Out of the country? Living under a rock? Here’s what you missed in the tenth week of Pac-12 basketball. 

Power Rankings (as voted upon by Connor Pelton, Andrew Murawa and Adam Butler):

Arizona is once again the unanimous top choice this week, and the next two spots below the Wildcats were in complete agreement as well. Check the full results below.

Junior Guard Nick Johnson Led The Wildcats With 17 Points In Their Rivalry Win Against Arizona State

1. Arizona (18-0, 3 Points). Comment: “The Wildcats have restored championship pride in a city that seemed to be dying on the vine after Lute Olson’s empire crumbled, after the Cactus League pulled up stakes and headed up the interstate.” – Dan Bickley (@danbickley)
2. California (14-4, 6 Points). Comment: “Pac-12 has changed so much in just three weeks. UO and Colorado no longer contenders & UCLA has been exposed. Cal appears to be the only challenger to Arizona.” – Connor Pelton (@ConnorPelton28)
3. UCLA (14-4, 9 Points). Comment: “I’m so over this @UCLAMBB team. Not watching them the rest of the season. See y’all when spring football starts. Peace.” – Miguel Melendez (@MelendezSports)
4. Stanford (12-5, 13 Points). Comment: “Viewed in isolation, one may argue that Stanford has experienced a few bad breaks with the “injury bug”; however, in the context of the last four seasons, a disturbing trend emerges around Dawkins’ inability to keep his players healthy. In Dawkins’ five and a half seasons, there have been eight season-ending injuries; in the six seasons prior to Dawkins’ arrival, there were three.” – Daniel Jacobson (@danieljacobson_) Read the rest of this entry »

Rushing the court: a rite of passage for college basketball fans; an endearing hallmark of the sport; the name of a pretty darn good college basketball blog. Last week’s “controversial” rushing of the court by Indiana fans after their win over Wisconsin got me thinking: What would it take for each of the schools in the Pac-12 to break out a good old-fashioned RTC this season? Now, there are some people who have come up with all the rules for when RTCing is allowable. We’ve even posted our own general guidelines around here in the past. But my own personal recommendation for court rushing (and a good, if dangerous, motto to live your life by): If it feels good, do it. So, if Washington State, say, wants to rush the court for a ho-hum mid-January win over Oregon State, for instance — hey, more power to ya. But RTCing anytime something marginally good happens ruins the specialness of it. So, what follows would be the most likely scenarios for possible court rushings in the Pac-12.

After Washington State Upset Gonzaga in 2006, Cougar Fans Filled The Court (Kody Whiteaker, AP Photo)

First, we’re going to group a bunch of schools together. What do Stanford, California, Arizona State, Utah, Colorado, Oregon State and Oregon have in common? Those are the seven remaining road games on Arizona’s schedule. These guys are all easy. If they beat #1 Arizona (even if the ranking changes) at home this year in just about any way – blowout, last-second buzzer-beater, or game getting called after the first possession with the home team up a hoop – you can expect to see an exodus of students from the stands out onto the court. And it will be good. And really, each of those schools has a fighting chance against the Wildcats and you have to figure at some point the ‘Cats will get caught. Maybe even twice. So, the expectation is that there is at least one RTC in the Pac in our near-future.

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Here are some notes from around the Pac-12, coming out of another busy weekend.

Jahii Carson is Slumping Right Now (Jeff Gross, Getty Images)

Arizona State is off to a 2-3 start in conference play. It is not ideal, but then again, the Sun Devils have played three road games and two at home, so that record is not terrible. And given that Herb Sendek’s team probably plays the toughest opponents in the unbalanced schedule (along with traveling partner Arizona, Arizona State is the lucky team that only gets to play Washington, Washington State and USC once), they’ll probably be just fine if they get to 9-9 in conference play, because that means they’ll have some quality wins under their belt. But. All of that being said, the elephant in the room right now is Jahii Carson, who is definitely slumping. He hasn’t hit better than 50 percent from the field in a game in over a month. He’s turning the ball over; he’s generally not making his teammates better; and most disturbingly, he’s not scoring and seemingly not as explosive. We pointed to these trends before, but it is clear that as Carson goes, so go the Sun Devils. Need proof? Check out the numbers below:

Need an explanation? Let’s not beat around the bush. Carson has been awful in Arizona State’s five losses. And Carson is not an awful player; in fact he’s very, very good. In order for the Sun Devils to take the next step, however, and get into the NCAA Tournament, Carson needs to up his game and be the type of consistent performer he was as a freshman. Carson toyed around with the idea of leaving for the NBA Draft last season, but he returned to Tempe with the hope of tightening up his jumper and proving his NBA credentials. Unfortunately for his prospects and team, a sophomore slump has left more questions than answers.

