Pac-12 Basketball Notes: All-Conference Team; Who’s in NCAA Tournament?
Get ready for a wild final weekend.
With just three games left in the Pac-12 regular season over the next two days, three teams still have a shot at an outright conference championship.
Because the title will be based on winning percentage and because the three contenders – Oregon, USC and UCLA – will all have played a different number of conference games, there is no chance that two teams could tie for the top spot.
The winner of Saturday’s battle of Los Angeles between USC and UCLA will still be alive for the title, then must wait until Sunday when Oregon can clinch its second straight conference crown with a road win over Oregon State, which beat the Ducks by 11 points in Eugene earlier this season and has won its last three games.
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ALL-PAC-12 TEAM
We expect the Pac-12 to cop out again and name a 10-player all-conference first team as it has the past 12 years. Maybe I’m mistaken, but my understanding is that only five players from a given team are allowed on the court at the same time.
We shall go ahead and name a five-man all-conference team, and the selections were actually rather easy.
Forward Evan Mobley, USC, freshman – 16.2 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.8 blocks
Forward Oscar da Silva, Stanford, senior – 18.8 points, 6.8 rebounds, 58% FG
Guard McKinley Wright IV, Colorado, senior – 15.3 points, 4.3 rebounds, 5.7 assists
Guard Chris Duarte, Oregon, senior – 17.7 points, 4.8 rebounds, 43.8 3-pt%
Guard Remy Martin, Arizona State, senior – 20.5 points, 3.7 assists. (Yes, he had a lousy game against Colorado on Thursday, but he had scored more than 22 points in each of the eight games before that.)
Two cool things about this quintet:
---Four of them are seniors, and you just don’t see all-conference teams composed of seniors anymore. It remains to be seen whether any will be back next year.
---These five could be on the floor together. Just move Martin to an off-guard spot, where he might be more effective anyway, and you have Wright at the point, Duarte and Martin on the wings, da Silva playing a versatile power forward spot and Mobley dominating the paint offensively and defensively.
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PAC-12 COACH OF THE YEAR
You can make a pretty good case for USC’s Andy Enfield, who molded a bunch of newcomers (transfers and freshman Mobley) into a contender, or Oregon's Dana Altman, whose team, as usual, is playing it best basketball late in the season.
However, the pick here is Oregon State’s Wayne Tinkle. Picked to finish last, the Beavers currently have a winning conference record and have a chance to land the No. 5 seed in the Pac-12 tournament.
Granted, being picked to finish last might simply be a case of poor preseason judgment by the voting media members, but it is the baseline with which we work.
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PAC-12 PLAYER OF THE YEAR
We attack this with trepidation because this one is close and the status of the four candidates could change in the next two days.
Wright, da Silva, Mobley and Duarte all have legitimate claims to be named Pac-12 player of the year. And here is how we break them down.
4. Oscar da Silva – Our leader for player of the year most of this season showed his importance to Stanford by his recent absence. The Cardinal lost the last three games with da Silva sidelined, including that 79-42 embarrassment against USC on Wednesday. But with Stanford just 10-10 in conference play, da Silva does not have the monster numbers needed to overcome his team’s record. The last time a Pac-12/Pac-10 conference player of the year did not come from a team that finished among the top three was 2004-05 when Arizona State’s Ike Diogu led the conference in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots.
3. Evan Mobley – A week ago, he was the player-of-the-year frontrunner, and he is certain to be a top-five pick in this year’s NBA draft. But he averaged just 11.3 points, 6.5 rebounds and 1.0 block over the past four games, and the Trojans have struggled in that critical span as a result.
2. McKinley Wright IV – Wright gives you exactly what you need when you need it, and any conversation with Wright reveals why he is such a valuable team leader. But two things hold him back from being the top pick: His 28.9-percent three-point shooting is not worthy of an elite points guard, and I happened to witness his performance in the Feb. 13 loss to Cal, when Wright looked very ordinary while being guarded by a freshman making his second career start.
