped to shoot two with under fifteen seconds remaining. Problem is… and we see this with struggling teams all the time, Mann missed both. That gave Kentucky wunderkind John Wall (23/4/5 assts) just enough of an opportunity to slice through the Stanford pressure to get into the lane for a foul and two free throws (which he nailed) with 2.4 seconds left. This clutch performance came on the heels of another Kobe-style icewater jumper from the right side with thirty seconds left that had tied the game at 61-all. In the overtime period, Stanford predictably fell apart and Kentucky’s other star freshman guard Eric Bledsoe hit a dagger three to salt the game away with 33 seconds to go. The Cardinal should be proud of its performance, especially Landry Fields (23/13/3 assts/4 stls), who often appeared to be the best player on the court in this game (yes, just a mirage), but it’s now exceptionally clear that all the squawking Calipari has been doing about how far his team has to go is truth-speak. The talent for this team to become something special is there, but it’s also painfully obvious that his Cats often rely on God-given abilities (especially on offense) rather than an actual understanding of strategy or the sets. Decisionmaking by some players, especially DeMarcus Cousins, is also troubling in their naivete and youthful indiscretion. For example, back to back horrendous decisions by Cousins late in the game to shoot a three (not his shot) and later to purposefully miss a FT attempt in a misguided attempt to get his own rebound only to foul Stanford in the process, exhibits these characteristics. Kentucky has a chance to be very, very good, and when you have a release valve player like John Wall to cover up mistakes, that can go a long way, but there’s no doubt that UK has a lot of work ahead of it to reach its goals this season.
Gonzaga 61, Cincinnati 59 (OT). The other really good game tonight was in the Maui Invitational finals, where those plucky little Zags from Spokane once again proved to the world that we should never take them lightly regardless of who they lose from year to year. Mark Few’s team won its first Maui Invitational title behind a balanced scoring effort among its starters — Robert Sacre (14/5), Elias Harris (13/7), Steven Gray (13/7/4 assts), and Demetri Goodson (12/2). The Zags’ supposed best player, Matt Bouldin, contributed the least offensively (6/11 on 1-7 FGs), yet the others stepped up and held off a very athletic and gritty Cincinnati team that looks nothing like the disaster that Mick Cronin inherited there a few years ago. The Bearcats’ starting five is extremely athletic and talented, and nobody is going to want to face this team as it continues to develop together (remember, Lance Stephenson is brand new and Cashmere Wright is essentially so). We were already high on Cincy but now we’re even moreso. One tiny complaint, though. When Cashmere Wright decides to take the game into his own hands as he did on the final drive in regulation, Born Ready needs to be ready to get to the rim for the putback and not stand around at the three-point line pouting that he didn’t get the ball. Just sayin’…
Story of the Night. Evan Turner’s Date With History. It’s only a matter of time. So long as Evan Turner stays healthy this year, he should have the new record for triple-doubles in a single season by around New Year’s Eve. He’s already got two in November, which puts him in select company of 33 others players in the entire history of the NCAA to have multiple trip-dubs in one season. The record is four, held by Stephane Lasme (UMass), Jason Kidd (Cal), Brian Shaw (UCSB) and Michael Anderson (Drexel). We should go ahead and dust off the record book because Turner is on pace to not only beat this record, but obliterate it. With his 16/10/11 asst night in an 84-64 win over Lipscomb, he’s now averaging an absurd 21/14/7 apg over five games this season. He’s really not that far from approaching an Oscar Robertson-esque season-long triple-double average, but suffice it to say that we’re calling the over/under on this year’s total at 10. The mere fact that you’re thinking about this — really thinking about this! – should give you pause as to the ridiculousness of how well Turner is playing. If Ohio State continues to hang around the top 10-15 in America this year, does anyone else stand a chance at NPOY?
Upset of the Night.Morgan State 97, Arkansas 94. We guess that the Pac-10 and SEC are simply going to trade spots in this section for the rest of the nonconference season. Arkansas, with several really good players in their lineup (Michael Washington, Rotnei Clarke, Marshon Powell), dropped a barnburner of a game to a nonconference foe for the first time in a long time (45 games). Morgan State’s Reggie Holmes went off for 34/5/4 stls, but there’s really no excuse for a loss like this for a team like Arkansas. Maybe it was something we saw in the body language of John Pelphrey’s players last week in St. Louis, but we feel like there are fundamental problems on this team beyond basic basketball skills.
Co-Upset 0f the Night. Seattle 77, Utah 74. This is nothing short of amazing, as Cameron Dollar’s Seattle club is playing its first full season as a member of D1, and to get a win on the road in a fairly tough environment as that at Utah is very impressive. Seattle’s Charles Garcia blew up for 24/8 and is it too early to tell Lorenzo Romar to start looking over his shoulder in the Emerald City? The Redhawks are already 3-2 this season with wins over Fresno State and Weber State in addition to the Utes.