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Periodically throughout the next two months, the Pac-12 microsite will be taking a look at the league’s postseason outlook. We start today.

NCAA Tournament

• Arizona (#1 Seed): Arizona has been atop the national rankings for five consecutive weeks now, and while some dispute whether it should be the top overall seed, no one has the Wildcats below the one seed line right now. They currently boast quality wins against San Diego State, Duke, Michigan, Washington and UCLA, with four of those coming away from home. The Cats remain one of three unbeatens across the land and have another chance at a good win on Thursday against Arizona State.
• Colorado (#4-#6 Seed): The Buffaloes have a pair of top 10 victories going for themselves, but that’s about the only positive they have to look at right now. Head coach Tad Boyle lost his leading scorer for the remainder of the season and another member of his typical nine-deep rotation until mid-March all in 40 minutes at Washington on Sunday, so while the Buffs’ résumé currently looks in the #4-#6 seed range, anything better than a #7 come Selection Sunday would make Colorado fans very happy. Staying on that line instead of the #8 or #9 would be crucial if it hopes to advance through the opening weekend, as that’s the difference between say, Virginia and North Carolina in the opening round as well as avoiding a #1 seed in the second game.
• Oregon (#5-#7 Seed): Sure, Oregon is sliding hard and fast right now, but the Ducks will be fine so long as this three-game losing streak doesn’t go beyond that. The Ducks need to keep these losses in a vacuum, and while it will definitely be a black mark the rest of the way, wins at Washington and against UCLA back in Eugene could make this skid a distant memory by the first of February. They will need to shore up their defense some in order to remain in the upper half of the NCAA field. Oregon ranks 306th in the nation in points allowed per game, and finding a way to keep their opponents below 80 will be key.

Joseph Young Leads Oregon’s High-Flying Offense With 18.8 PPG, But The Ducks Need To Shore Up Their Defense In Order To Remain On The Eight Line Or Higher (AP)

• UCLA (#8-#10 Seed): The jury is largely still out on the Bruins, who have won 13 games but only one of which can be classified as a “quality victory.” With four of their final five games this month either against teams that are locked into the NCAAs or on the bubble, that can change in a hurry but they’ll need to be ready to take advantage of those opportunities every night out.
• California (Bubble IN): Going into conference play, California was typically a middle-of-the-road NIT team according to bracketologists around the country, and that was with some slack being cut since it had lost Ricky Kreklow and Jabari Bird for an extended period of time. Boy, what a difference two weeks can make. The Golden Bears have worked their way into the NCAA field, possibly as high as a #10 seed, thanks to three road wins to start Pac-12 play. With the three-game road trip now out of the way, and the fact they don’t leave the state of California again until February 12, things are definitely looking up for the Bears.
• Arizona State (Bubble OUT): The Sun Devils, like UCLA, have been tough to figure out so far. They only have one quality win, and while there is only one bad loss to their name, performances like the ones they put up against Creighton and Washington won’t be convincing anyone that they’re ready for the field of 68.  Read the rest of this entry »

Out of the country? Living under a rock? Here’s what you missed in the ninth week of Pac-12 basketball. 

Power Rankings (as voted upon by Connor Pelton, Andrew Murawa and Adam Butler):

Arizona is once again the unanimous top choice this week, but every spot below the Wildcats saw more turmoil than usual. Check the results below.

