Tag: Pac-12 Basketball

Pac-12 men’s basketball power rankings: Part 2

The latest Pac-12 power rankings!

The college basketball season is rolling at a rapid pace and conference play is about to start the most teams across the country.

As far as the Pac-12 is concerned, the conference is extremely top-heavy. Arizona, UCLA and USC were all ranked in the top-10 in the latest Ferris Mowers Coaches Poll and don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.

After that, Colorado, Utah, and Washington State appear to be quite a ways down, and then the bottom chunk of the conference is looking pretty iffy, at best.

With December halfway done, it is time to do another power rankings edition, and there are quite a few changes.

Pac-12 Basketball Power Rankings: UCLA, Oregon suffer back-to-back losses against WCC

Thanksgiving week games have not gone well for the Pac-12 so far as we look at the power rankings ahead of conference play.

The week of Thanksgiving has historically been a huge week for college basketball fans. Multiple tournaments, including the Old Spice Classic, Maui Invitational, and recently the Phil Knight Invitational in Portland have brought together high profile opponents for must-watch television ahead of the beginning of conference play.

For the Pac-12 in 2021, this week of games has not gone particularly well. Oregon was the frontrunner to win the Maui Invitational – held in Vegas this year because of COVID – but they instead fell to Saint Mary’s on Tuesday evening and will play Houston for a third place finish.

Shortly after, UCLA had their doors blown off by the No. 1 ranked Gonzaga Bulldogs, giving the conference back-to-back losses to Mid-Major (albeit, elite Mid-Major) programs on primetime television.

It hasn’t all been bad, however, as Tommy Lloyd has the Arizona Wildcats undefeated through five games with a huge win over Michigan on his already impressive resume. Likewise, Washington State and Utah remain undefeated while USC is still holding on to a spotless record and a spot in the AP top 25.

Here is a look at our Power Rankings through the first few weeks of the season:

No Pac-12 hoops before January gives USC’s pieces a chance to mesh

The USC basketball jigsaw puzzle will get more time to develop.

Whether you read the Orange County Register or The Athletic or any other publication for USC basketball coverage, the larger reality surrounding Trojan hoops is obvious before the 2021 season: Once again, a USC roster is comprised of many disparate parts. Outsiders will need to fit with insiders in a jigsaw puzzle arrangement.

When USC defeated UCLA, 54-52, on March 7 — the last game USC played in the 2020 college basketball season, but also the game which sealed a berth in the NCAA Tournament which was never subsequently played — the Trojans relied on this quintet for the vast majority of minutes: Onyeka Okongwu, Nick Rakocevic, Jonah Mathews, Daniel Utomi, and Ethan Anderson.

Of those five players, who all played 29 or more minutes against UCLA on that Saturday afternoon, only Anderson returns this season. Taking an approach similar to what he used for the 2019-2020 season, Andy Enfield is relying on a lineup partly built from the outside, not entirely from the inside. In other words, transfers are going to figure prominently in the development of the 2021 Trojans.

Enfield has recruited three graduate transfers — Santa Clara guard Tahj Eaddy, Wofford forward Chevez Goodwin, and Utah Valley forward Isaiah White — while also getting undergraduate transfers as well: Long Beach State’s Joshua Morgan and Rice guard Drew Peterson.

Much as Okongwu was the freshman centerpiece of the 2020 team, Evan Mobley will be the freshman at the center of the action for the 2021 USC team. For the second straight season, USC basketball enters a campaign with a minority of its roster consisting of returning players. Last summer, it was four returning players. This year? Three.

Enfield didn’t want Elijah Weaver to leave — Weaver transferred to Dayton — but USC’s head coach was ready to hit the transfer market and assemble pieces by using different avenues. The transfers-plus-freshmen-plus-returning-players formula, with the returning players not representing the majority group, won’t be foreign to Enfield. His go-round this past season gave him experience in juggling a roster with these components.

While it’s a bummer that USC won’t be able to test itself against Gonzaga and Kansas — as we noted at Trojans Wire earlier this month — the lack of Pac-12 basketball in November and December does give the Trojans one specific reason for optimism: The roster will have more time to work together, so that when it does hit the floor (presumably in a conference-game-only regular season), it will be more cohesive, more unified, more aware of how to create the five-as-one fluidity every team needs.

“This is going to be a fun and exciting team to coach because we have a lot of guys with something to prove,” Enfield told Seth Davis of The Athletic. “We’ve got a lot of new players, and our returning guys will be relied upon to do things that they weren’t relied upon to do last year.”

They will have more time to polish their skills, too.

