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

Reader’s Take

Top Storylines

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

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

What to Watch For

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

1. Not only did Oregon State lose its first two road games of this Pac-12 conference season, it has lost the last 11 conference road games it has played. As you might expect, the Beavers are quite happy to be back home this week. However, the bad part is, they kick off the homestand with California, a team that has beaten OSU in 29 of its last 34 contests. However, if Craig Robinson’s club can gain a little momentum this weekend at Gill Coliseum, perhaps they could use that energy to turn around their poor fortune on the road.
2. Colorado is the one team in the conference with a winning conference record that gets to continue to play at home this week. However, after having dispatched with Utah easily last Saturday, tonight they will host Washington, “a different animal,” according to head coach Tad Boyle. While the Buffaloes are young and talented, Boyle says he will use this game against the Huskies as a litmus test for where they stand in the Pac-12. Given that CU is placing so much importance on this game, it will be interesting to see how the Huskies respond to their first conference road test.
3. Is Tony Wroten a Pac-12 Player of the Year candidate, asks The Arizona Republic’s Doug Haller. Of course, answers ESPN west-coast analyst Sean Farnham. Farnham cites Wroten’s tremendous ability in the open court, his scoring acumen, his strong rebounding for a guard, and, really, the weakness of the rest of the Pac-12 as key reasons why Wroten is the favorite for the Pac-12 POTY title. And, if you need some visual evidence, check out the sequence embedded there, where Wroten rebounds at one end, goes coast to coast, finishes above the rim, then hustles back downcourt and rejects a Devoe Joseph jumper. Classic.
4. Most years, a UCLA/Arizona matchup is a contender for conference game of the year. This year, the luster is off the rivalry a bit, as UCLA has struggled and, frankly, isn’t always much fun to watch. But still, it is UCLA/Arizona, and any self-respecting obsessive college hoops fan will want to take a look at it. However, if you were to check out Ben Howland’s comment and read between the lines a little bit, you might want to have a Plan B on hold. UCLA’s defense has struggled mightily stopping dribble penetration this year, and Howland admits “Arizona is very hard for us to match up with. Basically, we’re playing against five guards.” For the Bruins to have any chance to hang with the Wildcats, they’ll need to find a way to slow the penetration from those guards and find a way to use guys like Joshua Smith and the Wear twins to take advantage of the relatively underized Wildcat frontline.
5. Lastly, we head back up to Seattle for a great profile from The Seattle Times’ Percy Allen on Washington’s Abdul Gaddy, a friend of RTC. It was one year ago yesterday that Gaddy tore his ACL in practice, and it is amazing to think that he was back ready to go at the start of the 2011-12 season, just nine and half months later. While Gaddy’s injury-shortened sophomore campaign looked to be a breakout year for the Husky point guard, he has picked up this year right where he left off, leading his team in minutes played and assists and earning a co-captain role for Lorenzo Romar.

Finally, here’s this week’s Youtube Play of the Week… Arizona’s Josiah Turner to Nick Johnson.

