Ask basketball players and coaches around the Pacific-12 Conference and they will tell you they have heard the criticism placed on the league after a down nonconference season.
The numbers are not pretty. Consider:
• Pac-12 teams are 0-12 against ranked opponents.
• Although nine of the 12 conference teams posted winning marks, 31 of the collective 57 losses have been by double-digit margins.
• Pac-12 schools have one win against a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) top-50 team – Oregon State’s 100-95 overtime victory over Texas in November.
• Heading into the start of league play tonight, the Pac-12 sits ninth in conference RPI – just behind the Missouri Valley Conference.
• The conference’s highest scorer, Oregon State’s Jared Cunningham at 16.8 points per game, isn’t ranked in the top 100 nationally.
Embarrassing for a high-profile conference with a proud heritage? A sign of things to come? Proof of how it has been in the past few seasons? Whatever the answer, one thing is certain – the Pac-12 has been a flop.
“I was the coach a year ago who felt we were underappreciated as a conference, and I really believe I was right when you look at the NBA draft and how we performed in the NCAA tournament as a conference,” Arizona’s Sean Miller said. “This year, there is no excuse. As a conference, we don’t have those marquee wins. That doesn’t mean our conference, our players and teams won’t keep getting better.”
LACK OF STAR POWER
Heading into the conference season, no Pac-12 school is ranked, or even on the verge of it. No player is being mentioned as a potential All-American candidate.
“ The league has to have quality teams, and to this point, no one has showed they are a quality team in this conference, ” said Francis Williams, a former high school and AAU coach in Seattle who is now a college basketball analyst for Root Sports.
“ And the guys who would have been stars, they all left early. There are freshmen who ultimately could be pretty good. But we sill have that cycle of guys leaving early. And unfortunately this time we had guys who left early who shouldn’ t have.”
Williams specifically pointed to the UCLA duo of Tyler Honeycutt (35th pick to Sacramento) and Malcolm Lee (43rd pick to Chicago, traded to Minnesota). Both underclassmen left early, and fell to the second round in the 2011 NBA draft.
If they had returned, the Bruins likely would have been ranked in the Top 10.
“ Like always, we lose players to the NBA draft like crazy, ” Miller said. “ The only thing you have to do is put Malcolm Lee and Tyler Honeycutt on UCLA, or Derrick Williams on Arizona and you have a much different feel (with the Pac-12).”
They are gone. And once again, the league’ s top players are in the sophomore and freshman classes.
That might be a separate issue on its own. Steve Kerr, the former Phoenix Suns general manager now a broadcaster on college basketball and NBA games, noted last week that true freshmen in the Pac-12 – players such as Washington’ s Tony Wroten, Arizona’ s Nick Johnson and Stanford’ s Chasson Randle – are being asked to do too much early in their careers.
“ I mean, you now, everybody is entitled to their own opinion. For years, it has been freshmen who have been doing good – nothing against sophomores, juniors and seniors, ” Wroten said. “ Young guys, sometimes they get the job done. But sometimes you need to go to the (veteran).
“ (Kerr) could be right, he could be wrong. If you are ready to play, you are ready to play no matter what grade you are in.”
SOLACE IN CORVALLIS
The one squad seemingly on the rise is Oregon State, the Huskies’ opponent today. The Beavers were one of three Pac-12 schools to win 10 games in the nonconference season.
And leading the way for OSU is Cunningham, a 6-foot-4 junior with explosive jumping ability who impacts the game on both ends of the floor.
Early in the 2007-08 season, this was a program in turmoil. The Beavers lost their first four conference games, costing former coach Jay John his job. They ended up finishing 0-18 in the league.
Craig Robinson was hired from Brown to rebuild. And in his first season, Oregon State went 18-18, and won the College Basketball Invitational (CBI) postseason tournament title over Texas-El Paso.
Over the past two seasons, Oregon State has gone 25-38.
“ We had such a good first year winning the CBI that people were expecting it to go up, then up, then up from there, ” Robinson said. “ We kind of knew as a staff that it was going to get worse after the CBI before it got better. We knew that, and we were prepared, so we were just trying to work as hard as we could.”
Robinson has been able to recruit tall, team-oriented players to fit his style. Defensively, the Beavers are as good as any team in the Pac-12 – with Cunningham and Ahmad Starks national leaders in steals.
“ Our motto has been, ‘ Just one day at a time.’ We are not thinking ahead about what would happen if you are 10-3 or 11-2. You don’ t cloud your mind nor your process with those thoughts, ” Robinson said. “ You just focus on what is ahead of you. It has been good for us. I think you have to take that sort of attitude when you are trying to change a culture.”
Cunningham scored 35 points in a game earlier this season against Hofstra. He had 37 in the win over Texas. Many observers, including his own coach, think he could be the conference’ s best player.
“ I feel like that (37 against Texas) helped me out. In the past couple years … (we) didn’ t get a lot of recognition because of our losing seasons, ” Cunningham said. “ Winning in the (nonconference season), and having great teammates has really put us on the (map) this year.”
DON’ T COUNT ’ EM OUT … YET
Even amid the whispers that the Pac-12 might get just one team in the NCAA tournament, UW coach Lorenzo Romar said the season does not end in January. Until the season plays out, he said, reserve judgment.
“ It seems like every year, someone emerges as that standout guy that wasn’ t that guy heading into the season, ” Romar said. “ A great example is Brandon Roy, a first-team All-American (in 2005-06). Going into the year, he wasn’ t on anybody’ s All-American preseason team.
“ Or how about a guy like Ryan Anderson at Cal? Going into the year (in 2007-08), people did not have him as a big stud. He had a great year. As we go on, someone will emerge with that star power.”
From his court-side vantage, Williams lists Stanford as his team to beat. California, UW, Oregon State, Arizona and UCLA are also very capable of making a run, he thinks.
In terms of player-of-the-year candidates who can transcend the Pac-12 – guys with a real chance of making an impact nationally – Williams considers Cunningham the favorite, followed by California’ s Allen Crabbe, UW’ s Terrence Ross and Colorado’ s Andre Roberson.
“ The last three years … Pac-12 teams got better toward the end of the season anyway, ” UW guard Abdul Gaddy said. “ So when our teams do get into the NCAA tournament, we always excel and upset teams.”
- - -
Todd Milles: 253-597-8442 todd.milles@thenewstribune.com
