Rush the Court will be providing wall-to-wall coverage of each of the NCAA Tournament from each of the 13 sites this year. Follow our NCAA Tourney specific Twitter accounts at @RTCEastregion, @RTCMWregion,@RTCSouthregion and @RTCWestregion. Kenny Ocker is covering the Spokane pods of the South and West regionals this week.

Three Key Takeaways:

The Magic of March Goes to Hawaii (USA Today Images)

1. Cal really, really missed its starting backcourt: The Golden Bears came to Spokane knowing it would be without its lone senior and leading scorer, point guard Tyrone Wallace, who broke his hand in practice earlier this week. They didn’t account for shooting guard Jabari Bird also being unexpectedly sidelined by back spasms just before the opening tip. And then backup-point-guard-cum-starter Sam Singer and superfreshman Jaylen Brown picked up three fouls apiece in the first half and magnified that problem. Brown ended up fouling out with about eight minutes left in the second half and the Bears still in the game, but they were never able to close it out without him on the court. He finished with a mere four points. Singer had 12 points before fouling out. Cal only had six assists in the game.
2. REF SHOW! Speaking of all those fouls… there were 25 in the first half, which didn’t let the game generate any sort of flow. Singer and Brown had three apiece in the first half. Four of Hawaii’s starters had two fouls by that point. And then the Rainbows’ star center, Stefan Jankovic, picked up his fourth foul less than four minutes into the second half. All told, the game ended with 49 fouls, including disqualifications of Brown and Singer for Cal, and four Hawaii players finishing with four fouls. The tight officiating made it difficult to watch what should have otherwise been an entertaining #13 over #4 upset.
3. Hawaii ignored Cal’s vaunted interior defense: The Bears came into Friday’s game with the nation’s best two-point field goal defense, according to KenPom, giving up a mere 40.9 percent shooting inside the three-point arc. Hawaii did not care. The Warriors made 24-of-38 shots inside the arc (63%), including 6-of-8 inside shooting from guards Quincy Smith and Roderick Bobbitt and 5-of-7 inside shooting from center Stefan Jankovic.

Star of the Game: Hawaii guard Quincy Smith: The slashing senior wing got to the basket at will all game against Cal, hanging up 19 points on 6-of-8 shooting, including a perfect 4-of-4 in the second half.

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California has an unexpected hole in its starting lineup today after senior point guard Tyrone Wallace broke his hand for the second time this season days before the Golden Bears’ NCAA Tournament game. The injury came in a non-contact drill when Wallace, the team’s lone senior, got his hand caught in a teammate’s jersey, head coach Cuonzo Martin said during a Thursday news conference. With the importance of veteran guard play in the NCAA Tournament, the injury couldn’t have come at a worse time for the #4 seed in the South Region. But at least they’ve already played five games without Wallace this season. The Bears went 3-2 in those games, losing both ends of the Pac-12’s difficult Utah/Colorado road trip in late January and winning home games against Stanford, Arizona and Arizona State with junior Sam Singer as their point guard.

The loss of Tyrone Wallace puts junior point guard Sam Singer back in the driver’s seat. (AP)

“Everybody loses someone at some level, injuries, stuff happens. You have 13 scholarships. So there’s no excuses, it’s part of the game,” Martin said. “We won games with Sam at our point. I’m not worried at all. Sam will do a great job at the point guard position and whoever backs him up will do well as well.” But there’s a big difference between home conference games in January and NCAA Tournament games in March, and there’s just as big a difference between Wallace and Singer. Wallace leads Cal with 32.2 minutes, 15.3 points, 4.4 assists and 1.0 steal per game, and averages 5.4 rebounds as well. Singer, who has played in every game, averages 3.5 points, 2.5 rebounds and 2.7 assists in just under 20 minutes per contest. Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s something we occasionally do: group all of the teams west of the Rockies (you know, the only part of the country, save Austin, New Orleans, Memphis and maybe New York City worth a damn) together, mix them up and see what order they shake out in. This means we’ve got all of the teams in the Pac-12, Mountain West, WCC and Big West Conferences, plus some of the schools in the WAC and Big Sky. And normally, instead of just ranking teams the traditional way, we divide them up into tiers. The idea is that there may be two great teams that have serious Final Four dreams and then a significant fall off when talking about team number three. This year in the West? Not so much. Apropos of the rest of the nation, there are no elite teams. And on any given Saturday (or Thursday, or Wednesday), there’s a good chance whoever checks in a half-page down this list can play with the first team we mention. But still, here’s a best effort at placing the best in the West into tiers.