1. Washington is the talk of the Pac-12 this week, after having swept the Oregon schools in impressive fashion the opening weekend of conference play. And while Tony Wroten, C.J. Wilcox, Terrence Ross and Abdul Gaddy impressed offensively, the Huskies understand that it was their success on the defensive end that is most responsible for their 2-0 record. Wroten cited the Huskies loss to South Dakota State as the wake-up call they needed to get their act together on the defensive end.
2. Ben Howland admitted on Tuesday that the only chance UCLA has of earning an NCAA Tournament bid is to win the Pac-12 Tournament in March. Sure, this isn’t exactly a newsflash to anybody who has paid attention to the Bruins’ struggles this season, but some UCLA fans see this as Howland already waving a white flag. Realistically, it is simply a rational, truthful assessment of where the Bruins stand right now and Howland knows that the remainder of the UCLA regular season schedule is aimed simply at getting his team ready to play its best basketball of the season over four days at the Staples Center in early March. Other Pac-12 coaches may not have admitted as much, but certainly Howland is not the only Pac-12 coach facing similar circumstances.
3. UCLA’s next challenge comes Thursday in a homecoming for Arizona’s Solomon Hill, when the Wildcats face the Bruins in Anaheim as part of the Wooden Classic. Hill, who graduated from Fairfax High School (not exactly all that close to the Honda Center, where the game will be played), has struggled with the pressure of road games against his hometown schools in years past (just 14 points and 15 rebounds in 94 minutes in his four road games against the Southern California schools the past two years), but he’s playing his best ball of his career now and is a catalyst for Sean Miller’s team.
4. Anybody who has watched Utah play this season knows that Larry Krystkowiak needs new talent on that squad – and fast; what you may not have realized was just how quickly he needs the talent. With several Utes out with a variety of injuries, the team has been forced to use assistant coaches in their practices just so they can have enough bodies to go five-on-five. So, as a result, Krystkowiak is considering holding open tryouts among the student body to find some warm bodies with which to practice. And considering the depths to which this proud program has sunk, it is not out of the question that somebody could find themselves suiting up from that pool for a Pac-12 game in the near future.
5. Lastly, some sad news, as former UCLA head coach Gene Bartow passed away at the age of 81 on Tuesday following a two-year battle with stomach cancer. Bartow took over for the legendary John Wooden at UCLA in 1975, went 52-9 in two seasons in Westwood including a trip to a Final Four, before leaving to begin the athletic program at UAB. Bartow was not only the athletic director at UAB but also the basketball coach for the Blazers for 18 years, racking up 340 wins and nine NCAA Tournament appearances there (including seven straight trips and a run to the Elite Eight in 1982). He was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2009 and as of today, Bartow is 48^th on the list of the all-time winningest college basketball coaches, with a career record of 647-353. Bartow’s son Murry succeeded his dad at UAB and is now the head coach at East Tennessee State. Our condolences go out to the entire Bartow family.

1. The Pac-12 announced its Player of the Week on Monday, and no surprise, Washington’s Tony Wroten took home the honors for the first and perhaps not last time after averaging 21.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 4.5 assists in his first weekend of conference play. What was a surprise, however, was teammate C.J. Wilcox not even being nominated for the award. Wilcox had a fine weekend of his own (19.5 PPG and seven threes), but it was Aaron Bright, Jorge Gutierrez, Jesse Perry, Andre Roberson and E.J. Singler who showed up in the “Also Nominated” mention.
2. Speaking of Wilcox, he got sent to the bench this weekend after starting the first 11 games of the season for the Huskies. When junior center Aziz N’Diaye went down with a knee injury in the second half of the Huskies’ game against Duke, Wroten came in and earned a starting spot with his play down the stretch, and since then has been the go-to player offensively for UW. But, when N’Diaye was ready to return to the starting five, head coach Lorenzo Romar had to decide who would be the odd man out. The choice was Wilcox, but he took the change in stride, not only finding his shot this weekend, but also turning in two great defensive performances. With his ability to get hot quick and his experience coming off the bench last season, Wilcox is perfectly fine with his new role.
3. In Salt Lake City, more bad news for the struggling Utes, as Cedric Martin is struggling with plantar fasciitis and may have to miss games in the future due to the injury. Martin, who is second in the team in minutes and is one of just two players to start every game, has been limited in practice and head coach Larry Krystkowiak acknowledges that he may need to get a week or more of rest in order to push through the injury.
4. Arizona head coach Sean Miller already has a stellar 2012 recruiting class lined up, and now he’s working on lining up players for future years, with 2013 wing Jabari Bird (ranked #11 by ESPNU) near the top of the list. Bird lists Arizona, Washington and California as his top three schools and is intrigued by the possibility of playing in the Wildcats’ system, saying that Miller has told him that he would have the ability to be a ball-handling forward at UA. Bird and classmate Aaron Gordon, another Arizona target, play AAU ball for the Oakland Soldiers, the same team that produced current Wildcat players Josiah Turner and Nick Johnson.
5. Lastly, UCLA fans spent their fair share of time last offseason lamenting the early departures of Tyler Honeycutt and Malcolm Lee to the NBA Draft. Checking in with those players, Honeycutt was just assigned by the Sacramento Kings to the NBDL after appearing for four minutes in his one appearance thus far this season, while Lee, who actually signed a guaranteed contract with the Timberwolves despite being drafted in the second round, had to undergo knee surgery and will miss at least the next six weeks.

