Twelve straight hours of hoops here in Maui can leave you a little loopy, but that’s the situation we’re facing here after 160 minutes of fairly entertaining basketball spaced out over half a day. Ok, maybe it was 140 minutes of compelling stuff until UCLA woke up against Chaminade in the first evening game, but the point is that the quality of hoops being played this year in Maui is good for so early in the season.

Here are some thoughts from the afternoon/evening games. For Act I on the morning/early afternoon games (Michigan-Memphis and Duke-Tennessee), click here.

• UCLA is a conundrum surrounded by a riddle wrapped in a question mark. There’s just no figuring this team out. It’s spurious to try to draw reasonable conclusions from a game against a D-II school, but in two halves we saw a team that couldn’t impose its will against a group half its size versus a team that looked talented enough to make it into the NCAA Tournament’s second weekend. Here’s what we do know — the Bruins’ company line in the aftermath of Reeves Nelson’s latest flub (oversleeping and missing the team bus to the airport, causing him to need to take a later flight) is that his addition to the game in the second half “brought energy” and helped UCLA go on a 29-3 run to blow the game wide open.
• So let’s talk about Nelson, shall we? The 6’9″ junior was forced to sit out the first half as a penalty for his transgression, but if you heard Ben Howland and his players talk about his contributions after the game, you’d have thought he went for 20/10 after the intermission. Instead, he took two shots (making neither), hit one of two free throws, grabbed five boards (all defensive), tallied a couple of assists, and got a steal and a block. For 11 minutes of action, it’s a nice hustle line — no doubt about it. But to hear Team Bruin tell it, they wouldn’t have won this game without his performance. While we love glue guys who put their all into every play, Nelson typically isn’t that guy and this situation sounded a bit too much like Intervention where everyone is afraid to tell the truth about someone for fear it’ll set him off.  This UCLA team is definitely worth watching for the next few weeks, at least until the semester break.

Jeff Withey's Only Bucket of the Game Was Impressive (KemperLesnik/B. Spurlock)

• Read the rest of this entry »

Jesse Baumgartner is an RTC columnist. His Love/Hate column will publish on Mondays throughout the season. In this weekly piece he’ll review the five things he loved and hated about the previous seven days of college basketball.

Five Things I Loved This Week

I LOVED….finding out answers on Opening Night. After last year, we all knew UConn’s Jeremy Lamb had the chance to be special, but weren’t sure exactly what we’d get with Kemba Walker gone and a new team in Storrs. It took all of 32 minutes and 11 seconds against Columbia for Lamb to go baseline and throw down a “Yeah-I’m-A-POY-frontrunner-and-don’t-you-forget it” posterization. I’ll be shocked if that’s still not a Top 10 play by year’s end, and take note – this is the kid to watch for the next six months.

I LOVED….that moment when you realize college basketball is back – not necessarily the first game, but the first time you jump halfway off the couch and let out a little Ohhh!!! For me it was Alabama/Maryland, when Bama’s Tony Mitchell timed a tip jam so perfectly that he had time to cock it back into a semi-tomahawk and absolutely rip the net apart. The best time of the year is here.

