Surveying the Pac

We've reached roughly the quarter-season mark. I've looked at Cal and Stanford; how is the rest of the conference doing?

Arizona-- 5-2, SOS rank 8
Pomeroy rating: 26

(Just a note about the above: SOS is measured by rank among the 341 Division I programs. Pomeroy rating was developed by Ken Pomeroy, now of basketballprospectus.com, to measure the actual performance of basketball teams against their opponents in a better manner than the RPI. It's a pretty predictive ranking scheme.)

Lute Olsen always has his teams play particularly tough non-conference schedules. I've got to be honest with you-- I don't understand it with this team. The team at present has one proven scorer in Chase Budinger, who is (despite my earlier criticism of him vis a vis Ryan Anderson) pretty awesome, and a whole lot of question marks elsewhere. Jerryd Bayless is producing quite well for a freshman, but this is not a strong Olsen squad.

Add in the fact that Olsen is taking the season off, and you've got a recipe for another potential meltdown in the latter half of the season. He is, apparently, in the midst of a somewhat messy divorce. It's to his credit that he realized he couldn't concentrate on coaching and turned the reins over to Kevin McHale. But no matter who's coaching, the strain of numerous high-intensity games is, I think, going to wear the team down. They've still got games at Illinois, at UNLV (never an easy road trip), and at Memphis. It's hard to see this team going better than 9-4 in nonconference play, which likely means they'll need a .500 Pac-10 mark to make the Tourney.

Arizona State-- 5-2, SOS 156
Pomeroy Rating: 50

Herb Sendek has definitely upped the recruiting ante in the Desert, as evidenced by the fact that his team's leading scorer and rebounder is a freshman. Unfortunately, said freshman (James Harden) is a guard. Guards leading your team in rebounding is a Bad Thing. This team has a core of solid talent, and has held its own to this point, managing two D-I wins at the Maui Invitational, but losing by 15 to Nebraska does not fill me with confidence for this team's future. Right now Pomeroy has them on the Tourney bubble, but without better scoring and rebounding performances, they're not going to win enough games in-conference.

Oregon-- 6-1, SOS 30
Pomeroy Rating: 44

I find it odd that Oregon's schedule is ranked as highly as it is. Outside of Kansas State (narrow win) and St. Mary's (lost rather badly), there's no one of any consequence on there. This is a veteran team, but also one with severe depth and height problems. The team has one player with significant minutes over 6-6, and only 7 guys in the regular rotation. Call me a skeptic, but I just can't see where the #19 AP rank is coming from. The Pac-10 this year is crammed full of big men, and I cannot see what Oregon will be able to do against DeVon Harden and his ilk. They should enter Pac-10 play at 10-2, but I think this team will struggle to post a .500 conference record and ultimately miss the NCAA tournament.

Oregon State-- 4-3, SOS 321
Pomeroy Rating: 160

Let's face it-- this is a bad team. When you lose to Alaska-Fairbanks, you've got some serious issues. I was under the impression that O-State had brought in a decent recruiting class, but so far it hasn't really showed. The only players who should inspire fear in any opponent are Seth Tarver and Marcel Jones. In this conference, O-State is going to be lucky to win 4 games. It would take little short of a miracle for this group to even obtain an NIT bid.

UCLA-- 8-1, SOS 11
Pomeroy Rating: 3

It's a measure of how reactive and stupid the polls are that UCLA dropped 7 spots for losing to a pretty good Texas team by 2 points. Ignore them. The committee will, too. This is a Bruins squad which has won a bunch of games against tough opponents despite serious injury problems. The frontline group-- Collison, Westbrook, Shipp, Mbah a Moute (is that not the most awesome name in sports?) and Kevin Love-- is as good as any in the country. This team doesn't have the backcourt depth of some of Howland's past teams, but that situation will improve once Michael Roll returns from injury.

It's pretty hard for me not to think that UCLA is Final Four-bound again. The only thing that might crimp those plans is if the team loses enough conference games to drop to a #3 seed or so.

USC-- 6-3, SOS 16
Pomeroy Rating: 21

Does Taj Gibson have mono or something? What happened to the dominant big man we saw in last year's NCAA tournament? He had zero points when I turned on last week's game against Kansas, at about the 6-minutes-to-go mark. I'm a big fan of his, despite his playing for USC (easily my least-liked team in the conference) and the lassitude I'm seeing is a little disturbing.

Then again, maybe it's just a natural result of playing on the same team as OJ Mayo. Mayo has really damaged USC's chances with his ball-hogging ways thus far. He's shot the ball 157 times and scored 160 points on those shots. When you consider that he's also turning the ball over 4 times a game, you realize that the lion's share of this team's offense is going through a guy who's actually not all that good. Luckily for USC fans, he'll be gone soon.

I really dislike this new "one year rule" which encourages all of these ringers to show up on campus, go to class for a semester, and then bug out for the NBA. For one thing, it creates way too much uncertainty for coaches as to what their rosters are actually going to look like. For another, it's hard for fans to keep up with. For a third, it's a serious waste of classroom resources on guys who have no interest in or desire to attend college. And for a fourth, it makes the rich richer-- virtually all of these guys are going to top programs, not Northwestern State.

Make the rule the same as in baseball or football (3 year commitment) and I'd be a bit happier with it. I'm really not convinced the rule is even morally right or legally permissible, though. If the players want to play in the NBA, and the teams want them to play in the NBA, what exactly is the justification for preventing them?

Washington-- 4-3, SOS 179
Pomeroy Rating: 129

Here's a shocker for ya: losing Brandon Roy really hurt this team last year. He's not coming back, and it seems like you could say the same about the program. The Huskies made it to New York in the Preseason NIT, but got thumped twice there, and subsequently endured another thrashing at the hands of Oklahoma State in the Big 12-Pac 10 Series. The Huskies are hugely dependent on undersized big Jon Brockman, who is a talented guy but really not on the level of a Brook Lopez or a Kevin Love. Having an undersized, shoot-first point guard who's not a great ball-handler just adds to the problems. Washington has an outside shot at an NIT bid, but that's about all they can realistically hope for.

Washington State-- 8-0, SOS 137
Pomeroy Rating: 12

I don't know of a recent example of a college team enjoying this much consistent success without a single NBA talent on the roster. OK, OK, Kyle Weaver might get a look (6-6 shooting guards are a nice thing), but "last ten picks to possibly undrafted" doesn't really count here. The rest of the team consists of: a short Hawaiian point guard (Derrick Low), a guy whose shot looks like it came straight out of some highlight reel from the 1930s (Rochestie), a center who looks like he just ate Sheboygan and isn't sorry (Aron Baynes), and a guy who looks kind of like what Oakland A's pitcher Dan Haren would look like if you grew both him and his hair out ten inches (Robbie Cowgill).

Kudos to Tony Bennett for turning this ragged bunch of dudes into a formidable defensive menace. The combination of slow tempo and great halfcourt defense means Wazoo has a pretty fair shot at allowing fewer points per game than any other team in Division I. Having one aspect of your game be that good really gives you a chance against any opponent, even the UCLAs of the world.