In the first week of conference play, form more or less held, with nine of the ten games being won by the home team. California, Stanford, Washington, and Arizona emerged atop the conference with undefeated records (although the Wildcats played just one game, as opposed to the two played by the other three teams), but the Huskies have to go down as the team with the most impressive weekend, after knocking off not only Oregon State, a team considered by many to be a contender for the conference title, but also Oregon, who was the one road team to score a win in the opening weekend. All things considered, this could not have been a better weekend for the Huskies.

Team of the Week

Washington – Not only did the Huskies score two wins, they earned them over two good teams. And they did so in impressive fashion, winning by 15 over the Beavers and 16 over the Ducks. More importantly, they looked good in doing so. In recent weeks there had been concern over several areas of their performance, notably their defensive effort and their team chemistry; in these two games, those areas were strengths, not weaknesses. After allowing just over a point per possession to a solid OSU offense on Thursday, they held Oregon, who was coming off lightning up the Washington State defense, to just 36.3% 3-point shooting. As for chemistry, six Husky players scored in double figures against the Beavers, and sophomore wing C.J. Wilcox took his shift to the bench (allowing Aziz N’Diaye to regain his starting spot and Tony Wroten to retain his) in stride, scoring 15 points in the opener before lighting up the Ducks for 24 points on just 11 shots. There is still some concern that Wroten may dominate the offense too much, and again, he led the team in attempted field goals in both games, but he also played good defense, handed out nine assists on the weekend and rarely was out of control. The Huskies still have to prove that they’re capable of earning quality conference road wins, but they get to start out that challenge with the training wheels on, as they face Colorado and Utah in their first road trip this weekend. The Buffaloes could present a challenge, but if the Huskies can get out to a 4-0 start in conference play, they will definitely be on the short list of teams leading the conference title race.

Tony Wroten's First Weekend In Pac-12 Play Proved To Be His Most Impressive Back-to-Back Performances Of A Young Career (Credit: Elaine Thompson, Associated Press)