I LOVED….the uniqueness of the North Carolina/Michigan State Carrier Classic. Yes, it was a great matchup, great coaches, a great tribute to our veterans, etc. But more than that, for the first time I can remember the backdrop setting of the game truly overtook the importance of the matchup or the result. Organizers have tried to do that in the past by setting up courts in huge venues, but this trumped them all. Five years from now, I think far more people will remember pictures like this than the final score. OK, well, maybe they’ll remember Roy Williams in combat boots, too.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Let’s face it. It has been an ugly start to the season for the Pac-12 conference. Bad losses have been piled upon off-the-court problems and injuries to create some struggles out of the gate. The UCLA losses are the poster children for this epidemic, while Utah and Arizona State, to name just two, haven’t done much to help either. All that being said, Saturday night’s USC game was a new low. It’s not just that the Trojans lost to Cal Poly, a team that is a halfway-decent, middle-of-the-road Big West team. It is the manner in which the Trojans lost. They scored 36 points in the game. They scored 16 points in the second half (which, really, was only slightly worse than the first half). It’s not like they had a ton of possessions (roughly 54), but still, that works out to 0.67 points per possession. They turned the ball over on 22% of their possessions, and when they didn’t turn it over, they posted a 32.9% eFG. They only grabbed 65.7% of available defensive rebounds and just 16.7% of available offensive rebounds. Their best player, sophomore point guard Maurice Jones hit just one out of 11 field goal attempts, and now has just a 29.7% eFG this season. The good news is that there are some good young players on this USC squad which should provide a good foundation upon which to build this program; the bad news is, Trojans fans might need eyeball replacement surgery if they watch too much of this team this season.
2. Washington had a bad day from start to finish on Sunday. It started out with the Huskies getting absolutely taken apart by Saint Louis in the morning, a game in which they fell behind by 25 points at the half before making a bit of a run at the end to only lose by 13. While the Billikens are a very good team and played a terrific game Sunday morning, the Huskies were exposed in their first loss. First and foremost, the relentless ball screening by SLU caused Washington all sorts of problems defensively, creating wide-open looks for threes and clean entry passes into the post. Secondly, because the Huskies were forced to take the ball out of the net so many times, they were forced to play a lot of halfcourt offense and struggled to get good looks out of their sets. Really, we know that the Huskies are going to improve as the season goes on and SLU is some good competition so this is by no means a crushing loss, but it does mean that the Huskies will be working their tails off in practice this week. Still, the long day wasn’t done for the Huskies when the final whistle blew because their flight back to Seattle was forced to make an emergency landing in Spokane and wait for an hour for the next jump back home.
3. Colorado wrapped up their disappointing weekend in Puerto Rico on Sunday by salvaging seventh place in the Puerto Rico Tip-Off with a win over Western Michigan. The Buffaloes were able to seal the win despite playing much of the game without sophomore forward Andre Roberson, who fouled out in just 11 minutes of game action. Senior forward Austin Dufault and sophomore center Shane Harris-Tunks picked up the slack for Roberson on the glass, each snagging eight rebounds, while senior wing Carlon Brown did the bulk of the scoring, hitting  eight of his 14 field goal attempts for 23 points while adding six rebounds and four assists. The win sends the Buffs home with at least something to feel good about, despite dropping winnable games in the first two rounds against Wichita State and Maryland.
4. Just when you thought the Reeves Nelson soap opera at UCLA was done (at least until the next thing goes wrong on the court), Nelson missed the team bus to the airport on Saturday for the team’s flight to Hawaii for the Maui Invitational. He was allowed to take a later flight to Maui and is expected to play today when the Bruins start the tournament by playing the host, Chaminade. Head coach Ben Howland also confirmed on Sunday that the whole Nelson suspension thing was first started when he was late for a team meeting the day after the Bruins’ season opening loss to Loyola Marymount.
5. Oregon State is in the middle of an 11-day, three-game east coast trip, and got their travels off to a good start on Saturday night with an overtime win over Texas in the semifinals of the Legends Classic. We’ll have more on the Beavers later today, but this morning we wanted to share with you a peek inside their program from the perspective of the players, specifically senior Kevin McShane and sophomore Roberto Nelson (collectively McBert, apparently) who are keeping a blog about their road trip. The first entry gives you a glimpse at the practice and travel schedule of college athletes, while the second captures the emotions following their big win on Saturday night. Great stuff from an otherwise dismal Pac-12 landscape this weekend.

