From The Editor's Desk: Pac-10 Stumbles (And Falls) Out of the Gates

From The Editor's Desk: Pac-10 Stumbles (And Falls) Out of the Gates

 AKERS: With no signature wins and plenty of head-scratching losses, the Pac-10 is in danger of being this season's irrelevant BCS conference.

By JOHN AKERS
Editor, Basketball Times


Just two weeks in, the Pacific 10 Conference is in deep trouble.
It isn’t just that the Pac-10 favorite, California, so clearly lacked the muscle inside to compete with elite teams Syracuse and Ohio State in the Preseason NIT at Madison Square Garden.
Or that UCLA, the Pac-10’s leading man, kicked off ESPN's 24-hour marathon with a loss to Cal State Fullerton.
Or that Oregon State, a candidate for a breakout season under coach Craig Robinson, instead lost its opener to Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and followed that embarrassment up with a loss to Sacramento State.
Or that the Pac-10 is 1-3 against the West Coast Conference, with losses to Portland (Oregon), Loyola Marymount (USC) and San Diego (Stanford).
The Pac-10 finds itself paying for the high-reward recruits that made it arguably the nation's top conference in 2007-08. UCLA's Kevin Love, USC's O.J. Mayo and Arizona's Jerryd Bayless left after their only Pac-10 seasons, and Arizona State's James Harden followed them to the NBA after last season. Arizona suffered through Lute Olson's two years of coaching indecision, and USC has dealt with an NCAA investigation, early departures and a coaching change. For all the concern about how Mike Krzyzewski’s involvement in U.S. basketball might affect Duke, Stanford might have been hit harder by new coach Johnny Dawkins’ commitment to help Krzyzewski in Beijing. The Bruins were stung again by a one-and-done when Jrue Holiday left after last season.
It adds up.
The Pac-10’s next big problem is that there will be little room for it to repair its damaged reputation before conference play begins in January. The Bears might still be the Pac-10’s best team. But unless they upset No. 1 Kansas in their meeting three days before Christmas, the bar they set for the rest of the conference could still be relatively low because of last week’s losses.
Washington could emerge as the Pac-10’s new frontrunner, but the Huskies’ schedule will do little to establish them as a national power. They have a Dec. 12 date with Georgetown, and then just Texas Tech and Texas A&M from the power conferences beyond that.
Arizona State, Arizona and Washington State are the only other Pac-10 schools that have yet to slip up. The Sun Devils, somehow averaging 81.8 points under the conservative Herb Sendek, have their chance to make a name for themselves this week in the Preseason NIT Tip-Off, first against Duke on Wednesday and in a game against LSU or Connecticut on Friday. The Wildcats, under new coach Sean Miller, are still playing an Olson-inspired schedule that includes this week’s Maui Invitational, where they’ll open against Wisconsin. The Cougars, also under a new coach, Ken Bone, have no ranked opponents in a schedule including Gonzaga, Kansas State and LSU.
It's very possible that the Pac-10 will be without a single signature victory going into conference play. Should that happen, it won't matter much how the league race plays out. The best scenario at that point might be for two teams to separate themselves from the rest and for a third team to win the conference tournament – the recipe that a mediocre SEC used to get three teams into the NCAA Tournament last season. In a couple of worst-case scenarios, one team could dominate and the Pac-10 becomes the Conference USA of recent seasons or a four-way logjam turns it into last season's Mountain West Conference.
The problems likely won't end there for reasons extending beyond the Pac-10. There doesn't appear to be a top-20 type team from the Mountain West, the WAC, the WCC or the Big West, either. In an ideal situation for the NCAA selection committee, there would be a No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 seed from the West Coast that could each be sent to one of the West Coast's first-round sites, San Jose and Spokane. Then the committee would have the option of keeping nearly any NCAA Tournament team from the West Coast close to home for the first games.
More likely this season, no team from the West Coast will be in a position to earn higher than a No. 4 seed. In that case, all the No. 4 seeds likely would be sent to San Jose and Spokane, no matter where they're from. And that would mean that only the corresponding 5, 12 and 13 seeds could be sent to those first- and second-round sites, too. Unless any Pac-10 teams that get NCAA bids would land on those lucky squares, they would be sent halfway or all the way across the country to places such as Oklahoma City, Milwaukee, New Orleans, Jacksonville, Providence and Buffalo.
The odds are stacked against the Pac-10 today.
They figure to get worse by January.
They will likely be monumental by March.