Maui Invitational.
Cincinnati 69, #22 Maryland 57. Cincinnati is looking good. Yancy Gates dominated the inside, dropping 17/13 on the Maryland frontline, who often looked confused about where to be and what to do during this game — UC was also +15 on the boards. Greivis Vasquez finally broke through for double-figure points (19), but he shot poorly (5-17, 0-5 from three) and his percentage for the year is downright icy (30%). The Bearcats will take one of the other surprises of the young season in Gonzaga tomorrow night in the title game.
Well, if there’s over 100 games in one night, you’re going to have some interesting storylines through sheer volume, and sure enough, we had a little bit of everything this evening.
Story of the Night. Arkansas 130, Alcorn State 68. Rotnei Clarke reached ‘the zone’ that most of us only dream about tonight in Arkansas’ home opener, as the 6′0 sophomore guard with a career average of 12.1 PPG blew the roof off of Bud Walton Arena for an insane school-record 51 points including THIRTEEN three-pointers in seventeen attempts. Clarke’s ‘lucky 13′ on Friday the 13th breaks the SEC record for long-range bombs held by former Hawg Al Dillard, who would notoriously pull up from just inside the hash mark during his two years in Fayetteville in the mid-90s (Dillard also had 22 attempts in his record performance). When you get in this kind of a zone (15-21 FG, 13-17 3FG, 8-9 FT), former gunner-cum-coach John Pelphrey knows that the only thing to do is keep firing, and Clarke was happy to oblige. At halftime, the score was Clarke 31, Alcorn 26 as the Hawgs ran out to a ridiculous 45-pt lead, and even though he ‘cooled off’ in the second stanza with only four threes and 20 points, Clarke had to know that he was experiencing a once-in-a-lifetime type of night. Jemal Farmer, a 6′5 junior guard/forward, also had a great night, going for 28/12/6 assts for the Hawgs. This was a particularly pleasant way for Arkansas to start off its season, as the summer months were not kind to Pelphrey’s team with various off-court incidents and suspensions plaguing the program throughout. Five players, including starters Courtney Fortson and Stefan Welsh, were suspended for tonight’s game. Keep an eye on this Arkansas team this year, as they have enough talent to compete in the SEC West if they can all keep their heads on straight.
(photo credit: Michael Woods)
Upset of the Night.Rider 88, #19 Mississippi State 74. It didn’t take long for the SEC to show that it’s quite possibly overrated again, as SEC West favorite MSU got thoroughly outplayed at home on the night when it raised its banner for its 2009 SEC title. So… when will Renardo Sidney be eligible again? Rider, a darkhorse to win the MAAC this year and featuring one of the best mid-major players in America in 6′6 forward Ryan Thompson, used a balanced attack and very efficient offense (10-16 from three) to stick with the home team and take over the game in the second half. Mike Ringgold and Novar Gadson combined for 42/17 despite having to deal with the nation’s pre-eminent defensive player in the paint, Jarvis Varnado (22/14/7 blks). But it appears that lackluster play by MSU might be attributable to more than an off night. One of the more interesting quotes you’ll ever read from a college player came from MSU junior Kodi Augustus, who threw his coach Rick Stansbury under the bus in post-game commentary: “I talked to my dad,” Augustus said. “He said we got outcoached. I don’t know. But I looked at it, I only played 15 minutes the whole game. Yeah, I’m [upset], but like I said, I can’t do nothing about it. I played all those minutes the exhibition games and then you come and play me 15 minutes? Wow!” Wow, indeed, and it seems that a team who was one of the best defensive squads in America last season has major issues with egos and team chemistry right now, and this is BEFORE John Riek and Renardo Sidney have even suited up!
RTC Live Recap. Wake Forest 76, Oral Roberts 56. We were in Winston-Salem tonight for RTC Live, and although the game wasn’t as good as we’d hoped, we learned a few things about each team. Behind 19 points and 9 rebounds from Kevin Ford, ORU made things interesting by pulling within ten late in the 2nd half. That’s when Wake sophomore Al-Farouq Aminu scored 11 straight points, giving him a total of 25 points and 13 rebounds. Wake looked good inside, outrebounding ORU 51 to 25 including a whopping 20 offensive rebounds. Conversely, the Demon Deacons looked rough on the perimeter, shooting only 29.4% from behind the arc and committing 18 turnovers to only 14 assists (the TO-plagued Ish Smith will start the year with a 4:5 A/TO ratio). Wake fans should be happy that Aminu looks like a lottery pick after the season opener, and freshmen CJ Harris and Ari Stewart looked cool and composed, but the outside shooting and turnover problems that doomed last year’s Wake Forest team to an early exit in the NCAA Tournament still persist.