1. The big story of the weekend was the ongoing Bernie Fine saga. As we mentioned on Friday, the case at Syracuse is more nuanced than the one at Penn State although there are plenty of strange things going on at both locations.  After Jim Boeheim basically called out the two individuals who accused Fine of sexual molestation, one of them issued a response that indicates this case will end up being a he said, he said controversy. For their part, the team responded by leaving Fine’s seat on the bench vacant during their first game since he had been put on administrative leave. Interestingly, it appears that the accusers may not be able to bring the case in front of a court due to how long ago the alleged crime happened. We have a feeling that this case will drag on for quite a long time.
2. Connecticut received some good bad news when the NCAA announced that it would be suspending freshman Ryan Boatright for six games for improper benefits — a plane ticket he received while playing AAU basketball. Including yesterday’s game, Boatright has already missed four of the required six games so he will only need to sit out the first two games of the Battle4Atlantis Tournament this week. Boatright could potentially see his first action of the season in the final game of Battle4Atlantis if the Huskies are able to win their first two games. Boatright’s return could be a big boost for the defending champions, who have not posted a dominating win yet during the regular season while their primary competitors for this season’s championship have all done so at least once.
3. We are not exactly sure what is happening at Oregon with Jabari Brown and it appears that neither does the Oregon staff. The most recent reports indicate that Brown is on his way out of Oregon, but earlier reports suggested that Brown’s name had been removed from the school’s online roster and that school officials, as well as head coach Dana Altman, were unaware of the reasons behind it. Now it appears that Altman will essentially be left to beg for the school’s one stud five-star recruit to come back to them, as the loss of such a hyped recruit so early in the season will certainly affect the decision of uncommitted prospects who now might be more weary of playing for Altman after this incident.
4. Arkansas was dealt a significant setback at a practice last Thursday when Marshawn Powell suffered what is being called a “serious” knee injury that will sideline him indefinitely. The loss could be a huge one for the Razorbacks as Powell, a junior, led the team in scoring the first two games with 19.5 PPG on a team full of freshmen and sophomores and bereft of the services of Rotnei Clarke, last year’s leading scorer who decided to transfer. The Razorbacks are talented enough and their non-conference schedule is weak enough — with the exception of a game at Connecticut — that they should be able to survive until their SEC schedule starts. If Powell is not back by then, things could get ugly very quickly for the young Razorbacks.
5. Former UCLA legend Walt Hazzard died on Friday from complications related to cardiac surgery at UCLA Medical Center. Many of our younger fans may not be as familiar with Hazzard as they are with other members of the UCLA dynasty, but Hazzard was the one who gave John Wooden his first national championship in 1964 when Hazzard was named the MOP of the 1964 NCAA Tournament. Hazzard teamed with Gail Goodrich to form one of the most devastating backcourts in NCAA history and help build the UCLA dynasty. Along with his contributions as a player at UCLA, Hazzard also won a gold medal at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, played 10 seasons in the NBA, and coached the Bruins for four seasons. There has been no word on when and where funeral services will be held, but we imagine that it will be a who’s who of basketball royalty at the event.

Kevin Doyle is an RTC contributor and the Patriot League correspondent. Each week he will examine the other 26 non-power conferences in college basketball. You can find him on twitter @KLDoyle11.

Introduction

Well this is refreshing, isn’t it? College basketball on the tube every night, several Other 26 teams already knocking some ranked BCS teams off of their high horses, and a whole lot of goodness upcoming with more early season tournaments and games. There is not a specific theme that has made itself apparent to open the season — I will usually try to hone in on a theme during the introduction of each column — but business has been usual to open the season. We have seen two major upsets with Long Beach State and Cleveland State shocking Top 10 teams — both have crawled into our Top 10 as a result — and we have not seen The Jimmer all over ESPN routinely hitting shots from 35 feet, something that was all too common last year. Rest assured though, as more and more games are played, storylines and themes will naturally develop. For now, let’s dig into the Top 10 teams for the week.

The Top 10

Tidbits from the Rankings

Read the rest of this entry »

The UCLA basketball program is 0-2 for the first time since Steve Lavin’s final disastrous year in Westwood. An 0-2 record isn’t necessarily the end of the world, but the Bruins haven’t exactly come by their record in the same way that Belmont did (with losses to college hoops powers Duke and Memphis). The Bruins have lost their opening two games to Loyola Marymount and Middle Tennessee State – and not in particularly compelling fashion either. Along the way, last year’s leading scorer and Sports Illustrated cover boy Reeves Nelson was suspended for behavioral problems, sophomore center Joshua Smith tweeted out an immature response following the LMU loss and senior point guard Jerime Anderson served the last half of his very light punishment for stealing a laptop over the summer with a suspension against LMU before coming back to underwhelm against MTSU. In short, the UCLA basketball program is a hot mess right now, a dumpster fire, a train wreck. Worse yet, it is all of those things for the second time in three years.