The Best of the Best: Legitmate Top 25 teams

• Oregon (#1 overall, Pac-12 #1) – Since back in the middle of the summer, I’ve had the Ducks at the top of the Pac-12. With Villanova transfer Dylan Ennis added to the mix, the Ducks have long had the prospect of being, a deep, veteran, long, balanced squad. Some of those strengths (depth and experience, mainly) have been diminished with the season that wasn’t for Ennis (out for season with broken foot), but Dana Altman’s presence at the helm of a talented group should mean that this team’s best days are ahead of it. With the shot-blocking combination of Jordan Bell and Chris Boucher along the backline and the perimeter defenders like Casey Benson, Dwayne Benjamin and Tyler Dorsey, this team still has a ways to go before it reaches it’s defensive potential, as it is just 69^th in the nation in defensive efficiency. The defense has to improve, but if it does, the Ducks’ offense is diverse and explosive enough to drag them a long ways into March.

Bell-Boucher: Both A Banjo And A Great Shot-blocking Combo!

• Arizona (#2 overall, Pac-12 #2) – A one-point loss at California qualifies as a good result in a West that mimics the national landscape by not having any one dominant team. Every one of the Wildcats’ losses has been a tightly fought contest, with a four-point neutral-court loss against Providence to join three conference road losses that came by an average of two points (and four total overtimes). In short, Arizona is, on January 23^rd, six possessions away from a perfect 20-0 record, despite the absence of senior Kaleb Tarczewski for eight games, freshman Allonzo Trier for the last four games and junior Elliott Pitts for the last 13 games. While this is by no mean a vintage Arizona team, Sean Miller is the best coach in the West and you can count on him getting the absolute most out of a flawed roster.

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1. California senior point guard Tyrone Wallace is expected to be out for 4-6 weeks after breaking a bone in his right hand. Wallace, who leads the team in scoring (15.4) and assists (4.6) while averaging 5.1 rebounds per game. will be replaced in the starting lineup by Sam Singer. Wallace’s absence could be a crushing blow to any postseason aspirations that the team had coming into the season with a solid returning core and two top-10 recruits as the Bears are now 12-6 overall and 2-3 in the Pac-12. Wallace is expected to be back in time for the Pac-12 Conference Tournament, but by then the Bears may need to get an automatic bid to make it to the NCAA Tournament.
2. We cannot imagine what Colorado State forward Emmanuel Omogbo is going through right now after four members of his family died in a house fire on Tuesday. According to reports, both of Omogbo’s parents died in the fire as well his sister’s two-year-old twins. Omogbo’s sister survived after jumping out a second story window. Omogbo, who transferred to Colorado State from South Plains College in Texas, played last night in the team’s win at Air Force (1 points and 2 rebounds). If you would like to contribute to Omogbo and his family as they attempt to recover from this tragedy, you can donate through a GoFundMe page that the school set up for him.
3. We could have a repeat of the Skal Labissiere situation in the class of 2018 as Marvin Bagley III, the top-ranked recruit in the class, has been ruled ineligible to play high school basketball this season. The governing body in California ruled Bagley ineligible following his transfer from a school in Arizona to one in California on November 12 because it was felt that it was an “athletically motivated transfer”. Bagley will not be able to play high school basketball in California until January 4, 2017 (one year after he enrolled at a school in the state). With this being Bagley’s third high school in a little over a year and a half of high school we are reminded of Luke Winn’s analysis on transfer rates of top recruits.
4. It didn’t take long for Keith Frazier to find a new home as the former Southern Methodist guard will be transferring to North Texas. Frazier, who was a 2013 McDonald’s All-American and averaged 11.9 points per game, is best known as being the central figure for the infractions that led to SMU’s postseason ban. As we mentioned earlier in the week, Frazier’s ongoing guilt has been cited as the reason for his decision to transfer. We will be interested to see how he does at North Texas given his already solid numbers at SMU especially without having the burden of being the reason his undefeated team is not going to play in the NCAA Tournament.
5. Sometimes Ken Pomeroy’s stuff can be almost too complex for the average college basketball fan, but his post on the variation in expected pace of play should make sense to most fans. One of the more confusing aspects of Pomeroy’s ratings are his preseason and early season ratings, which are based on projections that he attempts to formalize into a numeric rating. As Pomeroy notes he uses several factors to predict a team’s style and performance including a coach’s historical pattern. While the individual team/coach variation is interesting we would be more interested to see how this plays out within conferences to see if officiating/style of play may also be a contributing factor.