Let’s Talk Freshmen. So many good new players, so little November television coverage. How’d the top freshmen do in their first games tonight?
As I write this, the North Carolina men’s basketball team just finished off their second win of the 2009-10 season against North Carolina Central. The University of Kentucky squad will play their first game this Friday, November 13th against Morehead State. That means that as of right now, the UNC program has amassed 1,986 wins in its incredible history. UK will start this season with 1,988. From this, it looks like in the Race For 2,000, we have a real barnburner on our hands.
Well, if you’re a Tar Heel supporter and you’re reading this, I have some bad news. We don’t. To Wildcat fans: you can fire up the sewing machines and start creating that banner. Call the silkscreeners and start cranking out T-shirts. I’m calling it.
The wins have occurred over time in such a way that both programs will get to the 2,000-win mark early in this season’s schedule, and we know the early part of any season is a time of the year when many teams load their schedule with a fair number of cupcakes and a few big non-conference names thrown in there for RPI/strength-of-schedule boosting. UNC and UK have both done this for this season, and this is nothing new for anyone. This season started with UK leading the race with 1,988 wins to UNC’s 1,984. UNC’s early start this week pulls them to within two wins. So let’s see how the rest of their schedules look up until December 5th, when Kentucky and North Carolina meet up for a monumental clash at Rupp Arena:
North Carolina: Valparaiso, Ohio State (in NYC), California OR Syracuse (in NYC), Gardner-Webb, Nevada, Michigan State.
Kentucky: Morehead State, Miami (OH), Sam Houston State, Rider, Cleveland State, Stanford OR Virginia, UNC-Asheville.
For the sake of argument, let’s say both teams start the season perfectly up to this point. That’s no guarantee; UNC-Ohio State, UNC-California/Syracuse, or even UNC-Nevada could be interesting. Kentucky has it a little easier up to here, so we’re actually helping the Tar Heels by assuming a perfect start to the season. But let’s say it happens — this would put the race at UK with 1,995 and UNC with 1,992 going into the head-to-head matchup.
Ed. Note: the previous posts in this series (Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Atlantic South, Deep South, Mid-South, Lower Midwest, Upper Midwest, Mountains and Southwest) are located here.
It’s time for the tenth and final installment of our RTC 2009-10 Impact Players series, the group of cool, wet Pacific states known as the Northwest Region. Each week we’ll pick a geographic area of the country and break down the five players who we feel will have the most impact on their teams (and by the transitive property, college basketball) this season. Our criteria is once again subjective – there are so many good players in every region of the country that it’s difficult to narrow them down to only five in each – but we feel at the end of this exercise that we’ll have discussed nearly every player of major impact in the nation. Just to be fair and to make this not too high-major-centric, we’re also going to pick a mid-major impact player in each region as our sixth man. We welcome you guys, our faithful and very knowledgeable readers, to critique us in the comments where we left players off. The only request is that you provide an argument – why will your choice be more influential this season than those we chose?
Matt Bouldin - G, Sr - Gonzaga. As anyone in Spokane or among Gonzaga’s growing national fan base can tell you, most of the talk about Gonzaga this off-season has concerned itself with what the Bulldogs have lost. Understandable, as the excellent Zag firm of Daye, Heytvelt, Pargo, and Downs are a tough bunch to replace, to say the least. Consider also that Gonzaga is bringing in something like 37 freshmen onto this year’s squad, and one can easily conclude that Mark Few finds himself with his most interesting coaching predicament yet. With such an inexperienced squad, what’s the one thing Few needs most? A savvy, intelligent senior leader. Enter Matt Bouldin, a 2010 preseason Wooden Award nominee to absolutely nobody’s surprise. Check these stats from last year: 49.1% from the field, 42.3% from three-point range…but only 13.6 PPG. Even with several other offensive options on his team, you’d expect a shooting guard with those percentages to average more than 13.6 PPG. But, this means that when Bouldin does shoot, it’s usually a good shot in terms of shot selection, something coaches will tell you is one of the real keys to winning at this level, and an incredibly difficult thing to teach. Mind you, those percentages are up from his sophomore season even though he registered more attempts as a junior. Without a doubt, Bouldin’s touches and minutes will increase this season, despite leading last year’s team with 31.7 minutes a game. He might need to get to the line a little more this year, but with his ability to take care of the ball, Coach Few should have no apprehension adding this to Bouldin’s responsibilites, if he chooses. Bouldin’s 2:1 assist-to-turnover ratio was third in the conference (behind two of his teammates!) and is exceptional for a shooting guard. So go ahead, feel sorry for Gonzaga if you must. We know what they lost, and we know Portland might be a fun pick in the WCC. But with a coach like Few, a leader like Bouldin, and a non-conference pressure-cooker like the one Gonzaga has in store, if Portland so much as twitches, Gonzaga will take them down. And look at their NCAA Tournament history. Except for 2007, Gonzaga does best when they get a 10-12 seed and nobody’s looking. Mark Few is spectacular when it comes to keeping numerous talented players happy and, perhaps better than anyone in the country, instilling in all of his players an immense pride in the name on the front of the jersey as compared with the one on the back. When you watch Few’s Gonzaga teams, you can almost feel the love the players have for that uniform. Matt Bouldin possesses this pride just as much as any of his Wooden-list predecessors like Morrison or Dickau. We guarantee you — he will not go quietly.