All of which begs the question, does head coach Ben Howland have reason to fear for his job? It’s not all that long ago that such a question would have been absurd. Remember, Howland had his Bruins in the Final Four three straight times between 2006 and 2008. Between the 2005-06 season and the 2008-09 season, he posted an astounding 123-26 (82.6%) record, with a 65-16 (80.2%) record in the Pac-10, including conference tournament games. Furthermore, Howland was absolutely killing it on the recruiting trail.

Ben Howland Has Had Some Great Successes At UCLA, But His Program Is Currently Struggling

After a two-man 2007 recruiting class ranked #10 in the nation by ESPNU, largely on the strength of Kevin Love, the #1 recruit in the nation (the class also included current UNLV senior Chace Stanback), Howland had then inked the #1 class in the nation for 2008, highlighted by point guard Jrue Holiday, with guys like Drew Gordon, J’Mison Morgan, Malcolm Lee and Anderson expected to make major impacts during their time in Westwood. The following year Howland added another five players (Tyler Honeycutt, Mike Moser, Brendan Lane, Nelson and Anthony Stover) for the #13 class in the nation. Of those 12 players in those three classes, six played either one season at UCLA or left the program prior to completing a second season. Four of them transferred out to other Division I schools with varying degress of success at their new destinations. The 2008 class goes down in history as a strong contender for the most disappointing recruiting class ever, with only Lee and Anderson making significant extended contributions to the program, and even those two players considered as serious underachievers compared to their incoming reputations.

Read the rest of this entry »

1. In an exciting nightcap at Madison Square Garden Thursday night, Arizona turned an eight-point deficit to St. John’s with under seven minutes to play into a nine-point win when it all was said and done. While it was Arizona veterans like Jesse Perry, Jordin Mayes, Kyle Fogg and Solomon Hill who finished strong for the Wildcats, it was their pair of highly-touted freshman guards who got the 23-6 game-closing run started. Nick Johnson took advantage of the Red Storm’s zone defense to drill a three on an underneath inbounds play, and on the next possession point guard Josiah Turner stepped into a passing lane, made a steal and threw down a slam at the other end to swing momentum. Johnson later added another three in the middle of the run to finish with 11 points off the bench, while Turner had his best game of his young career with eight points, three rebounds, and a couple of steals. He’ll still need to get his game under control more (he turned the ball over four times in 19 minutes), but last night he earned the minutes he played. He and his team will get another chance to take a step forward tonight as they face Mississippi State back at the Garden for the Coaches vs. Cancer championship.
2. On the other side of the continent, USC came up on the losing end of another exciting game that came down to the final moments. Playing at San Diego State, Trojan sophomore point guard Maurice Jones hit a wild game-tying three pointer with 6.8 seconds left, only to see his team give up a coast-to-coast drive for a bucket from Aztec sophomore point guard Xavier Thames with 1.8 seconds remaining to provide the final margin. Jones played all but a minute of the game for USC and led the Trojans in scoring for the third straight game, but his team fell to 1-2 with the two losses coming by a grand total of five points, including a double-overtime loss to Nebraska in their last outing.
3. ESPNU’s recruiting guru Dave Telep posted his rundown on the remaining unsigned top 100 recruits in the 2012 class and actually opined that UCLA’s struggles in their first two games of the season may help rather than hinder their pitch to #1 overall recruit, Shabazz Muhammad. Apparently Muhammad is looking for a needy co-dependent suitor, and if that’s the case, maybe the Bruins are employing a strategy similar to the Suck for Luck sweepstakes in the NFL. Elsewhere on Telep’s list, Cal and Oregon seem to be running a bit behind St. John’s for ESPNU’s #30 recruit, Ricardo Gathers, while Washington is one of many still trying to get a commitment from #7 Anthony Bennett.
4. Arizona State hosts New Mexico tonight, with both teams coming off losses earlier in the week. It’s been said that ASU is ready to play a faster tempo this season (although the first couple of games don’t indicate much of a change) and the Lobos will certainly offer the Sun Devils every opportunity to do so. However, Herb Sendek’s team has plenty of things they’ve got to shore up before they can be considered a different team than last year’s 12-19 squad. First, guards Chris Colvin and Keala King need to buy into Sendek’s gospel of ball movement, something they haven’t done yet. And secondly, somebody along the ASU frontcourt, whether it be Kyle Cain, Jordan Bachynski or Ruslan Pateev, needs to show that they can provide the threat of a scoring punch up front. Until that happens, this is still Trent Lockett and a bunch of inoffensive warm bodies.
5. Lastly, we head back to the Wildcats, as Mike DeCourcy of the Sporting News tells the story of Kevin Parrom’s battle back from the gunshot wounds he sustained in an attack in New York City in September while visiting his mother who was then dying of cancer. Back in New York this week for the Coaches vs. Cancer event, it is a bittersweet homecoming for the junior from the Bronx, coming back to the city where he could have lost his life, and where his mother did lose her life just a month ago.  Parrom first made it back to the court last Sunday against Ball State where he played a key role in helping the Wildcats scrape out a victory. When he left the court at the end of the game to a standing ovation from the McKale Center crowd, he also got a big embrace from his coach Sean Miller, a hug that Anthony Gimino of the Tucson Citizen puts on par with some of the other great moments in Arizona basketball.

