Nick Fasulo is an RTC correspondent who writes the column College Basketball By the Tweets, a look at the world of college hoops through the prism of everyone’s favorite social media platform. You can find him on Twitter @nickfasuloSBN.

We are now one month in to the college basketball season. What does that mean? It’s probably fair to start making definitive “this team is good, this team is bad” statements… only more eloquently. This week, Twitter was rife with negativity, as the reality of some team’s deficiencies were confirmed in week four.

Texas is Bad, Jaded

Take Texas for example. Sure, the absence of Myck Kybongo is killing this team, but offensively the Longhorns are an absolute mess, and simply plopping an above-average sophomore point guard into the rotation isn’t going to just fix everything. It’s even put the Worldwide Leader in a tenuous situation!

Texas is holding opponents to the lowest FG% in the nation. Georgetown scored 37 pts in their win Friday against Tennessee #nothinghastogive

— Longhorn Network (@LonghornNetwork) December 4, 2012

I can’t imagine people are rushing to get Texas #longhorn network. This hoops team is not great and not fun to watch. #NCAA

— Wally Szczerbiak (@wallyball) December 5, 2012

Texas has 11 turnovers in 13 minutes. They also wish this game was on the Longhorn Network so no one could see it.

— Greg Giombarrese (@ggiombarrese) December 5, 2012

UCLA is Bad Too, And Texas Is Still Bad!

Following that drubbing against Georgetown, the Longhorns were unfortunately back on national television. They could not hide, playing against an equally disappointing UCLA team in Reliant Stadium. Two high-level programs failing miserably to meet preseason expectations makes for an empty football stadium.

Buy a ticket,get the entire section at Reliant!

— Doug Gottlieb (@GottliebShow) December 8, 2012

Still sitting here with hundreds of others (dead serious) at Reliant, awaiting tipoff between Texas-UCLA

— Jason King (@JasonKingESPN) December 8, 2012

How bad is Texas? They’ve missed three wide-open layups. How bad is UCLA? They trail Texas by one.

— Jeff Eisenberg (@JeffEisenberg) December 8, 2012

Honestly, I don’t know what’s more embarrassing, a moist basketball court on an aircraft carrier, or crickets.

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Chris Johnson is an RTC Columnist. He can be reached @ChrisDJohnsonn. *Ed. Note: since Monday night had such a weak schedule of games, we combined the ATB for that night into the weekend’s edition.

The Weekend’s Lede. Prepare For College Hoops Boredom.In the interest of sparing you Monday night’s gulf of emptiness, and to give you a substantial recap to kick off the week in preparation for probably the most non-eventful week on the college hoops calendar, I’m incorporating the weekend into a lengthy ATB review. There was plenty of exciting action over the past three days, and for your sake and mine, I hope you enjoyed as much as of it as you can. If you missed anything – if the seasonal urge of holiday shopping or Christmas tree purchasing consumed your time – the next few days could feel especially painful. The dreaded final exam lull sneaked under the national consciousness, cloaked by the sport’s high drama in leagues across the country, but there’s no avoiding it any longer; it’s here. In that spirit, hopefully the weekend that was gave you enough to chew on over the coming week. I’ve singled out a few highlights, big moments and breathtaking plays to guide your thinking. For the sake of good, exciting basketball, let’s dive into the past three days’ worth of games.

Your Watercooler Moment. Illinois Is Better Than We Thought, And Now It has A Win To Prove it. 

The Illini made a statement by beating Gonzaga on its home court (Photo credit: AP Photo).

Entering Saturday night’s showdown at Gonzaga, the most you could say about Illinois was that John Groce had clearly coaxed better performances across the board from the same players who quit on Bruce Weber down the stretch last season. They were undefeated, ranked in the top 15 of last week’s AP Poll, and clearly improved over last year’s NCAA Tournament miss. But if you dug deep into Illinois’ body of work, it was hard not to come away thinking their undefeated start (and Maui Invitational crown) had at least something to do with a mostly forgiving early schedule. What the Illini did in Spokane – take down a top 10 team with Final Four potential on its home floor – legitimizes their undefeated run. Granted, the Bulldogs were coming off an unimpressive two-point escape at Washington State, the only time they’d been challenged all season, but it’s hard to argue Mark Few’s team wasn’t one of the nation’s best when the Illini visited the Kennel Saturday night. All things considered, Illinois’ victory was one of the most impressive true road wins we’ve seen all season. And no small measure of credit is owed to Brandon Paul, who contributed 35 points on 10-of-16 shooting in a national coming-out party that saw not only his own perception (and NBA draft stock) skyrocket, but also that of his team, and their prospectus in a crowded Big Ten.

