Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences. He is also a Pac-12 microsite staffer.

Reader’s Take

Top Storylines

• This past weekend likely saw the best regular season game of the Pac-12 schedule, as Stanford battled Oregon State for four exciting overtimes before finally securing an all-important road victory.
• Given the relative homogeneity of the conference, the recipe for winning the regular season title is going to be: 1) take care of business at home; and 2) steal a handful of road games against the middle and bottom of the Pac. On both of those fronts, Stanford is looking good now, sitting with California, Washington, and Arizona atop the conference. What’s that you say? Colorado actually leads the conference with a 3-0 record? Sorry Buffs, but get back to me once you have tasted the road in the Pac-12. Right now all three of their wins have come at home.

Stanford's Four Overtime Win Over Oregon State Helped Keep Them Among The Contenders In The Pac-12 (Rick Bowmer/AP)

• Elsewhere this past weekend, Thursday night was upset central as all six underdogs came away with victories that night, before things got back to normal, as only Stanford was able to spring the upset. UCLA got back to .500 in conference after sweeping the Arizona schools, making the Bruins and Buffs the only homestanders to win both of their games last weekend.
• And, lastly, the Pac-12 lost another promising player to immaturity this week, as Keala King was dismissed by Arizona State head coach Herb Sendek after being left back from the Sun Devils’ trip to the Los Angeles-area schools week along with Kyle Cain and Chris Colvin. In Sendek’s press conference on Tuesday, he referred to King being unhappy with being forced to play point guard in the absence of ineligible freshman Jahii Carson and butting heads with Sendek over his role. As a result, King joins the growing list of Pac-12 players who have divorced their programs this season. Read the rest of this entry »

Each week through conference play, we’ll offer up a couple of different takes on the biggest question of the week in the Pac-12. This week:

“Is the Pac-12 a One-Bid League?”

Connor Pelton: With stats like “0-20 in road games against the RPI Top 100” and the conference’s best road win coming at New Mexico State, a good argument can be made that the Pac-12 is a one-bid league. The way I see it, however, the conference will get a minimum of two bids, and possibly a third depending on the conference tournament. At most, the selection committee will have two at-large bids set aside for the Pac-12 going into championship week. The teams most likely in the conversation for those two are California, Stanford, Colorado, and Arizona, while Oregon and Oregon State will have to win the Pac-12 tourney to get in.

Out of those four, I see Cal and Arizona stealing the bids. But if the ultra-soft bubble that we are hearing about now remains through the next two months, Stanford could pull a third at-large spot by making the championship of the tournament. Colorado doesn’t have a true “bad loss” on their schedule at the moment, but I can only see them winning 19-20 games going into championship week. With a poor RPI, they are going to have to get an automatic bid.

Of course this is pure speculation at this point, but we are coming to the point in the season where games like Colorado-Arizona (January 21 and February 9) and California-Stanford (January 29 and March 4) not only matter for the conference race, but also have a huge impact on the national bubble. I think the Pac-12 will get more than one bid, but it is crucial for all four of these teams to prove they belong night in and night out down this stretch run.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a look at the power rankings that Drew and I have compiled after the ninth week of Pac-12 games. Here we go!

1. Stanford, 13-3 (3-1): The trip north for the Cardinal started off rough with a 11-point loss to Oregon, but they redeemed themselves Saturday night in Corvallis. Led by a 24-point performance from freshman sensation Chasson Randle, Stanford held on for a two point, quadruple overtime classic win over Oregon State. Despite trailing by as many as 11 in the second half, the resilient Cardinal came back to force overtime. From there it was a war of attrition, one that Stanford would finally win on a missed Roberto Nelson three at the buzzer. Up Next: 1.12 vs. Utah

2. California, 13-4 (3-1): Despite shooting a scorching 57% from the field, the Bears couldn’t match Oregon State’s energy and fell, 92-85 on Thursday night. Luckily for them, however, the scheduling gods smiled on Cal and gave them an extra day to rest and prepare for a tricky Oregon squad. The extra day proved vital as the Bears were able to crack the Duck defense to the tune of 77 points (40 of which came in the second half). Up Next: 1.12 vs. Colorado

California guard Jorge Gutierrez poured in 18 points against Oregon on Sunday. (credit: Don Ryan)