Today we’ve got a bonus entry, as I forgot to include our football picks for the weekend. Last weekend was a dismal week for both of us as we each went 3-3, but I’d have to point out that I at least got the Oregon pick in our game of the week right (although I had the game much closer than it turned out. And, it should be noted (if only because I’m the one writing this and not Connor), that although Connor holds a one game lead on the year, I’ve correctly picked all three of our games of the week, while Connor is a mere 2-1). This week we’ll look at Oregon again in our game of the week, this time against bowl-ineligible USC playing another in a long line of what amounts to mid-season bowl games.

1. The Reeves Nelson suspension lasted a total of one game, as the mercurial junior power forward was reinstated on Wednesday after having missed UCLA’s Tuesday night loss to Middle Tennessee State. He’ll practice with the team today and travel with the team to play in the Maui Invitational early next week. In a statement announcing the decision, head coach Ben Howland said that Nelson “expressed to me in our meeting earlier that he desires to be a better person and better teammate going forward and, given that, I feel as though I should give him that opportunity.” Nelson issued his own statement saying that he is “grateful to Coach Howland to have this opportunity to improve and work on being a positive force for our team.” With all the negativity surrounding the Bruin program in recent days, it remains to be seen just how long this kumbaya moment will last.
2. Utah played its first real competition of the season on Wednesday night when it traveled to Boise State, and not surprisingly, the young Utes (I can’t type that phrase without thinking of Joe Pesci) struggled mightily, losing by 21 points to a similarly inexperienced Bronco squad. In looking for a bright spot for Larry Krystkowiak’s team, one might point to either freshman guard Anthony Odunsi (14 points, four assists, three threes) or junior college transfer Dijon Farr (12 points, five rebounds), but the fact is that Utah turned the ball over 19 times on roughly 69 possessions, grabbed just 16% of their offensive rebound opportunities and didn’t do a great job on the defensive glass either (63.3 DR%). Single digit wins on the season are the unfortunate likelihood for Utah.
3. Things went much better for Oregon State in the final regional game of the Legends Classic pseudo-tournament, as the Beavers outlasted Hofstra behind a career-high 35-point performance from junior guard Jared Cunningham. Sophomore forward Devon Collier also posted a career-high with 25 points, and junior center Joe Burton continued his strong start to the season with five points, ten rebounds and a career-high of his own in assists, with 11. OSU now heads to the Meadowlands for the championship rounds of the tourney, with a matchup with Texas awaiting in the semifinals on Saturday and either Vanderbilt or North Carolina State in the next round on Monday.
4. With the early signing period now officially closed, every school in the conference has at least one 2012 recruit committed. Every school save for Washington, that is. But Lorenzo Romar still has a couple lines in the water, with Anthony Bennett and Zena Edosomwan a couple of top 100 recruits still on the Huskies’ radar. On Wednesday, another name reappeared as a possibility for Romar again, as former St. John’s commitment Norvel Pelle, who was unable to qualify immediately for the Red Storm, officially de-committed and reopened his recruiting. The 6’10”, 210-pound power forward originally chose St. John’s over Washington, so as long as he can get his academic house in order, it seems like the Huskies would have a good shot at landing him the second time around.
5. We started in Los Angeles at the top of the Morning Five, and we’ll wind up there again as I want to take a moment to highlight one of my favorites youngsters thus far in the season: USC’s freshman wing Byron Wesley. Wesley has been compared to last year’s senior defensive stopper Marcus Simmons repeatedly by head coach Kevin O’Neill, and he’s been a stalwart already on the defensive end in just his first two collegiate games. His offensive game is still very much a work in progress, but he’s got a strong frame that belies his youth and a motor that does not stop. If Wesley can carry over the work ethic he displays during games to practice and beyond, he has the ability to be an all-conference performer on both ends of the floor by the time he is an upperclassman.