Also Worth Chatting About. Kansas Is Still Kansas.

The Buffaloes were no match for Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse (Photo credit: Getty Images).

Just when you thought Kansas’ run of eight straight Big 12 titles might be in jeopardy, when the losses of National Player of the Year finalist Thomas Robinson and erratic-yet-effective point guard Tyshawn Taylor would leave the Jayhawks on the short end of another casually brilliant Bill Self season, Kansas goes out and eviscerates a very good Colorado team on national television to validate its place among the nation’s elite crust of national frontrunners. That’s just what the Jayhawks needed to reintroduce their veteran leadership and collective talent to the world, and to erase any doubts that existed about their league and national championship bona fides – if those doubts even existed in the first place. More importantly, Kansas unleashed highly-anticipated redshirt freshman Ben McLemore as a Freshman of the Year type of talent that many pegged him as. McLemore had already shown the potential to be Kansas’ primary offensive weapon this year; Saturday’s romp merely confirmed what many already knew.

Dunkdafied #1. Earlier this season, Mason Plumlee punctuated Duke’s comeback victory (and in the eyes of much of the national hoops consciousness, it’s No. 1 ranking) over Ohio State with a breathtaking alley-oop. Victor Oladipo sees you and raises you this rim-rock (and we can probably assume he fashions his Hoosiers the best team in the land). No lobs needed here, thank you very much.

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When Kyle Anderson announced his intention to attend UCLA (he was the second of the team’s four current freshmen to commit), Bruin fans no doubt imagined that he would be a confident, play-making force who would lead Ben Howland’s team back to national importance. Suffice it to say, up to this point, those visions haven’t quite yet panned out. There have been glimpses here and there of the versatility that makes Anderson such a promising prospect, but his swagger has been sporadic and there are now questions about whether Anderson was overrated as a top five player in last year’s admittedly weak recruiting class.

Kyle Anderson Has Struggled Early For UCLA, And In The Process, Lost Some of His Confidence

It was no secret even before Anderson arrived on campus that he wasn’t the type of athletic freak who would wow fans with great speed or hops (his nickname, Slo-Mo, is not meant to be ironic), but the expectation was that his tremendous feel for the game and leadership would overcome those deficiencies. After all, he was a 6’9” point guard who had led the fabled St. Anthony’s High School to 65 straight wins in the prep ranks. But it didn’t take long to realize that college competition would be a whole different animal. Against weaker competition such as Indiana State, UC Irvine and James Madison, Anderson showed he was more than capable of getting into the lane and finding a shot for himself, even if he was unable to convert over players his size inside. Although he shot just 7-of-23 from the field in those games, he at least offset his scoring deficiency by grabbing some boards, dropping dimes, and being a leader on the floor.

