Scores
Tuesday, January 10
Washington 91, Seattle 83
Thursday, January 12
Arizona 81, Oregon State 73 (OT)
Stanford 68, Utah 65
Oregon 67, Arizona State 58
California 57, Colorado 50
Saturday, January 14
Stanford 84, Colorado 64
Oregon 59, Arizona 57
Arizona State 76, Oregon State 66
California 81, Utah 45
Sunday, January 15
UCLA 66, USC 47
Washington 75, Washington State 65
It’s such a bizarre, twilight zone world in which to live, the world of Pac-12 Conference basketball in this day and age. A league is about to make history for all the wrong reasons, shuffling along without hope of a brighter day. The Pac is a “dead league walking,” ironically in its first season as a 12-member conference.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle of internal destruction: The Pac-12′s teams aren’t very good, so when they beat each other up, nobody’s NCAA Tournament value increases. Therefore, the Pac is still likely to be the first power conference to put only one team in the NCAA Tournament since the NCAA field was expanded from 48 teams to 64 in 1985 (with the field being expanded to 68 last season).
Go through the list of Pac-12 games this past week, and no new evidence emerges to suggest that the Pac will get more than one team in Bracketville. Arizona, which made the Elite Eight last year and came within one last-second shot against Connecticut of making the Final Four, is saddled with a young team this season. The loss of Derrick Williams to the NBA has left the Wildcats with few options before head coach Sean Miller brings in a top-notch recruiting class in 2013. Arizona barely held off Oregon State on Thursday, but if anyone felt that the Wildcats were going to use that win as a source of momentum going forward, those thoughts were shattered on Saturday, as Oregon waltzed into Tucson and stopped the Cats in a low-scoring rock fight. Any glimmer of an at-large hope for Arizona likely evaporated with that loss to Oregon.
The rest of the Pac-12 is little better. The two teams at the top of the league are nevertheless bereft of the resumes that will lead to participation in the March Madness derby… not as an at-large team, at any rate. Stanford and California lead the Pac at 5-1 after sweeping Utah and Colorado this past week, but the Cardinal and the Golden Bears can’t point to any quality wins at all. Stanford lost to Syracuse and Butler this season, only managing to beat Oklahoma State and North Carolina State in non-league play. (That win over NC State could be the Pac’s single best win of the non-conference season.) Cal lost to Missouri, San Diego State, and UNLV, the only marquee foes on the slate. Washington is sitting at 4-1 after beating Washington State on Sunday, but the Huskies missed their big opportunities for quality wins by falling to Marquette and Duke while also taking an embarrassing tumble against South Dakota State and, for that matter, Colorado in a conference game.
The more one looks at the Pac-12, the less hope exists in 2012.
Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Senior Staff Writer