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1. For awhile, as Herb Sendek seemed to be building a new power in Tempe and the Lute Olson regime was falling apart in Tucson, it appeared that the balance of power in the Arizona basketball landscape was shifting. The Sun Devils were ticking up, with James Harden taking ASU to the Second Round and Arizona missing the Tournament for the first time in 25 years. But, after three straight double-figure victories by the Wildcats over their in-state rival, including a 17-point thrashing on Saturday, and with the best recruiting class in the nation headed to play for Sean Miller next season, clearly Arizona is again widening the gap.
2. In California, the gap is closing, at least temporarily, as California completed its first home sweep of the Southern California schools in eight years by handing UCLA its biggest loss in the series in almost ten years. It is the first time since Walt Hazzard’s final year as the UCLA head coach that the Bruins have started conference play with two losses. While two Bruins went off for career high’s offensively (Tyler Lamb with 26, David Wear 17), Ben Howland stubbornly stuck with an ineffective man defense (although, to be fair, his team’s zone defense wasn’t much better) through most of the loss as all five Cal starters, plus reserve Robert Thurman, scored in double figures, shooting a 71.1% eFG and handing out 28 assists on 34 field goals. In short, California did what they needed to do to begin its chase for a conference title in style, while UCLA left Bruin fans considering a coaching change.
3. Washington State bounced back from a horrible defensive performance of its own in its conference opener to hand Oregon State its second loss on the weekend. It was a “gut check” game for the Cougs, according to junior forward Brock Motum, and he came through in a big way, scoring 26 very efficient points and grabbing eight rebounds. Freshman guard DaVonte Lacy was also huge for Ken Bone’s squad, scoring 18 points (just a point shy of his 19-point career-high he set in the loss to Oregon on Thursday), while Reggie Moore handled OSU’s pressure defense with aplomb, turning it over just once in 35 minutes while dishing out nine assists.
4. For Utah, a bad season got worse on Saturday, as the Utes played their first ever Pac-12 conference game and scored its fewest points in a game since 1947 in a 73-33 loss to Colorado. The Utes scored just 11 points in the first half and shot just 24.5% eFG while allowing Colorado to shoot 60%. They allowed CU to grab 42.9% of their own misses, along with 82.1% of the Utes’. Leading scorer Josh Watkins hit just one of his 12 field goal attempts and the whole team was treated to a post-game tirade from head coach Larry Krystkowiak that included threats for future benchings and suspensions for players who were either late to or absent from team-related functions, a problem that has been ongoing and has already resulted in an earlier one-game suspension for Watkins. With 17 games remaining in a season from hell, it remains to be seen how low this proud program can go.
5. Lastly, while some may attribute Washington’s strong start to the conference season to lessons learned in a home loss to South Dakota State, head coach Lorenzo Romar sees these results growing from lessons planted throughout the season. He’s been preaching defense for weeks now in the hopes of correcting some of their problems, and now that is paying off. Not only are stars like Tony Wroten and C.J. Wilcox buying in defensively, but Romar has gotten redshirt freshman forward Desmond Simmons to play like a “junkyard dog,” killing it on the glass and working hard away from the ball.