It Was California Freshman Jordan Mathews’ Night At Matthew Knight On Thursday (Chris Pietsch/AP)

1. Arizona (17-0, 3 Points). Comment: “It seemed like there was just an overall lack of focus and too much hero ball going on early. Once everyone settled in and started moving the ball around, there was no way USC was able to get back into it, and Arizona asserted itself by finishing the game with a 25-10 run to win the game by 20.” – Jason Bartel (@jasonbartel)
2. California (12-4, 6 Points). Comment: “And so the Bears have won three straight conference road games by an average margin of eight points. Who saw that one coming? With three straight winnable games on the horizon, Cal has a sudden and unexpected opportunity to make some serious noise in the Pac-12.” – Nick Kranz (@GoldenBlogs)
3. UCLA (13-3, 10 Points). Comment: “UCLA enters the AP poll with a loss to Arizona.” – Adam Butler (@pachoopsab)
4. Colorado (14-3, 14 Points). Comment: “Damn. Dinwiddie news is terrible. Have a feeling Boyle will get this team to respond, but doubt they can make the second weekend now.” – Andrew Murawa (@AMurawa)
5. Washington (11-6, 18 Points). Comment: “Those who have complained about Romar’s offense definitely have been put to silence. The UW offense looks much improved in the second year of the high post system, as the Huskies have been using an array of screens and cuts to get Wilcox and the rest of the guards open.” – Erik Erickson (@Erik_Erickson)
6. Stanford (10-5, 19 Points). Comment: “Maybe we start a new segment in here that’s just called WHAT DOES THE STANFORD SAY? and then I just write or link to whatever I want and it’s wildly unpredictable and completely upsetting but you’re attracted to that instability by some unintelligible force that keeps telling you that they’ll change. Did I just describe my ex-girlfriend?” – Adam Butler (@pachoopsab)
7. Oregon (13-3, 21 Points). Comment: “Oregon could not capitalize on their golden opportunities to steal one from Stanford as their last two shots clanked off the rim; first Johnathan Loyd’s jumper and then a driving layup from Dominic Artis, allowing the Cardinal to escape with an 82-80 win.” – Jake Tabor (@JakeTabor541)
8. Arizona State (13-4, 22 Points). Comment: “The Sun Devils are in a tough spot going forward, too, as eight of their 14 remaining games come against Arizona, California, Colorado and Oregon. Herb Sendek’s crew has a fight on its hands just to get to .500 in the Pac-12.” – Matt Norlander and Jeff Borzello (@EyeOnCBB)
9. Oregon State (9-7, 25 Points). Comment: “The Beavers beat Stanford, 81-72! Great reward for a great week of practice. Really impressed by the team on both ends of the court.” – Connor Pelton (@ConnorPelton28) Read the rest of this entry »

Out of the country? Living under a rock? Here’s what you missed in the eighth week of Pac-12 basketball. 

Power Rankings (as voted upon by Connor Pelton, Andrew Murawa and Adam Butler):

Arizona is once again the unanimous top choice this week, but the only other unanimous pick is Washington State at the bottom. There is a general consensus among the group as to the top six in the league, but after that, things get very interesting. Check the results below.

Junior Guard Askia Booker Scored 27 Points While Handing Oregon Its First Loss Of The Season On Sunday

1. Arizona (15-0, 3 Points). Comment: “This doesn’t appear to be one of those blow-the-other-guy-to-smithereens Arizona teams like those that Lute Olson operated, winning by ridiculous, double-figure margins. Saturday’s game might have been the surest preview of what the final 16 games of the Pac-12 season will be.” – Greg Hansen (@ghansen711)
2. Colorado (13-2, 7 Points). Comment: “The SDSU-Kansas game has a bigger storyline, but this Oregon-Colorado contest is a much better game. Two second-weekend teams squaring off.” – Ryan Fagan (@ryanfagan)
3. Oregon (13-1, 9 Points). Comment: “Colorado wasn’t doing anything different defensively than they had all game in the final 10 minutes — Oregon was just missing, missing, and missing some more.” – David Piper (@atqdave)  Read the rest of this entry »

It was a busy Pac-12 weekend around the conference. Here are some thoughts on each of the weekend’s five games.

Colorado 100, Oregon 91

• It was a game that largely lived up to the hype, with both teams looking good for long stretches. But over the last 10 minutes of the game, it was – get this – Colorado’s guard play that was the deciding factor in the game. It was supposed to be the undefeated Ducks with the bevy of play-making guards that had the advantage on the perimeter, while the Buffaloes were going to need to take advantage of a weak Oregon frontcourt in order to win this game at home. Instead, over the final quarter of the game, Askia Booker and Spencer Dinwiddie combined for 25 of Colorado’s 39 points, sophomore guard Xavier Talton chipped in six more, and Jaron Hopkins was the guy to get everything started with a three off a Dinwiddie dime. All told, the five Colorado guards outscored Oregon’s by a total of 66-52.
  