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1. Following this first weekend where the college basketball didn’t pale in comparison to the college football schedule, we start our week not recounting some of the action on the court, but rather action on a picket line. On Saturday, The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (now there’s a phrase I never expected to type out for the Pac-12 Morning Five) declared a strike against the Pac-12 Network and set up picket lines at USC, Arizona State, Oregon State, Oregon and Washington for those days’ games. The IATSE complaint centers on the fact that the Pac-12 Network has, in some markets, used non-union crews, and that employees on those crews don’t receive the benefits that union employees receive, such as higher wages, benefits and other protections. The Pac-12 issued a statement in response saying that it “respects an individual’s right to decide whether to be represented by a union” and not a whole lot else. Coupled with the conference’s impasse with DirecTV over carriage of their network, this is another bump in the road for the fledgling network. But, I gotta admit, the Pac-12 Networks are really cool. Just for instance, on Saturday you could have turned on the Pac-12 at 11 AM for Cal State Northridge and Arizona State and watched basketball straight through until the USC/Minnesota game wrapped up around 9:30 PM. And, something similar is on tap for next week.
2. On to actual on-court action, brave basketball fans who showed up at Reliant Stadium for UCLA and Texas may have reason to go on strike against the sport after the two huge programs put on a horrendous display of basketball in front of a largely empty stadium. As Jeff Eisenberg of Yahoo! Sports writes, the game may have set the record for most empty seats at a basketball game. The game was played at the home of the NFL’s Houston Texans and was capable of fitting some 43,000 fans. Let’s just say that the announced attendance (which was apparently an imaginary figure) missed that mark by somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 people. Why this game was scheduled at that location, I’ll never be sure. There was certainly no chance in hell that, even if UCLA had been playing well, the Bruins were going to bring any significant number of fans to Houston. And Texas, well, you guys know you do have a perfectly good Erwin Center that, even with its 16,000-some capacity would likely not have been filled for this game. As for the game itself, well, let’s just say Texas missed two point-blank layups on breakaways and neither of those likely qualify as the low point in this game.
3. From one monstrosity to another, for those of you who maybe thought that Washington getting back the services of Scott Suggs and Shawn Kemp Jr. would help turn this team’s season around, consider Saturday night’s loss at home to Nevada the cold water to the face to dissuade you of that illusion. The Huskies have now lost three home games to increasingly bad competition and, while Lorenzo Romar isn’t about to let his team give up, this looks to be headed to a lost season that will put 2007-08’s 16-17 campaign to shame. There were some extenuating circumstances Saturday night, as Abdul Gaddy was abused regularly by Nevada’s Deonte Burton early in the game and picked up three early fouls on a night when Andrew Andrews was out with injury, leaving the Huskies without a true point guard for 10 minutes, but that’s mere explanation rather than excuse. The schedule eases up significantly between here and a December 29 date with Connecticut, but this group is far away from congealing into a quality basketball team.
4. After knocking off Boise State last week, Utah had a great chance on Saturday night to not only exceed last year’s win total, but also knock off in-state rival BYU to seal up a phenomenal week for the program. At the under-eight timeout, the Utes had a six-point lead, the Marriott Center was quiet and Utah looked to have the Cougars right where they wanted them. But then a pair of Matt Carlino threes and a Craig Cusick three as a chaser brought things back to reality. The Utes wound up scoring just one field goal in the game’s last 11 minutes, turned the ball over seven times and let a very winnable game slip away. But if you take a step back and look at the season as a whole, especially in contrast with last year, it is clear that progress is being made.
5. Around the college basketball world, we’re into the dreaded time known as Finals Week, where the number of watchable games dwindles to a trickle. But, in the state of Oregon, both Pac-12 schools have wrapped up their exams and are ready to focus on basketball. Oregon’s finals were last week and they celebrated their first day of winter break with a demolition of Idaho State. But, rather than pick up on a whirlwind of cross-country travel in search of games, the Ducks will hunker down for a week, try to clean up some of the mistakes that Dana Altman has seen and prepare for next Saturday’s game against Nebraska. Meanwhile, Oregon State is on slightly different schedule. Having wrapped up their finals, the Beavers crushed Grambling State on Saturday in a game that was drastically different than its first game back from finals last year. But up next for OSU, rather than spend a week practicing in Corvallis, they’ll head up north to face Portland State on Wednesday night.

Last Thursday, you may have remembered our Pac-12 Hoops Pick’Em that got underway in our M5. We’re back at it again this week, this time with a full post to go over the results from last week and to look ahead as well. Parker and I stole the show in week one, going a solid 11-2 to take a one-game advantage over Drew and Adam. I was the only one to miss Utah’s road win at Texas State on Friday night, but I came back to the field with Wyoming’s upset of Colorado. Parker and I took the lead thanks to San Diego State’s win over UCLA on Saturday at the Honda Center. So now, we enter week two. Colorado’s visit to Kansas and Illinois visiting Gonzaga headline the list as our games of the week.