1. Opening night in conference play was an exciting one, so let’s jump right into it with the game of the night, where Stanford held off UCLA, needing a Josh Huestis block of an attempt by Lazeric Jones to preserve a 60-59 victory. After giving up the first four points of the game, Stanford bounced back with a 15-2 run and never again trailed, although UCLA had multiple attempts to regain the lead in the second half. Jones led the charge for the Bruins, reeling off a career-high 26 points, but it was a couple of threes by Stanford freshman Chasson Randle wrapped around another three by sophomore Anthony Brown that broke a late tie and gave Stanford a five-point lead with five minutes to play. Randle had struggled on the night, hitting just one of his ten other attempts from the field and getting exposed on the UCLA pick and roll throughout the evening, but came up big down the stretch. Prior to the game, Stanford head coach Johnny Dawkins announced that junior guard Gabe Harris would miss the rest of the season after having surgery on his injured right knee. Harris had been averaging over 13 minutes per game off the bench.
2. Up the road a stretch, California had to withstand a late charge from Maurice Jones and USC to pull out a four-point win. Jones hit three 3-pointers in the final four and a half minutes to bring the Trojans back from a 16-point deficit, and were right there, just a point back with the clock running down when Trojan sophomore center Dewayne Dedmon swatted Jorge Gutierrez’s layup attempt. However, the ball wound up in the hands of Allen Crabbe who, in his own words, “just threw it up” from behind the three-point line and was fouled by little-used Eric Stangis. Crabbe hit all three free throws and the Bears escaped. If there was ever a game for Gutierrez to shine in, it was this gritty, hard-fought game, and he certainly stood out, leading his team with 13 points, seven rebounds, seven assists, and four steals. However, his uncharacteristic two-of-seven night from the line was crucial in keeping USC in the game. Even more concerning for Mike Montgomery was his team getting absolutely crushed on the glass, allowing USC to grab 50% of the available offensive rebounds and 74.1% of the defensive rebounds. As expected, sophomore forward Richard Solomon did not play for Cal due to a stress fracture in his foot.
3. Things were significantly less dramatic in the state of Washington last night, although for a brief moment it looked like Oregon State was on its way back from a 20-point deficit to make the Huskies sweat a bit down the stretch. After a wild Ahmad Starks three-pointer brought back to within 83-80, U-Dub closed the game on a 12-0 run to finish off the Beavers. The big story in the game was the played of Husky freshman guard Tony Wroten, who had 26 efficient points on 10-16 shooting, nine rebounds, four assists, just two turnovers, and hit five of his seven free throw attempts. While Wroten has now scored 20 or more in four of his last five games, this was far and away his best game in a young career. Lorenzo Romar also got significant production from the rest of his roster, with five other players – including sophomore wing C.J. Wilcox, who came off the bench for the first time this season – scoring in double figures.
4. Perhaps the biggest surprise on the night in the conference was Oregon going into Spokane and taking apart Washington State, ending the Cougars six-game winning streak in spectacular fashion. While senior forward Olu Ashaolu gets the honorifics after scoring 23 points and grabbing ten rebounds, it was a total team effort for the Ducks, as they shot a ridiculous 78.6 eFG% and controlled the glass. As Craig Powers at CougCenter points out, Oregon scored about 1.31 points per possession on the night, a number that is a bit out of whack since the Ducks spent the last several minutes trying to run out the clock. In the first half, OU scored almost 1.8 points per possession. There’s a long way to go in the season, but this had to be a concerning outing for Washington State head coach Ken Bone.
5. When Utah tips off its first conference game in the Pac-12 on Saturday at Colorado, it will do so without senior guard Chris Hines. Hines broke his left thumb three weeks ago against BYU, and has been playing through the injury for the Utes last three games (including its only two wins of the season), but head coach Larry Krystkowiak says he can barely even catch the ball, so Hines will sit for the time being. Unfortunately for the under-talented Utes, Hines’ backups are banged up as well, as walk-on Alex Mortenson is out after suffering a concussion in practice this week and junior Cedric Martin has been struggling with plantar fasciitis this week and will be a game-time decision on Saturday.

Yesterday we looked back at non-conference play and picked out some of the highlights of the first couple months of the season. Today, as conference play gets ready to tip-off, we look forward to what we expect to happen from here until Selection Sunday. Prior to the start of the season, we took a guess at things like conference standings and All-Pac-12 teams based on limited information. Now, we’ve got twelve or thirteen games upon which to base our next set of guesses, but given the state of affairs in the conference so far, may be no closer to having a good idea what is going to happen from here on out than we were back in November. Nevertheless, here goes:

Projected Standings

1. California 13-5 – While every team in the conference is flawed, the Golden Bears are slightly less flawed than the rest, provided Richard Solomon can return from his injury, Harper Kamp can remain relatively healthy and freshman David Kravish continues to improve. Their quartet of guards (Jorge Gutierrez, Allen Crabbe, Justin Cobbs and Brandon Smith) is the best in the league and head coach Mike Montgomery has a way of squeezing every bit of production out of his players.
   

   With Mike Montgomery At The Helm And A Talented Backcourt, The Golden Bears Are The Slight Favorite In The Pac-12 (photo credit: Christine Cotter)