About three weeks ago, after California struggled to put much of any space between itself and Incarnate Word, we here at the Pac-12 microsite staged an intervention. Without actually intervening, of course. But we did call out the Golden Bears’ loaded roster for poor defensive effort, a general lack of energy, non-existent half-court offense and questionable chemistry. Given that it only a month into the season, we still gave Cuonzo Martin‘s team a pass with upcoming dates against St. Mary’s, Virginia, Davidson and the entirety of the Pac-12 on the horizon. Since that December 9 game, the Golden Bears have gone 5-1, with the sole loss coming in an overtime affair at Virginia, KenPom‘s fourth-best team in America. That loss, if anything, gave Cal its first taste of credibility. So are the the boys from Berkeley now out of the woods and headed to the Final Four? Hmmmmm.

In Recent Weeks, Jordan Mathews Can’t Seem To Miss. (Mike Stobe, Getty Images)

There is a lot to be excited about in the East Bay right now. Jordan Mathews can’t miss (52.3 percent from three-point range). Jabari Bird is finally showing the two-way consistency that was missing in his first two campaigns. Kameron Rooks and Kinglsey Okoroh are making wholly unanticipated leaps into relevance as capable big men on both ends. Ivan Rabb  is impressing with his ability to both pull bigs away from the hoop but also bang with them down low. Sam Singer has been a legitimately good reserve off the pine. Jaylen Brown, while still struggling to put it all together, has started hitting more jumpers while improving his defensive effort and terrorizing opponents in transition. All of this is happening while senior point guard Tyrone Wallace is in the midst of a serious drought (13.3 percent from three-point range; three turnovers per game). In past years, such a malaise from Wallace would have surely coincided with a significant losing streak (see: last year’s devastating 1-8 stretch in late December and January).

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Happy New Year’s everyone! May you all celebrate the arbitrary tick of the clock on an arbitrary day on the arbitrarily human-invented calendar in whichever arbitrary fashion pleases you the most! Here in this space we’re turning our attention to something far less arbitrary, a tradition older than the hills, a ritual that goes back to before the first organism crawled out of the ocean and onto dry land however many million years ago: the transition from non-conference college basketball to Pac-12 conference play. At least seven unnamed sources indicate that such a sacrament is timeless. And so, to celebrate, let’s take a spin around the Pac-12 and do a quick reset, preparing you for what will seem, as it always does, like a sprint from New Year’s to March Madness.

All-Conference Team (No Surprises Edition)

Jakob Poeltl and Gary Payton II May Wind Up Fighting Over Conference Player of the Year Honors. (Godofredo Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports)

• G Gary Payton II, Sr, Oregon State
• G Tyrone Wallace, Sr, California
• F Josh Scott, Sr, Colorado
• F Ryan Anderson, Sr, Arizona
• C Jakob Poeltl, So, Utah

When we put together our preseason all-conference picks back in November, Poeltl and Payton were unanimous choices as first-teamers, and here they are at the turn of the calendar as the heavy Player of the Year favorites in the conference. Wallace was also on our preseason first-team and he’s been fine, if not spectacular. Scott and Anderson were second-team guys and have both been rock-solid as seniors. Scott has struggled some in his team’s two losses, but if he can lead the Buffaloes to an upper division finish, he might yet have a say in the Player of the Year race as well. Read the rest of this entry »

With notable results filtering in throughout the week, the complexion of the Pac-12 has undergone significant change in the last seven days. Here’s a look at some of the highlights — and lowlights — of recent action.