3. Colorado, 11-4 (3-0): Buffalo fans couldn’t have asked for a better week. Thursday night they got a statement win over Washington, an 18-point victory which saw five Buffaloes score in double figures. On Saturday they solidified their spot atop the Pac-12 standings with a 71-60 win against Washington State. Up Next: 1.12 @ California

4. Arizona, 11-5 (2-1): A good week would have included a victory at UCLA, but the Bruins ran the Wildcats out of the Honda Center and won, 65-58. Arizona had an extra day to think about the tough loss and took their frustrations out on USC. The Cats held the Trojans to just 16 points in the first half before eventually winning, 57-46. Up Next: 1.12 vs. Oregon State

5. Oregon, 11-5 (2-2): Just when you thought the Ducks were getting their act together with a win over Stanford, they come back three days later in front of a big crowd and turn out an uninspiring performance against Cal. Watch for this splitting trend to continue throughout the season. Up Next: 1.12 @ Arizona State

6. Washington, 10-6 (3-1): The Huskies have managed to fallen from NCAA Tournament bubble team to NIT bubble team in just four quick weeks. The Dawgs avoided disaster by pulling out a four-point win at Utah on Saturday, but the 18-point loss two days earlier is going to be deadly for their hopes to make either tournament. Up Next: 1.15 vs. Washington State Read the rest of this entry »

With last night’s unique, electric, and egalitarian college football championship game behind us we figured it was time to pull out our RTC BCS Poll. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the concept, we are applying the BCS formula to college basketball to see what the results would be if college basketball had a BCS system instead of actually deciding a champion on the court. We have done this each of the past three years. Here are the results from 2009, 2010, and 2011. The posts are from various points in the season (either midway through the year or potentially at the end of the regular season) This year we are going to try to expand it out a little further and track the changes essentially from the start of conference play.

The rules are essentially the same as the BCS and as in previous years (with a few upgrades):

1. We are following the BCS Football guidelines as closely as possible, but we replaced the Notre Dame rule with the Duke rule since they both have sketchy TV contracts (Notre Dame with NBC and Duke with ESPN).
2. The AP and ESPN/USA Today polls are used as the human polls and RPI, Sagarin, Pomeroy, Massey, Colley, and LRMC as the computer polls. The human poll scores are calculated as a fraction (in decimal form) of the percentage of possible votes (1625 in the AP and 775 in the ESPN/USA Today respectively). Like the BCS we remove the highest and lowest computer rankings from a team’s overall computer ranking. The highest and lowest rankings are noted with green and red boxes. In the even that there were multiple similar highest or lowest scores we picked the first one in chart.
3. We used the traditional BCS calculations for determining each team’s score weighing the two human polls and the combined computer poll average as 1/3 of a team’s total score each.

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In any four-overtime game that is eventually decided when a three-pointer at the buzzer goes astray, the losing coach is going to have plenty of decisions that didn’t pan out that he can blamed for. Even the winning coach probably has a decision or two that could have ended the game earlier had they been made in a different fashion. But Saturday night’s four-overtime epic in which Stanford outlasted Oregon State left me repeatedly befuddled with the decisions that OSU head coach Craig Robinson made in crunch time. Below is a partial list (believe me, there were more) of head-slappingly poor decisions in the overtimes alone that helped to leave Oregon State at 1-3 in conference play.

Craig Robinson's Questionable Decisions May Have Cost Oregon State A Game

1. At the end of the first overtime, with the game tied, Oregon State uses one of its four remaining timeouts between a pair of Chasson Randle free throws (this decision actually goes in the good decision column, as Randle missed the second free throw following the TO, keeping the game tied), but apparently in the timeout, the play that Robinson set up was to give the ball to Ahmad Starks and let him mount a wild drive to nowhere leading to a turnover. There was no ball screen, no player movement, no real plan, and Stanford was able to get through to a second overtime without even needing to dodge a bullet at the end of the first OT. Another timeout in the halfcourt to set up the final play would have been a good decision.
2. At the end of the second overtime, OSU was up one point and playing defense with twenty-some seconds left. After a sequence that winds up with the ball out of bounds off of the Beavers, Devon Collier was injured and needed to be replaced. OSU had a boatload of timeouts should they have wanted to make an offense/defense substitution later, so the obvious decision for Robinson was to get his best defensive squad in the game. But, instead of replacing Collier with Eric Moreland, Robinson subbed in Angus Brandt to pair with Joe Burton up front, alongside three guards. Now, nothing against Brandt or Burton, both of whom are nice players, but are you really telling me that Moreland is not a better interior defender than either of them? In the end, Randle scored the go-ahead basket in the middle off a dish from Dwight Powell. It seems that even Robinson realized his mistake when on the final possession with three seconds left, following a game-tying free throw from Burton, he switched things up and got Moreland in the game in lieu of one of the guards and he came up with a third-overtime-inducing block. Read the rest of this entry »