2. Stanford 12-6 – Johnny Dawkins’ team will prove it is for real, but it may not have the experience or the single elite player capable of scoring with confidence in clutch situations to actually win the title. Chasson Randle or even Dwight Powell could grow into that type of player, but it may be a year or more away from happening. The Cardinal travel to Berkeley on the final day of the regular season in what could be a game rife with title implications.
3. Arizona 12-6 – It seems like everybody is just waiting for Josiah Turner and Nick Johnson to turn it on, take over this team and turn the Wildcats into an explosive offensive force. They’re talented enough to make that happen, but 13 games into the season, it is looking like Solomon Hill, Kyle Fogg and Jesse Perry are going to have to continue as the go-to guys for Sean Miller. And while those guys are nice players, they are all more suited to the role of contributors rather than stars, at least on teams who hope to win a conference title. However, the fact that the Wildcats only have to play Cal, Stanford, Oregon State and Oregon once each is definitely a bonus.
4. Oregon State 11-7 – Craig Robinson’s has an exciting and young squad that may have only scratched the surface of its talent so far. However, given their history of losing games that they have no business losing, they’ve got to be in the same “prove-it” category that Stanford occupies. Nevertheless, don’t be surprised if the quintet of Ahmad Starks, Jared Cunningham, Devon Collier, Joe Burton and Angus Brandt turns itself to be the most talented starting five in the conference. Read the rest of this entry »

1. There’s not a whole lot you can tell from a 23-point win over one of the worst teams in the Big West, but Washington did address some of the things that needed addressing in their win over CS Northridge on Thursday night. First, their defense was much improved, holding the Matadors to a 26% eFG. Secondly, their chemistry appeared to be better, as their scoring was balanced (10 players scored, and four players scored in double figures) and freshman sensation Tony Wroten notched five assists while Abdul Gaddy dropped eight dimes. However, the Huskies still turned the ball over 20 times (Wroten responsible for six), and for the third time since Wroten entered the starting lineup, failed to get Terrence Ross and C.J. Wilcox each double-digit field goal attempts in the same game (Ross had 14 attempts, making five, while Wilcox has seemingly reverted to just a shooter – attempting all six of his shots from behind the arc). It’s a win, and it puts the Huskies back above .500 and sends them into their holiday break with a good feeling, but when conference play kicks off next week, they’ve still got plenty of work to do.
2. The team with the best record in the conference proved that they’ve still got a long way to go as well, as Stanford got outworked and maybe outlucked a bit by two-time defending national runner-up Butler. Last week we talked about how this Cardinal team still needed to learn how to be a winner, and that got reinforced on Thursday night as the Bulldogs, led by a senior point guard in Ronald Nored (who has seen it all in his time in Indianapolis) took advantage of every opportunity and made the smart plays necessary to squeak out a win on the road. Sure, there was the shot-clock-beating desperation three-pointer by Nored that went in, or the putback by Andrew Smith of another late-possession brick that were certain indications of good fortune shining on Butler, but the fact is that the Bulldogs took advantage of those kinds of opportunities while the Cardinal did not. Yet again, we’ve got another Pac-12 team who just wrapped up non-conference play as a complete mystery. They may well be a legitimate contender for the conference title; or they may be just another pretender.
3. Now there’s the USC we know and, um, love? Three days after scoring 83 points against TCU, the Trojans broke out for a whopping 13 first-half points, although certainly against much stiffer competition with Kansas visiting the Galen Center. Aside from their typical 40.8% eFG, the Trojans turned the ball over 18 times, got killed on the glass, and just generally avoided any semblance of a coherent offensive game plan. The Trojan guards reverted back to their pound-the-ball-into-the-floor-for-30-seconds and throw-up-a-wild-shot default, as Maurice Jones, Alexis Moore and Byron Wesley combined to shoot 5-of-26 from the field (with 10 turnovers mixed in there), while DeWayne Dedmon followed up his solid game Monday with an invisibility trick any magician would be proud of (two field goal attempts, two rebounds and four fouls in 20 minutes). Aaron Fuller again proved to be the only effective offensive threat, hitting 70% of his field goals while going for 19 points and grabbing five rebounds. SC heads into conference play four games under .500, with fans beginning to contemplate another head coaching change.
4. Oregon finished its stretch of three games in three nights against mediocre competition (well, mediocre, only if North Carolina Central, Prairie View A&M and Stephen F. Austin rise to the level of mediocrity) with its third consecutive win. Considering the best of those three teams was ranked 219^th in the nation by Ken Pomeroy, three wins by an average of 10 points is not exactly an impressive run. However, the Ducks are beginning to figure out where their offense is coming from. In all three games – part of a round-robin tournament called the Global Sports Hoops Showcase that needs not only a better name but a better field – Devoe Joseph and E.J. Singler scored in double figures for the Ducks, while Garret Sim averaged more than 10 per game himself. If head coach Dana Altman can get guys like Olu Ashaolu, Tony Woods and Jeremy Jacob to buy into doing the dirty work for them, and if freshman three-point specialist Brett Kingma can find his stroke, this team is still capable of an upper-division finish.
5. Lastly, Utah’s two-game winning streak was snapped Thursday night when it dropped a game to in-state rival Weber State by 29, the largest margin of defeat for the Utes in that rivalry. And with the Utes changing their “scheduling philosophy” now that they’re in the Pac-12, this may be the last time they play at Weber State. Utah has yet to schedule any future games either at Weber State or at Utah State, possibly ending some great home-and-home matchups in the Beehive State. Until this point, it’s been easy to feel nothing but sympathy for the struggles of Utah’s basketball program, but without a doubt, their apparent willingness to kill off what have been great rivalries does an effective job of mitigating some of that goodwill.