The Pac-12 has hundreds of millions of dollars on the line

The Pac-12 is anxiously watching the SEC, Big 12, and ACC.

Jon Wilner of the San Jose Mercury News is regularly breaking important news about Pac-12 athletics and Pac-12 finances. Wilner broke another significant story on Monday when he obtained a term sheet documenting the media rights fees the Pac-12 had hoped to get from ESPN/ABC and Fox Sports for coverage of football and men’s basketball.

Wilner posted the figure: $276.4 million.

The big drama: How much of that money will the Pac-12 get?

It obviously won’t be the full amount, but even half of that would be a significant chunk of change. What will determine how much the Pac-12 is able to recoup?

Wilner talked to experts such as Patrick Crakes, a former senior vice president for programming and content strategy at Fox Sports, who had this to say:

“I think (the networks) will prorate their rights fees to (the Pac-12), but I don’t believe it will be 100 percent of what they’re supposed to pay.”

Could the Pac-12 be left with nothing?

Crakes said this:

“If they don’t play in the spring, yes, the networks have contractual language that impacts what they pay in the event of lost game inventory. The language says they technically don’t have to pay.”

However, Crakes added that the networks are not likely to play hardball to the extent that they will leave the Pac-12 (and Big Ten) with nothing:

“The reality is, they’re married to the conference. What problems do (the networks) want to cause with the Pac-12 if they want to renew in 2024?”

Wilner also talked to Karen Weaver, a Drexel University professor who specializes in sports media rights.

Weaver had this to say:

“While we all acknowledge this is a business relationship first, it is also a partnership. How the parties work together to get through this crisis will be telling. I suspect the rights might be a little more valuable to Fox than ESPN, just because they are more oriented to college football’s regular season.”

Wilner noted in his report that Comcast, Cox, and other cable distributors pay ESPN and Fox Sports monthly fees for programming. Those fees, Wilner explained, are passed along by ESPN, Fox Sports, and other outlets to the Pac-12 and other conferences in media rights payments.

Major League Baseball — which went without games through mid-July, obviously did not give its regional sports carriers games to show on television for many months.

Wilner cited a Variety Magazine report that Comcast is going to provide a refund to customers who purchased sports channels which didn’t offer expected MLB game inventory.

You don’t have to think long or hard to realize that if this reality is replicated in college football programming, it would bust up the pipeline connecting distributors to television programmers to the conferences, including the Pac-12.

Crakes pointed out the obvious, looming problem:

“If the channel is negotiating with the distributor, this becomes part of its conversation with the conference.”

Here is the really big concern for the Pac-12 (along with the Big Ten): What if the SEC, ACC and Big 12 play football and manage to complete a season or come close to it?

Crakes weighed in:

“If the ACC, SEC and Big 12 play, the optics are poor because the Big Ten and Pac-12 could end up as the only Tier 1 fall sports that canceled.”

The Pac-12 would not be able to lean on Force Majeure arguments to claim that it should be owed the full (or close to full) amount of media rights fees. If other conferences pulled off football while the Pac-12 did not, how would a Force Majeure claim hold up in litigation?

That’s the $276.4 million question being asked by a nervous Larry Scott right now. It’s a very big deal in the midst of these media rights deals whose statuses are up in the air… and which depend on whether SEC football is ON the air in several weeks.

Mountain West Basketball: Non-Conference Games Affected By Pac-12 Postponement

Mountain West Basketball: Non-Conference Games Affected By PAC-12 Postponement Non-Conference games that won’t happen this year given the PAC-12’s decision. Contact/Follow @HardwoodTalk & @MWCwire A look at the non-conference games around the …

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Mountain West Basketball: Non-Conference Games Affected By PAC-12 Postponement

Non-Conference games that won’t happen this year given the PAC-12’s decision.

Contact/Follow @HardwoodTalk & @MWCwire

A look at the non-conference games around the Mountain West affected by the PAC-12’s decision to cancel all sports for the rest of 2020. 

Well, it’s starting folks, after a month-long waiting game for college basketball fans around the country watching conference after conference make their own call in regards to the upcoming football season, normally set to kick off this month.

We finally have some news regarding games taking place on the hardwood. Though as expected, it follows the trend we are currently seeing around the college football world, no games anytime soon or at least not until the turn of the calendar year.

As of yesterday, the Pac-12 is the first conference to essentially postpone all sports for the remainder of the 2020 calendar year. Although other conferences such as the Ivy League made their own pioneering announcements back in early July, the PAC-12 is the first to include winter sports by not directly mentioning any change or postponement for any sports in particular. But by pushing back any further discussion surrounding the key words “all sports” until at least 2021.