Best Audition for NBA Scouts

Colorado’s George King Has The Shooting And The Size To Make NBA Scouts Take Notice.

Last week we highlighted the NBA potential of a stretch seven-footer like UCLA’s Thomas Welsh and this week it is Colorado forward George King’s moment in the spotlight. The 6’6″, 220-pounder is shooting 50 percent from behind the three-point arc after making four of his six attempts in the Buffs’ win over BYU and has an NBA body so we have to imagine he is getting looked at a little. The redshirt sophomore has zero track record or pedigree, which makes his efficiency all the more surprising. With all the talk in the NBA of the importance of threes and free throws, what is better than a player who is doing exactly that and little else? And therein lies the rub. King has three-and-defense potential but he currently doesn’t play very much defense and he doesn’t pass much either. He is primarily an offensive player at this point and although he is a gifted shooter, he won’t shoot 50 percent from downtown this season. If he can stay efficient and work hard on becoming a better rebounder and defender, there is no doubt he has NBA ability.

Best Non-Conference Scheduling

UCLA is obligated to play a star-studded non-conference schedule because of who they are but it sure seems like the Bruins are cutting their teeth against a legitimate Sweet Sixteen contender every week. Oh wait… they ARE playing a legitimate Sweet Sixteen contender every week. After an impressive win over Gonzaga in Spokane over the weekend, UCLA now owns two (the other is Kentucky) of the most impressive non-conference wins of any team in the country. Considering two of the team’s three losses were in a preseason tournament halfway across an ocean, we are inclined to believe those wins will vastly outweigh the losses in the eyes of any committee that may or may not evaluate the Bruins for postseason play. The Bruins will likely end up in a lot of bubble discussions in February and there is no doubt these games help teams prepare for the pressure of similar games in the postseason. They aren’t done either. UCLA plays North Carolina in Brooklyn on Saturday.

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Everyone talking about Arizona during the offsesaon (even Jay Bilas) seemed to agree that the biggest question facing head coach Sean Miller was how he would replace do-it-all point guard T.J. McConnell; but no one could have expected how quickly transfer junior Kadeem Allen would be able to answer that question.

Kadeem Allen Has Emerged As An Answer at Point Guard for Arizona. (Arizona Athletics)

The statistical comparison between the two players comes with a rather large disclaimer that Arizona hasn’t played anyone of note this season in its four games; but so far, at least, Allen looks like a competent replacement for McConnell. Without trying to pretend this is an apples to apples review, it is worth noting that Allen has been the more efficient offensive player (125.3 to 118.3 in ORtg; 60.5%  to 53.8% eFG), a better passer (45.0% to 39.0% in ARate) and a more opportunistic defender (4.9% to 4.3% in Stl%). It’s certainly likely that his efficiency and assist rate will fall back to Earth as he faces better competition, but Arizona’s ability to reload instead of rebuild this season depended heavily on the team’s point guard play. Early indications show that Allen and sophomore Parker Jackson-Cartwright are absolutely ready to fill that role. Read the rest of this entry »

There was absolutely nothing noteworthy about Cal’s 85-67 thrashing of UC Santa Barbara last night in Berkeley, but if the Golden Bears are going to be the contender that they have been advertised as this preseason, that is without question a very good thing.

Cal Rolled to Its Second Win of the Season Versus UCSB Last Night

Cal didn’t play all that well against the Gauchos. Freshmen Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb battled foul trouble all night long, and head coach Cuonzo Martin mentioned afterward that his offense looked stagnant in settling for too many three-pointers (the Bears finished just 6-of-22 from downtown). But UC Santa Barbara is not your typical cupcake either, as the Gauchos were picked by some pundits to win the Big West this season — the type of opponent where a loss would hurt far more than a win helps. But instead of letting UCSB keep the score close and build confidence as the game wore on, Cal instead trampled them from the start with its vastly superior size and athleticism. This fact is easily illustrated in that the Bears’ margin of victory (18) was nearly identical to the difference in made free throws between the the two teams (17). The game was clearly over by midway through the second half, but the final score appeared closer than it actually was after Martin emptied his bench in the final minutes.

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

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

Kadeem Allen Is The One at Point Guard U?

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

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