SPONSORED: Rush the Court is pleased to bring you a free to enter Top 25 teams only Fantasy College Basketball Contest with $250 in prizes courtesy of DailyJoust.com! Draft your team today for Saturday night’s contest. Daily Joust has Accurate Real-Time Scoring Stats for all CBB contests. Click Here To Enter.

1. After Tuesday night’s embarrassing loss to Middle Tennessee State, UCLA fans were questioning what Ben Howland could do to resurrect the floundering program. Howland appears to have answered them by reinstating Reeves Nelson after suspending the junior for what has been described as “behavior issues”. While the decision certainly makes the Bruins a more talented team that does not appear to be UCLA’s primary problem right now. They certainly were not any less talented than Loyola Marymount or Middle Tennessee State even without Nelson, but still lost to both of those teams. Now, Howland will be using a point guard who was involved in a computer theft earlier this year, an incredibly overweight big man, and a player whom he appears to have brought back in a desperate attempt to save this season. As Jeff Goodman notes that this act screams of Howland putting winning above everything else. It will be interesting to see how this affect UCLA’s recruiting going forward. They already have signed Kyle Anderson, who appears to be sticking with UCLA although we would argue that he doesn’t have much choice after signing with them, but we imagine this turmoil might affect Shabazz Muhammad, who apparently was watching both UCLA and Kentucky on Tuesday night.
2. The NCAA has a history of making interesting decisions and yesterday’s announcement that Joe Castiglione, the athletic director at Oklahoma, had been appointed to the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee appears to be another one of them. Castiglione replaces former Big 12 commissioner Dan Beebe, a man whose career fell so precipitously in the past few months that he got his own fake Twitter account that has over 15,000 followers. Castiglione appears to have a solid resume, but the timing is a bit odd since his school was put on probation just a week ago and although it appears that Castiglione probably could not have stopped it the selection is an interesting one especially in light of the fact that Connecticut‘s Jeff Hathaway is also on the same committee and serves as chairman despite his school having to take a scholarship hit and potentially being ineligible to play in next year’s NCAA Tournament due to a low APR score.
3. The Kentucky fans who showed up en masse at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night for the team’s resounding win over Kansas will get another chance to return New York next year, but will have to head over to Brooklyn instead of Manhattan as the Wildcats are scheduled to play Maryland in next year’s Barclay Center Classic. We don’t know who will be playing at Kentucky next season, but we expect that they will be very talented and there will be plenty of Wildcat fans at the game. The night’s undercard is Morehead State against Long Island, which might actually bring some fans to the game given the proximity of the school.
4. With many of the top recruits in the country having already committed or in the process of committing to a school Basketball Prospectus took a look at “basketball recruiting royalty,” which they use to refer to Duke, North Carolina, and Kentucky. While the article does take quite a few liberties in assuming why or even if those schools target certain recruits based on where they are ranked and consequently what type of player they will be, it is an interesting read. It also provides some interesting statistics on how often players ranked in each recruiting ranking range stay at a school they committed to before leaving either due to graduation, transfer, or to the NBA. We would love to see someone try a more formal approach to analyze this and see if there is a “sweet spot” for schools to recruit in although it would probably change whenever the NBA makes its decision on how long a player has to stay in college before turning pro.
5. The ratings for last Friday’s Carrier Classic are in and they were excellent as we all expected. The telecast received a 2.7 rating (3.859 million viewers), which is the highest rating that ESPN has ever had for a November college basketball game (technically tied with a 1992 Preseason NIT game). The press release claims that this is ESPN’s most-watched college basketball game since March 2005 when 3.78 million watched Duke play North Carolina. We are assuming they are referring to the Nielsen rating because 3.859 million is certainly more than 3.78 million. Of course, before we start getting too excited about this rating we should point out that more people watched ESPN’s College Football Scoreboard on Saturday night (2.8 rating for 4.232 million viewers) than watched an actual college basketball game.