  Big Game Askia? Who Knew? (Patrick Ghidossi, BuffaloSportsNews)

• Meanwhile up front the Ducks were just okay against that tough Colorado frontcourt. On the offensive end, they were great, grabbing better than 41 percent of their own misses and getting a terrific 24-point performance out of Mike Moser. But the bigger concern is their ability to defend on the interior, and here they were exposed a bit, allowing Colorado to grab better than 46 percent of their misses, leading to lots of easy putbacks for the Buffs. Oregon’s guards are going to keep them in a lot of games, but they need to clean up their frontcourt issues in order to reach their potential.
• For some of the surprises in this game, the most expected angle proved completely true: Colorado is going to be really, really tough at home. With a strong seven-man rotation plus a couple other guys ready to provide spot minutes, the Buffs are deep, athletic, big, strong and – most importantly – good. And the Coors Events Center is a great homecourt advatange. KenPom.com has the Buffs expected to win their next six games at home by an average of just under 10 points per game, but that only takes us to February 22 when they’ll host Arizona in their last home game of the season. Right now that KenPom projection is Arizona, 68-65, but in what could be Dinwiddie’s final home game, the early inclination is to lean Buffs. Not that trying to project a game seven weeks out is good practice.

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1. As Drew reported last week, Oregon State decided junior forward Eric Moreland was eligible to return from his 14-game suspension two games early, meaning that he could appear in the Beavers’ Pac-12 opener last Thursday at Colorado. His return sparked some energy into a team that has had an up-and-down non-conference slate, using his lengthy frame to force bad shots and his athletic ability to grab 10 rebounds. Head coach Craig Robinson ended up misunderstanding the terms of the big man’s suspension that was handed down last summer, thinking that it was for half of all games played, when it was actually measured by days of the season. Moreland came back down to earth on Saturday at Utah, only playing 19 minutes as he, along with the entirety of the Oregon State starting lineup, lacked energy. The result was a forgettable one-rebound, four-point performance in an 80-69 loss to the Utes. The return of the junior was expected to lift the Beavers to at least an NIT run, but if the first weekend of conference play is any indication, it could be another long winter in Corvallis.
2. The nation is now down to six undefeated teams — and the Pac-12 to just one — after Colorado exploded for a 100-point performance against previously undefeated Oregon on Sunday afternoon in Boulder. The Ducks were able to survive despite giving up 105 points to Mississippi and 96 to BYU earlier in the season, but the Buffaloes in their home building proved too much to handle. They now sit at 13-1 and are likely to drop out of the top 10 when the national rankings are released later today.
3. The USC–UCLA crosstown basketball rivalry wrote another chapter yesterday, with the Bruins throttling USC for a 107-73 win. The 107 points scored by UCLA ties the record for the most points from a winning team in the history of the rivalry. Both teams are of course led by first year coaches, Andy Enfield with the Trojans, and Steve Alford with the Bruins, and it was just the fourth time ever that each entered conference play with new coaches at the same time. Enfield has quickly learned in his stint with at USC that anything and everything he says about the team in Westwood will be reported and scrutinized, and they are surely already looking forward to a rematch at the Galen Center on February 8. UCLA improved to 12-2 with the win, while SC fell to 9-5. Both teams get to stay home this week and will host the difficult Arizona schools.
4. Sticking with UCLA, Bruins Nation rates the full Bruins’ lineup after non-conference play. The UCLA roster is loaded with talent, but it’s tough to know just how far the team could go in March when it dropped its only two challenging non-conference games. Sophomore guard Jordan Adams leads the team in scoring with 18.5 PPG, while wing Kyle Anderson is contributing at a 14.5 PPG clip and leading UCLA in rebounds with 8.7 boards a game. Next up for the Bruins is what a lot of people assumed would be the Pac-12 game of the year before the season began, a visit from top-ranked Arizona on Thursday at 6:00 PM. This will be the only time that the Bruins and Wildcats will meet in the regular season.
5. We close today with some recruiting news, as Arizona has emerged as a major player in the courting of class of 2015 power forward Carlton Bragg. Head coach Sean Miller is working hard in preparing for the future, as his talented Wildcat frontline featuring Kaleb Tarczewski, Aaron Gordon and Brandon Ashley won’t be around Tucson forever. Bragg would be a huge addition to the program, a five-star player who already has offers from Michigan State, Indiana, and UCLA, to name a few.