The only difference between the two leaders this week comes in The Showcase at Houston, where I was the only one to take the home-state Longhorns. Drew was the only one to take the visiting Fighting Illini against the Zags, and he was also the only one to pick USC with a home upset over Minnesota. Three of the four of us took Fresno State getting a road win in Pullman, with Adam going with the safe pick in the Cougars. The final game of the week, featuring #21 UNLV visiting Berkeley, was split between the prognosticators.

Brendon Mulvihill is the head curator for @SportsGawker and an RTC contributor. You can find him @TheMulv on Twitter. See bottom of the post for the Official RTC Star System.

With a month to go in the non-conference season, we are starting to sort out the contenders from the pretenders. This weekend provides some additional match-ups that will give us a better indication of which teams we should watch out for come March. Let’s get to the breakdowns.

Colorado at #10 Kansas – 2:00 PM EST, Saturday on ESPN2 (***)

This Weekend Colorado Tries to Beat Kansas for the First Time Since 2003

• You might call this game a renewal of a Big 12 rivalry but the reality is that it has been far from a “rivalry.” Kansas has not lost to Colorado since the 2002-03 season. While this will be the first time that CU plays Kansas as a member of the Pac-12, coach Tad Boyle is 0-3 against the Jayhawks since taking the helm in Boulder two seasons ago. The big question for the Buffaloes will be how they handle KU center Jeff Withey. A few weeks ago, CU was able to slow down another seven-footer in Isaiah Austin when they defeated Baylor. However, Withey is not a freshmen trying to fit himself into “The Pierre Jackson Show.” He’s a senior who has proven to be a dominant force on defense and a capable offensive threat. Withey also cleans up on the glass, particularly on the defensive end. Colorado needs to figure out how to grab some of those misses lest it become a long night. Keep an eye on the three-point shooting of Colorado guards Askia Booker and Spencer Dinwiddie. Both are threats from deep and both need to be on target to have a chance to win this one.

Temple vs. #1 Duke – 3:15 PM EST, Saturday on ESPN (****)

• Last season, Temple beat Duke in Philadelphia on the backs of Rahlir Hollis-Jefferson and Khalif Wyatt. Hollis-Jefferson and Wyatt combined to go 15-22 from the field in a somewhat surprising upset of the Blue Devils. The Owls also did it without this season’s leading scorer, Scootie Penn. However, when you compare this Duke team to last season’s team, they are more balanced and more patient without Austin Rivers dominating the ball. The Blue Devils have scoring threats all over the floor and point guard Quinn Cook is proving to be an excellent distributor. Additionally, Mason Plumlee has been superb. The key for the Owls will be figuring out a way to stop Plumlee in the paint. Unfortunately for Temple, scoring can come from anywhere when playing the Blue Devils. They are too balanced and too battle tested at this point to drop one to the Owls this year.

Seven Sweet Scoops is the newest and hottest column by Chad Lykins, the RTC recruiting analyst. Every Friday he will discuss the seven top stories from the week in the wide world of recruiting, involving offers, which prospect visited where, recent updates regarding school lists, and more chatter from the recruiting scene. You can also check out more of his work at RTC with his weekly column “Who’s Got Next?”, as well as his work dedicated solely to Duke Basketball at Duke Hoop Blog. You can also follow Chad at his Twitter account @CLykinsBlog for up-to-date breaking news from the high school and college hoops scene.

Note: ESPN Recruiting used for all player rankings.