1. Arizona State came into conference play as one of the least talented teams in the Pac-12. This weekend they played without three of their players, all suspended for “unacceptable conduct” and it was announced Sunday that at least one of those players who had been suspended this weekend will not be returning to the team as Herb Sendek dismissed Keala King from the team. Kyle Cain and Chris Colvin, who were suspended along with King this weekend, apparently will return to the team. King becomes the eighth Sun Devil to leave the program with remaining eligibility since 2008 and the third player in a seven-man 2010 class to leave. It’s a good thing Sendek signed a contract extension earlier in the year, because this program is an absolute mess and will need to start over more or less from scratch next offseason. For what it’s worth, ASU did salvage a weekend split in Los Angeles, knocking off USC on Thursday before getting blown out by UCLA on Saturday.
2. Saturday night, Stanford and Oregon State played one of the most entertaining games you’ll see this season, as the Cardinal somehow pulled off a 103-101 victory in the fourth overtime at Gill Coliseum. It was a game that was worth watching from the opening tip to the final buzzer, from Roberto Nelson’s shoeless three-pointers early in the first half (that had the OSU announcers way, WAY too excited) to his late body slam of Josh Huestis, to his potential game-winning three-pointer at the end of the fourth OT that just missed. There’s a ton more to be discussed here, and we’ll have something up later this afternoon, but for now enjoy reliving the game with Jeff Eisenberg’s five memorable moments from the game.
3. There were two Pac-12 games on Sunday afternoon although neither came anywhere near matching the excitement in Corvallis Saturday night. They were, however, important games as the road teams came up with wins in both games. First it was Arizona getting over on USC in one of the uglier games you’ll see this season. The teams combined to shoot 3-of-30 from behind the arc, Arizona turned the ball over 17 times, and Maurice Jones was allowed to shoot the Trojans out of yet another game (he was 3-of-13 from the field and is now shooting a 42.1% eFG this year). Later, it was California going into Oregon and coming away with a 17-point victory that was most notable for Allen Crabbe’s best game of the season – 26 points, 12 rebounds and six three-pointers. In both cases, the road teams earned weekend splits, putting the Bears and the Wildcats, along with Stanford’s Cardinal and perhaps Washington’s Huskies atop the list of conference favorites.
4. Washington’s on that list above in part due to their road win at Utah this weekend. While a win on the road in this year’s Pac-12 is nothing to scoff at, the Huskies weren’t exactly impressive in their victory. After struggling with the woeful Utes for 39 minutes, Washington at least had some breathing room down the stretch, having built up an eight-point lead with just a minute to play. But then Desmond Simmons missed the front-end of a one-and-one with the Utes in foul mode. And then Terrence Ross missed two more front-ends, allowing Utah to get back to within two points with 12 seconds left. Ross finally capped the game off by drilling a couple free throws, but the Huskies’ performance certainly didn’t inspire much confidence.
5. Lastly, back to that UCLA/ASU game for a second. Bruin sophomore center Joshua Smith, back after missing Thursday’s game with a minor concussion, had his best game of the season, scoring 18 points in 21 minutes and dominating the undermanned Sun Devils. Thursday night Ben Howland noted that Smith, who has struggled with his conditioning throughout his UCLA career, after much work both in and out of practice, was down to his lowest weight of the season (presumably somewhere north of the 305 pounds at which he is presently listed). Saturday night, the work that he had put in was evident. Not only was he able to play 21 very effective minutes, but he actually dunked a ball – not just once, but twice! Don’t believe me? The proof is in the picture here. Now, this doesn’t mean that all of a sudden Smith is the all-conference performer that he has the talent to be (he did, after all, manage only four rebounds against ASU), but it is a huge step in the right direction both for Smith and the Bruins. I like to think he heard my plea.

