Pac 10 Basketball Overview January 19

Arizona's Williams is the reigning Pac 10 player of the week

Welcome to the weekly Pac 10 college basketball overview, taking a look at each teams results and how they are positioned for postseason play. Washington is establishing themselves as being as close to a lock so far as can be from the Pac 10. The other schools are scrambling as Cal is the only one with a real quality out of conference (OOC) schedule. UCLA was underwhelming, except for the BYU win and USC is entirely way too inconsistent. Washington State and Arizona appear to be contenders for an at-large, but they can’t afford any bad losses. Here’s a quick look some interesting items from this week:

• Arizona
  • Wildcats forward Derrick Williams garners Pac 10 POW award
  • Wildcats gearing up for big weekend in Washington
• California
  • Q&A with freshman guard Allen Crabbe
• Oregon
  • UCLA accuses Singler of dirty play last weekend
• Oregon State
  • Beavers junior walk-on McShane becoming fan favorite in Corvallis
• Stanford
  • Former  Cardinal Landry Fields excelling with Knicks in rookie year
• UCLA
  • Bruins sophomore forward Honeycutt continues to have elbow problems
• USC
  • Freshman Bryce Jones to transfer out of USC
• Washington
  • Huskies will focus on stopping Arizona’s Williams on Thursday
• Washington State
  • Coach Bone says suspended Moore might return on Thursday

Team Overviews: Records are going into January 19th and the ratings that will be considered are Ken Pomeroy’s rating system, which is not perfect, but tends to be the fairest in terms of strength of opponent and the RPI. The RPI is now being used since this is one of the tools used by the selection committee to select the field of 68. RPI is courtesy of rpiforecast.com.

Arizona Wildcats RPI 29

• 15-3, 4-1 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 11-2 with a win over NC State and losses to Kansas and BYU. They also have 4 gimme wins. RPI 24, schedule 79.
• Pac10 Wins: at Oregon, Cal, Stanford, Arizona St.    Losses: at Oregon St.
• The Wildcats appeared headed back to the Big Dance after missing out last season, until they lost to Oregon State. Barring any more horrible losses, they probably need to get to at least 13 wins. Anything less puts their bid in danger.

Arizona State Sun Devils RPI 142

• 9-8, 1-4 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 8-4 with wins over UAB and Tulsa and losses to New Mexico, St. John’s, Baylor, and Richmond. They also have 4 gimme wins. RPI 105, schedule 142.
• Pac10 Wins: at Oregon   Losses: at Oregon St., Stanford, Cal, at Arizona
• Barring a major run that results in 15+ wins in conference/Pac10 tourney, they won’t be dancing this season.

California Golden Bears RPI 53

• 9-8, 2-3 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 7-5 with wins over New Mexico, Temple, and Iowa State and losses to Notre Dame, BC, San Diego State, Southern Miss, and Kansas. They also have 4 gimme wins. RPI 55, schedule 5.
• Pac10 Wins: at Arizona St., Wash St.        Losses: at Stanford, at Arizona, Washington
• The Bears played a brutal OOC schedule and could reap the benefits of that if they can get to 20 wins overall. Less than that will probably not be good enough. But they’re the only Pac-10 school that can lose that many games and have a chance at an at-large berth.

Oregon Ducks RPI 182

• 8-10, 1-5 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 7-5 with no notable wins and plenty of losses. They also have 5 gimme wins and a non division I win. RPI 187, schedule 106.
• No tourney this year for the Ducks.

Oregon State Beavers RPI 224

• 8-9, 3-3 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 5-6 with no notable wins and plenty of losses. They also have 4 gimme wins. RPI 312, schedule 338.
• No tourney this year for the Beavers, unless the President gets involved.

Stanford Cardinal RPI 98

• 10-6, 3-2 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 7-4 with a win over Virginia and losses to Murray State, Tulsa, Butler, and Oklahoma State. They also have 5 gimme wins and a gimme remaining against Seattle. RPI 153, schedule 238.
• Pac10 Wins: Cal, at Arizona St., Washington   Losses: at Arizona, Wash St.
• The Cardinal doesn’t have the quality OOC profile, but a 14+ win conference record could get them in.

UCLA Bruins RPI 63

• 11-6, 3-2 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 8-4 with a win over BYU and losses to Villanova, VCU, Kansas, and Montana. They also have 6 gimme wins and a remaining game against St. John’s. RPI 81, schedule 44.
• Pac10 Wins: Wash St., at Oregon St., at Oregon  Losses: Washington, at USC
• The Bruins need a very good conference record to make that BYU win stand up. That St. John’s is very important and could be a deciding factor on Selection Sunday. If the Bruins win that one, they should be able to get into the tourney with 14 wins, if not 13. If they don’t beat the Johnnies, then they might need to go 12-1 the rest of the way in the Pac 10.

USC Trojans RPI 85

• 10-8, 2-3 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 8-5 with wins over Texas and Tennessee and losses to Rider, Bradley, Nebraska, TCU, and Kansas. They also have 3 gimme wins. RPI 74, schedule 48.
• Pac10 Wins: Wash St., UCLA   Losses: Wash, Oregon, Oregon St.
• What happened on the Oregon Trail? That might have done them in. I wrote that they had used all of their mulligans before last week. Let’s see if they prove me wrong. It’s going to take 11-2 or 12-1 and a run to the Pac 10 tourney finals to make it in. Inconsistent teams like this normally don’t become consistent.

Washington Huskies RPI 26

• 13-4, 5-1 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 8-3 with a win over Virginia and losses to Kentucky, Michigan State, and Texas A&M. They also have 4 gimme wins and a remaining gimme against Seattle. RPI 42, schedule 41.
• Pac 10 Wins: at USC, at UCLA, Oregon, Oregon St., at Cal     Losses: at Stanford
• The Huskies will need to continue on to 14+ wins if they want to get an at-large bid. There’s no signature OOC win and their three losses are the only good opponents they played. They also need to avoid any mishaps when playing the Oregon schools unlike USC.

Washington State Cougars RPI 58

• 13-5, 3-3 in Pac10
• OOC rundown: 10-2 with wins over Gonzaga and Baylor and losses to Kansas State and Butler. They also have 5 gimme wins. RPI 54, schedule 149.
• Pac 10 Wins: Oregon St., Oregon, at Stanford   Losses: at UCLA, at USC, at Cal
• The Cougars have two quality OOC wins and that gives them a chance to make it in with only 13 wins. They will also need to win a quality road game or two and avoid any Oregon slipups.

That’s this week’s Pac 10 overview. These will come weekly and become more condensed as teams drop out of at-large contention. My other conference overviews will follow.