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

Reader’s Take

Top Storylines

• Non-Conference Play Winding Down – Can you believe we’re a week away from the start of the conference season? Tonight there are eight games involving Pac-12 teams (highlighted by Kansas at USC and Butler at Stanford), there are another couple tomorrow night (Richmond at UCLA and California at UNLV), a throwaway game next Wednesday (New Orleans at Colorado), and then we’re into conference play next Thursday with the Southern California schools traveling to the Bay Area and the Oregon schools heading to the Washington schools. There are a couple of unappealing non-conference games jammed into the middle of the Pac-12 schedule (literally, a couple: Seattle at Washington on January 10 and UCLA at St. John’s on February 18), but that’s it. No more non-conference games for the Pac-12 to boost its resume.

Lorenzo Romar's Huskies Have Struggled To A 5-5 Start, With An Uncharacteristic Home Loss To South Dakota State Mixed In There (photo credit: Geoffrey McAllister, AP)

• What’s Up With Washington? ­– Coming into the season, the Huskies were considered one of four teams in a bunch at the top of the conference, each with a relatively equal chance to win the regular season title. Since that time, however, UCLA has dropped clean out of the discussion, and with Washington’s 19-point loss on Sunday night to South Dakota State dropping them to .500 on the year, Lorenzo Romar’s team is right there with the Bruins in having earned its share of doubters. Aside from neutral-site losses to top 15 teams Duke and Marquette, the Huskies had previously also dropped road games at Saint Louis and at Nevada. But the home blowout to Nate Wolters and the Jackrabbits was a whole new, entirely unexpected low. While the Huskies have had their share of troubles on the road in recent years under Romar, a home loss to a team the caliber of South Dakota State is unprecedented.
• Arizona State, USC, Utah – Not only has the Pac-12 been bad this year, (19-7 since we last did that, with losses to South Dakota State and Northern Arizona mixed in there), they’ve been entirely unpredictable. For example, after Arizona State knocked off North Dakota State on a buzzer-beater two Saturday’s ago, they lost two straight games, victims of buzzer-beaters on both occasions. Then last night, they were spared the indignity of a third straight buzzer-beater loss only because the game winning three-pointer, this time from Fresno State’s Kevin Olekaibe, came with 30 seconds left. For USC, they allowed one of the worst shooting teams in Division I, Georgia, to shoot over 60% against them on Saturday, very much an out-of-the-ordinary occurrence for any team facing the tough Trojan defense. SC came back on Monday night to score 83 points against TCU, this after scoring over 60 only three times in regulation prior to that outburst. Then there’s Utah, who last week at this time were 0-8 against Division I opponents. Since then, they’ve won both their games and appear to at least be making some progress.

Player of the Year Watch

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