1. Wiggins Got Game?

Down in Tallahassee, Florida the nation’s No. 1 overall ranked senior, Andrew Wiggins, took his first official visit to Florida State this week. The 6’8″ Canadian small forward out of Huntington Prep (West Virginia) is highly regarded as the best high school basketball player in the country and rightfully so. However, the visit is now being highly publicized for the off-court attention he received more than just basketball. Before watching the Seminoles’ intrastate match-up between No. 6 Florida, in which they were routed 72-47, the big story that has gone viral since Wednesday came from one small tweet from @NosillaDraw, a Florida State co-ed, who was one of Wiggins various “tour guides” on Tuesday. “If my girls and I didn’t convince you to come to FSU last night I don’t know what would,” tweeted the young female, attached with a photo of Wiggins and three other FSU co-eds. The tweet, which was picked up originally by Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio, caused quite the recruiting stir in Lexington and in Tallahassee moments after being sent to the masses. Wiggins, who is also considering Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina and Ohio State, was then spotted behind the FSU bench along with his parents and FSU alums, Marita Payne and Mitchell Wiggins, for the game. Fans and cheerleaders alike also made their case for why he should become a Seminole, with chants, signs taking shots at Kentucky, and white T-shirts that spelled out “We Want Wiggins!” across the chest. While Florida State has a lot of work to do on the court this season, landing Wiggins would give the Seminoles their most coveted recruit during head coach Leonard Hamilton’s tenure. One thing is for certain — the Seminoles faithful reassured Wiggins that he is their No. 1 priority; however, time will tell in the spring if Wiggins agrees and makes Florida State his No. 1 choice.

A group of Florida State co-eds tried their hand at luring Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 overall ranked senior, to Tallahassee

2. Jabari Parker Returns To Court

He’s back. The nation’s No. 2 overall ranked senior, Jabari Parker, made his on-court return on Saturday night for Simeon Career Academy (Illinois) at the Chicago Elite Classic after nursing a fracture in his right foot suffered in the summer while participating with the U-17 Team USA squad. Parker was not expected to play for Wolverines as of the night before, but felt well enough to suit up and return to the court with his teammates in their season opener. Limited to just 10 minutes of action, Parker finished the game with six points, four rebounds and two assists as Simeon got a win in which they led wire-to-wire. Parker, who is deciding between BYU, Duke, Florida, Michigan State and Stanford, showed some signs of rust, but viewed it as just another hurdle in the recovery process. “I felt good,” the 6’8″ small foward said. “Of course I had some bumps and bruises coming in, but as the game progressed I was a little sore. But I’m learning how to get my wind back and trying to get back in shape.” He has taken four of his five official visits and will prepare to trip to Stanford before making his highly anticipated decision either in January or February. Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo was on hand at the Chicago Elite Classic as the Spartans, along with Duke, have been mentioned as the co-favorites to land his services.

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1. Gonzaga’s last second win over Washington State on Wednesday night goes down as one of the best games of the young season so far, and while Ken Bone and the Cougars aren’t big on the concept of the moral victory against a bitter rival, there are some good things they can take away from that game. First and foremost, their stars stepped up in a big way. Brock Motum and DaVonte Lacy combined for five threes in a four-and-a-half minute stretch to bring the Cougs back from an 11-point deficit to tie the game and set up the final scramble. And if WSU has any plans to turn around a slow start to the year, it will need to be on the backs of those two. The other big thing is that, while this team will be without a traditional point guard the whole year, Bone seems to have cobbled together a workable solution. Mike Ladd seems to do most of the play-making in the halfcourt set, but guys like Royce Woolridge, Dexter Kernich-Drew and Lacy have all pitched in and assembled a good point-guard-by-committee group that is doing an excellent job limiting turnovers and getting WSU into their sets. It was bumpy at the start of the year, but the Gonzaga loss proved to me, at least, that the situation is workable.
2. Meanwhile, Utah, another team expected to finish near the bottom of the conference, was able to come up with its best performance of the year in blowing out Boise State. On a night when the Utes honored former head coach Rick Majerus prior to the game, Utah center Jason Washburn said “we felt like Coach Majerus was with us all night; he was right on the bench with us, smiling down.”  Washburn went 6-of-6 from the field to pace an incredibly hot shooting night for the Utes, in which they shot a ridiculous 78.8% eFG. Block U calls the win the best by the program in the last four years, and, although I could nitpick, it is being taken as a sign by the Ute faithful that Larry Krystkowiak has got this ship headed in the right direction.
3. We’ve talked a lot about Mark Lyons over the last few days, and Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News has his own take on his transition to the point, which includes the unconvincing argument of “hey, they’re beating a lot of bad teams by a lot of points!” But, DeCourcy does make the point that Lyons is never really the sole ballhandler on the floor for Arizona and that Sean Miller is quite pleased with Lyons’ production. I would maybe go even one step further and say that, while Lyons is the closest thing to a point guard on the team, very rarely is he tasked with being the initiator of the halfcourt offense, a role that just as often falls to either Solomon Hill or Nick Johnson. Lyons may spend a bit more time with the ball in his hands this year than he did last year playing with Tu Holloway at Xavier, but really, Miller hasn’t exactly tried to rebuild Lyons from the ground up.
4. Even with UCLA’s struggles out of the gate, Shabazz Muhammad still thinks his team is going to make an impact in the Pac-12 this season, even if it has been relegated to sleeper status by their early losses. He told the Petros and Money show on Fox Radio on Wednesday how he feels about the rest of the season. But, the big takeaway from Muhammad’s comments (other than the overwhelming use of the word “really”) may be that Ben Howland has “become a players’ coach.” Muhammad ties that comment to the change that encourages the team to get out in transition more, and it is true that UCLA’s averaging about three more possessions per game this year than last, but certainly Howland is still trying to figure out the sweet spots on both ends of the floor for this team.
5. Another team that has earned the title “sleeper team” in the Pac-12 is Oregon, off to a 7-1 start behind the production of an all-freshman backcourt of Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson. While senior leader E.J. Singler is quick to praise his younger players, Dana Altman, ever the coach, sees the need for better consistency and better shot selection out of the backcourt duo. Still, he sees them as key cogs in the long-term plans for the Ducks. And, an already deep and talented team expects to get even deeper and more talented, when freshman Arik Armstead is expected to join the team in January. Armstead, a defensive tackle for the Ducks football team, won’t join the team until after Oregon’s appearance in the Fiesta Bowl (January 3 against Kansas State) and it’ll take some time for him to get into basketball shape and learn the ins and outs of the teams’ sets, but he’s been spending a bit of time working with team managers. Just how much of an impact he’ll have is unknown, especially with a now deep Ducks big man rotation, but you can never have too much talent, can you?