Our pick for Pac-12 player of the year is:
1. Chris Duarte – His numbers speak loud enough – 17.7 points, 53.8 field-goal percentage (best in the Pac-12 among perimeter players), 43.8 three-point percentage, 4.8 rebounds, 1.9 steals. But there’s more: UCLA coach Mick Cronin called him the best defender in the country (OK, Cronin may have been blowing some smoke since Oregon was the Bruins’ next opponent, but still . . . ). During the Ducks’ current four-game winning streak that has rocketed them into first place, Duarte averaged 21.5 points on 57.1 percent shooting, including 50 percent on three-pointers. The biggest factor is that Duarte just seems to make the big play at crunch time game after game after game. The Ducks occupy first place at the moment, but even if they drop to second, Duarte is our pick for Pac-12 player of the year.
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FRESHMAN OF THE YEAR
Evan Mobley.
No contest, especially with Josh Christopher, Marcus Bagley and Ziaire Williams missing significant portions of the season.
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WHICH PAC-12 TEAMS ARE IN NCAA TOURNAMENT?
Simply put, USC, Colorado, UCLA and Oregon seem to have NCAA tournament berths assured, while Stanford needs to win the Pac-12 tournament to get in, and needs Oscar da Silva to play to have any chance at that.
Only a handful of sites have their projections of the 68-team field updated sufficiently. USA Today is updated through Wednesday games, and ESPN and CBS Sports are updated through Thursday games. Here is how the Pac-12 contenders are seeded by those three:
USC: 9 (ESPN), 7 (CBS), 5 (USA Today) – average 7.0
Colorado: 5 (ESPN), 9 (CBS), 8 (USA Today) – average 7.3
UCLA: 6 (ESPN), 10 (CBS), 9 (USA Today) – average 8.3
Oregon: 8 (ESPN), 9 (CBS), 8 (USA TODAY) – average 8.3
Stanford: None of the three even have the Cardinal among their first four out.
UCLA’s No. 10 seed by Jerry Palm at CBS Sports is concerning because that would put the Bruins on the bubble. If they lose to USC Saturday and in the first round of the Pac-12 tournament, it may get dicey for UCLA if there are a bunch of upsets in other conference tournaments.
Also worrisome is the significant difference in the Pac-12 teams’ seeds on different sites. UCLA, Colorado and USC all have a gap of four places from the highest to the lowest seed assigned to them. That suggests observers don’t know what to make of Pac-12 teams.
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Top Five Teams (But by the time you read this it may be different)
---1. Oregon (18-5, 13-4) – The Ducks have won four in a row and nine for their last 10, to push them into first place in the standings.
---2. Colorado (20-7, 14-6) – Although the Buffaloes are fourth in the standings, they have won four in a row, including convincing wins over USC and UCLA.
---3. UCLA (17-7, 13-5) – Bruins held a nine-point lead with 11 minutes left against Oregon on Wednesday, and they lost by eight.
---4. USC (20-6, 14-5) – The Trojans have lost three of their last five and have lost some luster that smashing a depleted Stanford team could not restore.
---5. Arizona (17-9, 11-9) – The Wildcats edged out Oregon State for this last spot because they beat the Beavers twice.
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Team on the Rise
---Oregon State (14-11, 10-9) – Yes, Oregon has won four in a row, but the Beavers quietly have won three straight, and all three were on the road.
Team on the Skids
---Stanford (14-12, 10-10) – The Cardinal look absolutely lost without Oscar da Silva.
Team on a Mystery Tour
---Arizona State (10-12, 7-9) – Sun Devils had won three in a row before the loss to Colorado on Wednesday. If ASU gets Marcus Bagley (who played Thursday) and Josh Christopher healthy for the Pac-12 tournament, the Sun Devils could pull a few upsets. Or they could fall flat.
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Numbers of Note
83.1 – Colorado’s free-throw percentage through Wednesday, best in the country and on pace to set the Division I single-season record set by Harvard in 1983-84 (82.2)
9 – Number of years since Washington State has finished with a winning record overall. The Cougars are 14-12, so unless they lose in the first round of the conference tournament then get into some postseason tournament and lose the opener, they will end with a winning record. The last time the Cougars finished with a winning overall record was 2011-12.
0 – Number of times in the past four games that USC’s Evan Mobley has reached his scoring average, his rebounding average or his blocked-shots average.