This announcement should be the first of many in the coming days, with basketball beginning to mirror football around the country. With conferences taking the future of their upcoming seasons into their own hands and making difficult decisions across the country to either push back their seasons into the new year or going on as planned as we’ve seen with the ACC, Big 12 and SEC.

We’ve seen the scheduling fallout Group of Five conferences have encountered recently with Power Five conferences opting for conference only seasons along with FCS and FBS independent programs shutting it down completely and now high major conferences pushing all sports back to possibly the turn of the new year.

Conference Commissioners have gone on the record stating that college sports cannot be played in a bubble-like professional sports have demonstrated this summer and it seems that no such attempts will be made come 2021 either. At least, given what we know and are seeing happening around the country at the moment. Where smaller conferences don’t have the resources to begin their seasons at the moment and even some bigger ones don’t see the reward outweighing the risks should they decide to play in the coming months.

It’s still very early and I’m sure the ongoing pandemic halted some further discussion between athletic departments. But there is some previously published non-conference games out there to review (Via the D1 Docket’s Twittter account). But at first glance we only have four officially announced games and three possible ones listed at the moment between the Mountain West and PAC-12 in jeopardy.

That probably isn’t a true representation of how badly schedules were affected around the conference yesterday. Since Mountain West schools took the floor against PAC-12 schools sixteen times last season, with four of those contests coming from San Jose State alone.Though in reality, I’m not entirely confident we would have seen a season that even slightly resembled what we are used to on opening night anyway.

Nonetheless, some highly anticipated matchups will be missed by local fan bases who were probably not going to be allowed inside the proposed venues anyway, or at least not in the volumes or traditional seating arrangements we’ve come to know and love.

Anyway, below are the games we can guess are canceled this winter, while also keeping in mind some games that are expected to happen annually like rivalry matchups between the Buffaloes and Rams not reflected below.

Nevada

A possible matchup against Oregon State in the Cayman Islands Classic, originally scheduled for late November.

San Diego State

At Arizona State on Dec. 10th, 2020

A possible rematch against Arizona State in the Diamond Head Classic, originally scheduled for late December.

San Jose State

At Stanford TBD

UNLV

California on Nov. 14th, 2020

UCLA on Nov. 17th, 2020

A possible matchup against Stanford in the Maui Invitational, originally scheduled for late November. 

Wyoming 

At Arizona on Nov. 20th, 2020

Make sure to check back on updates to the upcoming season (whenever that may be) right here, as we at Mountain West Wire will be keeping track all fall and winter for updates with you.

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Pac-12 won’t play basketball before 2021, giving the sport time

Crucial details emerge for college basketball

The main story to emerge from the Pac-12 on Tuesday was the decision to shut down fall football in 2020, but the other really big part of the Pac-12’s actions was that it shut down all sports for the rest of 2020.

This carries one very obvious and potent piece of news: No Pac-12 college basketball before 2021. Is that upsetting? I completely understand if you are angry at that, because there’s a lot to be angry about.

However: If we stop and think for a moment about how to conduct a college basketball season, this does not reduce the odds of a college basketball season happening.

Other things might reduce those odds, but not this.

First of all, it would make little sense to have athletes on campus between Thanksgiving and Christmas. That time should certainly be spent with family, and we shouldn’t give families the added stress of wondering if their college-age members are safe. Keep them home during the holidays.

Realize this point: Basketball isn’t nearly as punishing on the human body as football is. Basketball can be played in large quantities throughout the calendar year. Football activity generally needs to be limited to one four-month period per year. It is not a year-round sport. So, if college basketball starts practice in early January and starts its regular season in late January, that isn’t any sort of crisis. If the NCAA Tournament and/or Final Four are played a month or even two months later than usual, that’s not a huge problem — an inconvenience, but not a huge problem. An early-May or late-May end to the season would still be in time for the 2021 NBA Draft, and that assumes the 2021 NBA Draft would still be held in late June. It might be pushed back, given that the 2021 NBA season has already been pushed back to some extent and might be pushed back even more in the coming months.

College basketball — due in part to the Pac-12’s decision on Tuesday — has now gained multiple extra months to plan for how to stage a season. The other point worth noting here, especially if college hoops wants to start in late January or early February, is that the possible arrival of a new presidential administration with a very different approach to COVID-19 could create new possibilities that don’t exist under the current president.

College basketball, you now have more time to get this thing right. If the sport doesn’t pull off a season, it will rate as an even bigger failure than the failure to have a fall football season.