1. In recent days, we’ve seen a lot of talk about how Mark Lyons at Arizona has struggled a bit in his transition to playing the point, all this despite lights-out shooting and an undefeated record. But Tuesday night at the McKale Center, Lyons’ shot betrayed him in the midst of his first unquestionably bad game with the Wildcats and, as Greg Hansen reports, some in the crowd lost patience with their new senior in the midst of his oh-fer night. But, as Hansen notes, it isn’t as if Lyons’ lone role as the team’s point guard is to make spectacular passes to teammates for easy looks. Lyons ability to be a scoring threat earned open looks for his teammates. For example, Nick Johnson took advantage of the attention paid to Lyons by the defense to score 23 points, then afterwards he had Lyons’ back, praising his defense and leadership. Still, this was a good win over a halfway decent Southern Miss team, but the 27 turnovers that the ‘Cats endured (certainly not all Lyons’ fault – he had just three turnovers in 29 minutes) are not exactly a great sign as UA’s competition jumps up a notch.
2. UCLA had a somewhat random exhibition game on Tuesday night against Cal State San Marcos as a result of wanting to open the new Pauley Pavilion with a game that would actually count in the standings, but it turned out to be a pretty well-placed game. It gave the Bruins a chance to work on their newly unveiled zone def… err, what’s that? They played man-to-man defense the whole game? You’re kidding me. What’s more, head coach Ben Howland asked the opposing coach to play man defense against them the whole game, and CSSM’s head coach Jim Saia complied. Now, I’ll certainly admit that the Bruins could use some work on their man defense, but I would guess that all of these current Bruins have played plenty of man defense in their lives, but not a ton of zone. And given that UCLA has shown a drastic inability to guard opponents in a man-on-man setting, I just sort of assumed that the Bruins would be working on that zone that they probably have to play a lot of in the future. And, while UCLA certainly hasn’t been excellent offensively against man defense, they’ve been downright awful against the zone, but for some reason Howland wanted to work on their man offense. And, to make matters worse, by all accounts UCLA didn’t even look that good playing against CSSM. They turned the ball over offensively, they couldn’t stop CSSM players from getting in the lane, and they beat an overmatched team by only 23 points in a game that was closer than the final score.
3. Last year, Arizona State earned its seventh win of the season on January 28. Last night they got to 7-1 on December 5 with a win over Hartford. And, as the Hoops Report writes, Herb Sendek and his team have put themselves on track to return to the postseason for the first time since 2010. But, while wins over the likes of Central Arkansas, Cornell and Arkansas-Pine Bluff are certainly better than losses to those teams, the sole “good” win in their non-conference slate will be their Thanksgiving week win over Arkansas, a team currently with a sub-100 RPI. And, the best remaining game on their non-conference slate is DePaul, so if ASU has any hopes of getting to the Big Dance, rather than one of those little ones, they’ll need to make a major splash in conference play, something they’ve failed to do recently to the tune of a 10-26 conference record over the past two seasons.
4. On Tuesday, Spencer Dinwiddie took a little shot at Colorado’s Wednesday-night opponent, referring to Colorado State as “little brother” and expressing some irritation over CSU’s rushing of the court following last year’s win. Last night, Dinwiddie backed up his talk by showing “little brother” he meant business. The sophomore guard scored a career-high 29 points in front of an overflow crowd at the Coors Event Center in Boulder. Dinwiddie backtracked a bit from his comments following the game, saying that he “didn’t mean it in a disrespectful way,” but he also took joy in being able to “back up the comment with a win.” More importantly, come March 17 (aka Selection Sunday), expect CU’s win over their in-state rival to be a solid notch in their bedpost.
5. Washington has a bit of a break this week, taking a breather from competition in advance of its Saturday game with Nevada, but sophomore Desmond Simmons has earned the praise of his head coach. Lorenzo Romar described Simmons’ performance on Sunday against Cal State Fullerton as “Brockman-esque,” referring to former Husky great and all-time rebounding leader, Jon Brockman. Simmons posted career highs in points and rebounds (14/18, respectively) in that game, and in the process became the only Husky aside from Brockman to grab that many rebounds in Romar’s time in Seattle. Given that UW’s frontcourt, other than center Aziz N’Diaye, has struggled to control the glass, Simmons’ explosion was well-timed. While Simmons is still coming off the bench for Romar, the head coach made it clear following the CSUF game that it isn’t because of anything that Simmons is doing wrong, but rather a result of him bringing great energy off of the bench. With Shawn Kemp Jr. nearing a return from his knee injury, it is possible that the UW big men, which had been considered a weakness as recently as a week ago, could turn into a strength by the time conference play rolls around.