0 – Number of UCLA players ranked among the top 10 scorers in the Pac-12.
0 – Number of UCLA players ranked among the top nine rebounders in the Pac-12
0 – Number of UCLA players ranked among the top eight in blocked shots in the Pac-12.
0 – Number of UCLA players ranked among the top 10 in steals per game in the Pac-12
0 – Number of UCLA players ranked among the top 15 in the Pac-12 in most turnovers per game. Which is one reason UCLA is in second place in the Pac-12 standings heading into the final weekend of the regular season, with a chance to win the Pac-12 regular-season title outright.
55.4 and 85.7 – UCLA’s shooting percentage from the field and from the foul line against Oregon on Wednesday – and the Bruins still lost by eight points.
60.8 – Oregon’s shooting percentage in Wednesday’s win over UCLA
10 – Number of field goals made by Oregon in the Ducks’ final 12 attempts against UCLA.
2 – Number of shots Stanford made in its first 22 field-goal attempts in Wednesday’s loss to USC. (That’s 9.1 percent shooting.)
1 – Number of field goals made by ASU’s Remy Martin in nine attempts against Colorado on Thursday. His six points ended a run of eight straight games in which he scored more than 22 points.
1 – Number of players ranked among the top 30 three-point shooters in the Pac-12 who have enough attempts to qualify for a national ranking in three-point percentage. The one is Chris Duarte, who averages 2.52 made three-pointers per game, just over the 2.5-per-game minimum needed to be ranked nationally.
50.7 – Three-point percentage of Washington’s Jamal Bey, which ranks seventh in the country among players with at least 1.0 made three-pointer per game. Like many long-range specialists, Bey has a higher percentage on three-pointers than on two-point shots.
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Quotes of the Week
---“I don’t like the fact that we have to go to Eugene twice. Hopefully at some point Oregon will play at UCLA in my career at UCLA. It would be nice. As much as I know Oregon’s got a lot of nice pinots up there, I don’t have time to go pick up anything.” – UCLA coach Mick Cronin before having to play Oregon in Eugene on Wednesday. A connoisseur of pinot noir wine, Cronin and his team made an earlier trip to Eugene this season only to find out just before game time that there would not be enough officials available for the game due to a virus-related issue. The Oregon-UCLA game scheduled to be played at UCLA was postponed and never played, and the last time Oregon played UCLA in Los Angeles was 2019, the year before Cronin arrived at UCLA.
---“They just said get guys loose and get ’em out of there. They got to have energy at game time.” – Oregon coach Dana Altman, on the advice NBA coaches gave him about keeping guys fresh. The Ducks played their last four games in a span of seven days, and their last seven in a span of 14 days.
---“Disappointing that Oregon doesn’t have to play UCLA at Pauley like it’s supposed to.” – USC coach Andy Enfield, after the Trojans’ win over Stanford and Oregon’s victory over UCLA in Eugene left USC needing a win over UCLA and a loss by Oregon on Sunday to get a Pac-12 championship.
---“This is a game that was very humbling. We were a shell of ourselves tonight.” Stanford coach Jerod Haase, after the Cardinal, playing without Oscar da Silva, Bryce Wills and Daejon Davis, lost by 37 points to USC on Wednesday, Stanford’s largest margin of defeat in four years.
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Top Games This Weekend
---Saturday, March 6, at Pauley Pavilion in Los Angeles, 1 p.m., CBS – USC (20-6, 14-5) vs. UCLA (17-7, 13-5) – The winner in this regular-season finale has a shot at the conference title. USC won the first meeting between the Los Angeles rivals by 18 points, but UCLA is 11-0 at home.
---Sunday, March 7, at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis, Oregon, 5 p.m., FS1 – Oregon (18-5, 13-4) vs. Oregon State (14-11, 10-9) – Ducks clinch a conference regular-season title with a win. Oregon State has won three in a row and beat Oregon by 11 points in Eugene earlier this season, although neither Chris Duarte nor Will Richardson played in that game.
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Cover photo of Chris Duarte by Soobum Im, USA TODAY Sports
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Follow Jake Curtis of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53
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