1. Less than a week ago, there was excitement around the UCLA program for the upcoming season. Now, after an opening game loss to Loyola Marymount, the suspension of last year’s leading scorer Reeves Nelson, and last night’s 20-point loss to Middle Tennessee State, the program is officially in freefall. The Blue Raiders shot 71.4% from the field, and made 10 of their 11 three-point attempts for a whopping 78.6 true shooting percentage. (To put that into perspective, when Villanova shot lights out in the 1985 National Championship game to upset Patrick Ewing and Georgetown, the Wildcats shot posted a 82.7 TS%.) Meanwhile, UCLA only managed a 42.9 TS% of their own, and after a 4-20 night from deep, they are now 6-35 from three on the season. Sophomore center Joshua Smith was fairly effective for the Bruins inside, posting 15 points and nine rebounds (with 11 of those points coming in the first half), but the twin faults of being unable to consistently hit perimeter shots and the inability of UCLA defenders to guard, well, anybody or anything, leaves UCLA at 0-2 for the first time since Steve Lavin’s final year. UCLA begins the Maui Invitational on Monday, and Nelson’s status for that trip remains up in the air.
2. Things weren’t a whole lot better in Tempe on Tuesday night, as Arizona State dropped a home game to Pepperdine, a team that finished 12-21 last season and was picked to finish last in the West Coast Conference this season. Outside of junior wing Trent Lockett, who had 23 points and nine rebounds, ASU went 10-42 from the field for a 29.8 true shooting percentage. With still no update on the eligibility status of freshman point guard Jahii Carson, it looks like the Sun Devils will have to move forward with their currently eligible players, meaning that this is more or less the same team that struggled to a 12-19 record last season. And after all the offseason talk about significantly upping the tempo, the Sun Devils are still only using about 64 possessions per game, good for putting it right smack dab in the bottom 20% of Division I teams.
3. With all the talk about the turmoil in UCLA, the fact that Arizona’s freshman point guard Josiah Turner was never asked up off of the bench in the Wildcats’ win over Ball State on Sunday has been swept under the rug somewhat. Turner has been ineffective so far in Tucson (seven points, four assist and three rebounds combined in UA’s first three games), but while head coach Sean Miller hinted that the DNP may at least be partially behavior-related, Greg Hansen of the Arizona Daily Star points out that most of the great lineage of floor generals at Point Guard U took some time to get going out of the gate. In other words, it is far too soon to write off last year’s #15 recruit (according to ESPNU).
4. Up in Corvallis, Oregon State has opened the season with a couple of wins over Cal State Bakersfield and Division II West Alabama by an average of 28.5 points. While neither opponent is much to write home about, the performance of junior center Joe Burton has Beaver fans excited. Burton has averaged 15 points, 5.5 rebounds, five assists, and three steals in those two games, while knocking down a three in each game. Of course, much bigger challenges lie ahead for OSU, but head coach Craig Robinson believes that the hard work that Burton has put in off the court will continue to pay off the rest of the season.
5. Finally, a look ahead. We mentioned UCLA’s trip to Maui above, but in the next couple of days we see a couple other Pac-12 teams hit the road to compete in early season tournaments. Arizona will be at Madison Square Garden on Thursday and Friday nights for the final two rounds of the Coaches vs. Cancer (okay, I’ll go ahead and call this thing by its actual name, the 2K Sports Classic benefiting Coaches vs. Cancer – name just rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?), with a semifinal matchup against St. John’s followed by either Texas A&M or Mississippi State the following night. An Arizona/Texas A&M matchup in the championship seems mighty appealing. Also, Colorado is in the Caribbean as we speak, preparing for their Puerto Rico Tip-Off opening round game against Wichita State on Thursday, with either Maryland or Alabama lying in wait in their next game. The Buffs only have a warm-up against Fort Lewis under their belt, so we’ll get to see by the end of the week whether they have what it takes to compete in the Pac-12 this season.