This Weekend’s Lede. This was the first full weekend of conference play, and as expected, teams that hadn’t played many legitimate road games prior to the turn of the new year found life away from home in hostile environments to be considerably tougher than lacing another game up at home. It wasn’t the best of college basketball weekends, nor was it the worst, but as we begin to settle ourselves into competition within the family for the next two months, it’s time to separate legitimacy from fraudulence through actual play on the court around the nation. Let’s jump into this weekend’s action.

Your Watercooler Moment. Kentucky Student’s Half-Court Shot Causes Kroger Controversy.

Meet Vincent Swope. No, he actually isn’t an SEC official, he just plays one when he attends Kentucky basketball games at Rupp Arena. The freshman who has turned a referee getup into his game-day trademark in UK’s eRupption Zone was selected to shoot a half-court shot worth $10,000 during Saturday’s game versus South Carolina. As you can see above, his heave from mid-court was true. According to published reports, shortly after the ball found the bottom of the net and Swope ran around the court rightfully celebrating his newfound riches, a representative from Kroger Foods, the contest sponsor, approached him suggesting that he had violated the terms of the contest by stepping over the half-court line. In the pantheon of snaky moves, Kroger’s reported attempt to screw a young student out of his winnings due to a technicality would have reached a new level of shady business dealings. Luckily, Matt Jones at Kentucky Sports Radio became aware of the situation and immediately mobilized his legion of Twitter followers to #occupyKroger in an anti-corporate social networking throwdown that would make Ralph Nader and Naomi Klein proud. Within an hour of the game’s finish, Kroger had caved and in fact called Jones himself to beg for his forgiveness, asking him to pass along to Swope that the company would make good on his prize. As of Sunday evening, Swope says that he hasn’t yet received the money, but we’d wager that Kroger has learned its lesson and won’t drag their feet too long on paying him. Great work from KSR/Jones in ensuring the right outcome here.

[ed. note: Kroger reached out to us, taking the stance that the company never suggested to Swope that he would not be paid for his shot. This contradicts Swope’s accounting of the sequence of events to Matt Jones, but it appears that Kroger will in fact pay the freshman his winnings, which is all anyone wanted in the first place.]

Then, There Was This. Chris Mack Gives Up His Knee For a Xavier Win. In an exceptionally odd situation, Xavier head coach Chris Mack jumped in the layup line during Friday’s practice and, after dunking the ball once, ended up tearing his patellar tendon in a freakish accident trying to do it again. Andre Walker said afterward that Mack’s injury was “really weird… a freak accident,” and to that sentiment we certainly agree. First of all, props to Mack for trying just about anything to get his team off the schneid (XU had lost five of six before beating Fordham Saturday) and for still being able to dunk a basketball at the age of 42, but he probably should have wowed the players just once and left it at that! What a weird season it’s already been at Xavier.

Five More Weekend Storylines.

• Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Murawa is the RTC correspondent for the Pac-12 and Mountain West conferences. He is also a Pac-12 microsite staffer.

Reader’s Take

Top Storylines

• The home teams dominated play this week, going 9-1 in the first weekend of conference play. Fans around the conference will gnash their teeth and overreact to the first two games and anoint teams like Washington, Stanford and California as the runaway favorites, but the fact remains that even in a down year in the Pac-12, the eventual winner of the regular season title will need to win their fair share of road games, while still defending their home court. So, it is good news for the Huskies, Cardinal and Golden Bears, but they’ve still got a lot to prove before distancing themselves from a team like Oregon State, who dropped its first two games of the year in disappointing fashion.
• The one road team to score a win last weekend was Oregon, who played almost a perfect game in their opener against Washington State, scoring almost 1.8 points per possession in the first half, shooting a 78.6 eFG% and sweeping to a 17-point road win. They were brought back to earth a bit on Saturday, when a suddenly hot Washington team tore through them, but a 1-1 record for the Ducks is a significant accomplishment. If they can back that up by holding serve as the Bay Area schools come north this weekend, they’ll be in business.

