Allen Moll is an avid NBA and College Basketball fan who watches and studies games religiously and coaches youth basketball in his native Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania. Allen is a regular columnist for thehoopdoctors.com, Bleacherreport.com, UpperDeckblog.com, and his own site, Hoops Haven.
The Pac-10 Conference has been one of the historically good conferences in the history of college basketball. With teams such as UCLA and Arizona being elite programs, winning multiple national titles and with a number of other schools accustomed to getting at large bids to “The Big Dance” like Washington, Arizona State, and USC, you would think around this time of the season that we would be talking about which 4 or 5 teams have a chance to be invited to March Madness.
Not this year.
The conference is officially in a down year because of a mass exodus of talent to the NBA and some recruitment violations at Southern Cal. Many top players have left in recent years for the lure of mega-buck contracts in the professional ranks like Kevin Love, O.J Mayo, and Chase Budinger leaving the conference barren in terms of marquee talent.
Many teams have either started of great or had long winning streaks with no one seemingly showing they want to be conference’s representative come March.
Usual conference powerhouse, UCLA has fallen the hardest from last season after suffering through an early 5 game losing streak and sit at a disappointing 4-3 in conference and a sub .500 record overall(9-10). At this point Ben Howland has to be looking forward to next season when some prized recruits like elite big man, Josh Smith will be playing for the Bruins.
Washington and Cal were the early leaders of the conference as both have been nationally ranked at some point. The Huskies probably have the best collection of talent, with Quincy Pondexter, Abdul Gaddy, and Isaiah Thomas, but have slipped in conference play, currently sitting near the bottom of the standings at 3-5 and a lowly 12-7 overall.
California is probably the current favorite, after defeating Oregon State, to get to 13-6 overall and sits atop the conference standings at 5-2. Jerome Randle has been their best player, putting up 18.7 ppg and dishing out 4.7 assists. But the Bears are 0-2 against ranked opponents, don’t have any quality wins, and have already lost to rival Washington.
Arizona State also looked good for a while, winning 4 straight in conference to become one of the favorites but lost badly at home to Arizona and now firmly sits on the “bubble” at 14-6(4-3 Pac-10), but also doesn’t have any quality wins besides beating Washington earlier in the season when they were in the Top 25.
USC has also looked surprisingly good at times but has imposed some sanctions upon themselves concerning recruiting violations over O.J. Mayo, dashing all hopes of any post-season play. Arizona and Stanford are the only other teams over .500 in the conference(4-3) but both can hardly be considered contenders since they are equally mediocre at 10-9 overall.
The problem is with so many of the teams having down seasons, even if they get on a long winning streak against each-other now that they are in conference play, their RPI and Strength of Schedule will be too low when compared to teams with worse overall records in conferences like the Big East or ACC, where they play ranked opponents on a nightly basis. With that being said and all of the statistics against them, only one team will probably earn an at-large bid to the tournament.
Who is the favorite for that one invitation to go “dancing?” Your guess is as good as mine. Just put the top 7 teams’ names in a hat and make a selection. If I had to make a prediction,……………..the Cal Bears will get the nod.