Ryan ZumMallen of LBPostSports.com is the RTC correspondent for the Big West and Pac-10 Conferences.
Predicted Order of Finish:
California (13-5)
Washington (12-6)
UCLA (11-7)
Oregon (10-8)
Arizona (10-8)
Stanford (8-10)
Oregon State (8-10)
Washington State (7-11)
Arizona State (6-12)
USC (5-13)
All-Conference Team:
Nic Wise (G), Arizona
Jerome Randle (G), Cal
Patrick Christopher (F), Cal
Landry Fields (F), Stanford
Michael Dunigan (C), Oregon
Impact Newcomer. Abdul Gaddy (G), Washington
What You Need to Know. A legendary NCAA powerhouse, the Pac-10 Conference practically owned property in the Final Four in recent years. Last season, though, no team made it to the promised land with a flurry of budding superstars bolting for the NBA – leaving the Pac-10 fumbling to reload with a full clip. This season, the number of quality players is as high as ever, but they’re largely too young or inexperienced to consider the Pac-10 a national power this season. While UCLA and Arizona look to rebuild their storied histories from near scratch, only Washington and California return enough experienced talent to warrant much confidence, and its no coincidence that these two teams have been picked as preseason favorites to vie for the conference title.
Predicted Champion. California(NCAA Seed: #5) – Arizona attempts to begin a new legacy with the replacement of their iconic coach. UCLA starts from scratch after losing the core that took them to national heights. USC is facing stiff sanctions and has a tough season ahead of them after losing an array of stars. By comparison, California is a picture of consistency. The Bears return two all-conference first team players who will likely battle each other for POY honors this season. In Jerome Randle and Patrick Christopher, Cal boasts two experienced leaders who can each carry the team when need be. Add to that a deep bench and the nation’s best shooters, and this team is built for a Pac-10 championship, and beyond…
Tennessee Loses Another Player. This time it wasn’t under horrifically scary conditions, but senior guard Josh Tabb, who was already on indefinite suspension by Bruce Pearl, left the program to spend time with his ill mother. He only played 17 MPG last season, but he was fairly effective providing backcourt depth to Bobby Maze and Scotty Hopson, averaging 3/2/2 and shooting a high percentage from the floor (51%/42%). It’s looking more and more like UT will be playing five 6′7 guys at certain points of the season. UT: the Golden State Warriors of college basketball.
Stanford As Well. Sophomore guard Jeremy Green, an all-Pac-10 freshman last season, was suspended indefinitely by Coach Johnny Dawkins for violation of unspecified team rules. In relatively limited action last year, Green averaged 6/2 and shot 46% from three-point range, but he was expected to become a major contributor this season as the young Cardinal begins rebuilding. This comes on the heels of more bad news last week, when 6′8 freshman forward Andy Brown was lost for the season to a knee injury. Assuming we don’t see Green back in uniform this season, it could be shaping up as a long year in Palo Alto for Dawkins in his second year there.
Nimrod Will Play. Billy Donovan received good news from the NCAA this week, as the governing body cleared point guard and soon-to-be-opposing-fan-favoriteNimrod Tishman to play this season at Florida. The 6′5 Israeli freshman was a late pickup for the Gators after Nick Calathes bolted for the pros, but according to Donovan, he may not see much court action this season, as Erving Walker, Kenny Boynton and Ray Shipman are currently ahead of him on the depth chart.
Uncertainty About John Wall. The John Wall Circus continues in Lexington, as Coach John Calipari stated during last night’s post-scrimmage press conference that Wall “has been cleared in every way” even though the UK president, Lee Todd, is on record this week stating that the school and NCAA are investigating his association with Brian Clifton, his AAU coach who was also a certified agent at the time. Worst case is Wall pays back a little bit of money and misses 10% of UK’s games (Nov. 13 – Morehead State; Nov. 16 – Miami (OH); Nov 19 – Sam Houston State). Not a huge deal, although we’re pretty excited around here to see the guy play.
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2010 conference tournaments | Tagged: ben howland, california, jerome randle, lorenzo romar, matthew bryan-amaning, michael roll, mike montgomery, pac-10 tournament, sean lampley, stanford, ucla, washington | 
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