Olu Ashaolu's Double-Double Led The Ducks To The Lone Road Win In The Opening Week Of The Pac-12 (Young Kwak/AP)

What to Watch For

• A week of conference play only tells half of the story. This week, for the most part, teams that benefited from opening week homestands have to head on the road, while last week’s road warriors get the comfort of some home-cooking. The biggest clashes of the week may come when the Oregon schools host the Bay Area schools. If either Stanford or California is able to somehow pull off a sweep, they have earned the early title of Pac-12 favorites. Meanwhile, Oregon State, considered by some (ahem), to be the conference favorite prior to last weekend has a lot to prove. The Beavers absolutely have to win both of their games this weekend at Gill Coliseum to still be considered a legitimate contender to the throne. Read the rest of this entry »

We may only be two games into the conference season, but tonight will give us a good feel on who is a contender and who is a pretender in the Pac-12. The game that most fits that bill will take place tonight in Corvallis when 2-0 California meets 0-2 Oregon State. For the visiting Golden Bears, a loss won’t make or break their chances at a conference crown, but it could be listed as a bad loss on a tournament résumé that is sure to be on the bubble come March. On the other side is Oregon State, where a victory is crucial after being swept in Washington last week. For the Beavers to have any shot at an at-large into the NCAA Tournament, a 3-1 record over their next four games is a must. So of course, they could lose tonight and win their next three, but that is highly unlikely as Stanford and Arizona are on the horizon. Despite this being one of the best games of the week and boasting multiple talented players on each side, the game will not be televised or webcast. That means the winner may get a little national attention just from being on ESPN’s bottom line, but the loser would likely fall from the nation’s radar for a LONG time.

Junior guard Jared Cunningham leads Oregon State with 17 PPG (credit: Sports Chat Place)

For the Beavers to get a win tonight they will need to rely on their defense. They have played three teams this season that are at Cal’s level offensively, and so far they are 1-2. The one win came against Texas, a game in which the Beavers were able to get out on multiple fast breaks after stepping into the Longhorn passing lanes. The Beavers would score a total of 100 points in a game where they actually didn’t shoot the ball that well, but they got the win because of their great defense. That is what they need to do here if they want to have a chance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a look at the power rankings that Drew and I have compiled after the eighth week of Pac-12 games. Here we go!

1. Stanford, 12-2 (2-0): The Cardinal didn’t spare any hearts after beating the LA schools by a combined nine points this week. On Thursday night it was a grind-it-out, defensive thriller as Stanford stopped UCLA on their final possession for a 60-59 win. Then on Saturday, the Cardinal built a double-digit lead, only to see it be cut down to three with two minutes left. However, Stanford would hit its shots down the stretch to hang on for a 51-43 win. Up Next: 1.5 @ Oregon

2. California, 12-3 (2-0): The only difference between California and Stanford’s week was in their handling of UCLA. First, the Golden Bears needed to take care of USC. The Trojans certainly did make Cal fans nervous down the stretch, but in the end the Trojans had dug just too deep a hole to climb completely out of and fell, 53-49. Two days later it was the visiting Bruins who provided that same feeling, however, this time it was just for the first half. After only leading 40-39 at halftime, the Golden Bears outscored UCLA 45-30 in the final 20 minutes of play to send the Bruins back to LA with an 0-2 record. Up Next: 1,5 @ Oregon State

Sophomore guard Justin Cobbs is averaging 12.4 PPG and 4.6 APG. (AP Photo)

3. Arizona, 10-4 (1-0): It was rivalry week in the desert as the Wildcats and Arizona State met for another installment of the Territorial Cup. This one was all Wildcats however, as Arizona used an early 17-5 run to gain some separation. They never looked back after that, cruising to a 68-51 win. Forward Jesse Perry led the Wildcats with 16 points, while center Ruslan Pateev led the Devils with 12. Up Next: 1.5 vs. UCLA in Anaheim

4. Oregon, 10-4 (1-1): The most surprising result of the week came on Thursday in Spokane, where the Ducks defeated Washington State, 92-75. The Ducks shot a scorching hot 69% from the field in the win, which was good enough to move them up a spot from last week’s rankings despite their loss to Washington on Saturday. Up Next: 1.5 vs. Stanford

5. Oregon State, 10-4 (0-2): It’s hard to imagine the Beavers having a worse week than they did in Washington. The only problem is, the nightmare could very well continue over the next two weeks as the Beavers host the Bay Area schools and travel to Arizona. If they manage to pull out three wins from that stretch, the Big Dance is still in the picture. Up Next: 1.5 vs. California

6. Washington, 8-5 (2-0): The road back to respectability is a long and winding one after you drop games to Saint Louis, Nevada, and South Dakota State, but the Huskies are slowly coming back. After dismantling Oregon State in front of a distracted fan base on Thursday, the Dawgs came back two days later and did the same thing to rival Oregon. Up Next: 1.5 @ Colorado Read the rest of this entry »