With conference play arriving almost everywhere this weekend (it’s about time!), let’s take a peek at some of the major Saturday (and a few Sunday) games and storylines in college basketball’s seven major conferences.

Say What You Want About The AAC, But The Recently-Birthed League Will Pose A New Challenge For Memphis: Real Tests In January And February. The First Of Those Examinations Comes Today Against Cincinnati.

AAC. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the first-ever weekend of American Athletic Conference basketball! OK, so maybe it isn’t that exciting, but an old Conference USA matchup does offer the league a headlining game on 2014’s first Saturday. Cincinnati visits Memphis (12:00 ET, ESPN2) in an early match-up of presumed upper-echelon AAC teams, but look elsewhere if you seek a battle of stylistic comrades; the deliberate, defensively stout Bearcats (286th nationally in tempo, eighth in defensive efficiency) will look to put the clamps on an explosive Memphis squad that rarely presses the pause button (39th nationally in tempo, 19th in offensive efficiency). UConn and SMU, both 0-1 in league play, offer an alternate viewing option (2:00 ET, ESPNU), and with a visit to Louisville coming next, Larry Brown’s SMU team would be well served to get a win Saturday to avoid staring down the barrel of an 0-3 league start.

ACC. Will there be life after Jerian Grant for Notre Dame? If yes, then a visit from Duke (4:00 ET, CBS) will offer the Irish the chance to provide a more convincing affirmation than they offered in their first game without Grant – a gut-check overtime victory over Canisius. Garrick Sherman should have a chance to exploit the smallish Duke interior, no matter what Doug Gottlieb thinks about his beard. Elsewhere, Pitt and Syracuse join Notre Dame in making their ACC debuts. The Panthers visit NC State (12:00 ET, ESPN3), while the Orange play host to Miami (2:00 ET, ESPN3). And if you like defense, two of the nation’s 10 most efficient defensive units are set to meet in Tallahassee; Virginia and Florida State (5:00 ET, ESPN2) will tussle in a race to 50 between ACC sleepers.

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Back in the old days of the Pac-10, comparing the different conference schedules of league teams was largely an academic affair; with an 18-game balanced schedule, each team played every other team in the league both home and away. But with Utah and Colorado now on board, we’re in the era of the unbalanced schedule. Each team in the league still has a travel partner (UCLA and USC, Cal and Stanford, Colorado and Utah, the Arizona schools, the Oregon schools, and the Washington schools), so, for instance, when Arizona goes on the road to play California and Stanford, Arizona State does the same in reverse order. The only difference is that, now in unbalanced schedule land, each set of traveling partners skips a trip to one other set of travel partners and loses a visit from another pair as well. Below we’ll take a look at who skips whom, who gets the benefit of the unbalanced schedule this year, and whatever other little nuggets we can find in the conference slate as we get started tonight.

The Arizona schools

• Road trip skipped: The Washington schools
• Homestand skipped: The Los Angeles schools

Arizona Shouldn’t Be All That Pumped About Skipping The Washington Road Trip. (Casey Sapio, USA Today)

In one form or another, Washington and Washington State are consistently regarded as two of the three worst teams in the conference this season (and, honestly, usually the worst two). In other words, missing out on a couple of dates with the Huskies and the Cougars is not necessarily a good thing when it comes to conference standings. Consider that a strike against Arizona, a team that figures to be very much in the hunt for the conference championship. On the other side of the coin, however, skipping those two will give Arizona State a couple more shots against higher RPI squads, and given that the Sun Devils figure to be bubblicious come March, trading out the two Pacific Northwest RPI killers may come in handy. One other note in favor of the Sun Devils is that they’re possibly in line to benefit from traveling with the Wildcats. Arizona is going to get everybody’s best shot this year, especially as long as they remain atop the national standings, meaning ASU could be a trap game on a regular basis. Imagine, for instance, Oregon hosting Arizona on February 6 — win or lose that night, the Ducks could be in for a serious letdown two days later when they host Jahii Carson and his Sun Devils.

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