Just a little more than a year ago, I wrote this article about the state of the Pac-12 and why the conference isn’t held to a higher standard than the other five power conferences. Seattle Pacific, Adams State, and Cal Poly had all beaten Pac-12 opponents just two weeks into the season. If it sounds familiar, you’re right. Nearly all of the preseason hype the league gained from the signings of guys like Shabazz Muhammad, Kaleb Tarczewski, and Grant Jerrett is gone. Oh yeah, don’t forget about Kyle Anderson, Brandon Ashley, or Josh Scott, all ESPN Top 40 players in their own right. UCLA and Arizona were being picked as Sweet Sixteen locks, and Stanford would definitely make the field of 68. And then there were the Californias and Washingtons, expected to make a run at the Tournament if they could put the right pieces together. But the bigger the hype, the bigger there is a chance of disappointment – and there’s certainly been a lot of that through the first three weeks of basketball in the Pac-12.

Games Like The Ones Colorado Has Played Against Texas Southern and Wyoming Has Tad Boyle Frustrated

The conference has lost a combined 24 games so far in the 2012-13 campaign, and an astounding 11 of those have been to teams in the non-power conferences. Basketball factories such as Sacramento State, SMU, Cal Poly, Pepperdine, Albany, and Wyoming have all notched victories against Pac-12 opponents, and there have been some near misses in other places. A Drake squad that ranks 254th in the nation in rebounding led California with 1:10 to play before eventually falling to the Golden Bears. A 1-7 Texas Southern team took Colorado to double overtime on the road before the Buffaloes pulled out a five-point victory. And then there’s UCLA, who entered the year ranked in at least the Top 20 of every preseason poll, getting taken to overtime by UC Irvine after the Anteaters missed two free throws – either of which would have won the game, with five seconds to play in regulation.

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