Thought dead, Pac-12 rattles tournament via teamwork
The Pac-12 has four men’s basketball teams in the Final 16 of the NCAA Tournament, which is no surprise to those of us who hang on Bill Walton’s every word.
This has triggered a display of self-back-patting that might dislocate the elbows of every Pac-12 coach, and several examples of how winners get to write, or misrepresent, history.
Yes, the four advancing teams were outstanding in the first and second rounds, with only Colorado, the highest Pac-12 seed, failing to get through.
No, the league was not overlooked by lazy media types and sleepy NCAA selection committee
members.
Yes, the caliber of play in the Pac-12 improved over the winter, and the quality of coaching has rarely been better.
No, the Conference Of Champions was nowhere near as good as the Big Ten, even though eight of the nine Big Ten representatives were swept into the sea.
All those things can be true.
The tournament is designed to produce a champion. It is not designed to identify the best team. It is a pageant, a marvelous vehicle for some of the best teams in the obscure conferences to show they would be competitive anywhere.
Matchups are the paramount factor. So is emotion and engagement, particularly hard to judge when all the teams are basically hotel hostages until game time.
The Last Upset was two years ago, when the University of Maryland-Baltimore County thrashed top-seeded Virginia, the first 16-seed win over a One. Nothing else should be a true surprise.
In a one-shot world, possibilities are endless. That’s why Oral Roberts, with two prime-timers in Max Abmas and Kevin Obamor, is so impressive. It gobsmacked the intelligentsia twice, over Ohio State and Florida, two fatted calves. That does not mean the Summit League was the equal of the Big Ten.
The Pac-12 winners used two formidable modern weapons to do this: experience and togetherness.
UCLA is the only young team among the four. USC has three senior transfers, Oregon plays two seniors, a redshirt senior, a junior and a redshirt junior. Oregon State has three seniors and two juniors in rotation. And Colorado, for what it’s worth, played four upperclassmen extensively. A 22-year-old has a lot of memory-bank advantages over a teenager when times get tight.
The Beavers had the same cohesiveness when they won the Pac-12 Tournament. They eliminated Oklahoma State, which basically stood in respectful corners and waited for freshman Cade Cunningham, the assumed first overall pick in the 2021 draft, to storm the fort. Cunningham had his moments, but Oregon State made him go through layers of big defenders, and he missed 14 of 20 shots, most of them needlessly difficult.
Against Iowa, Oregon decided it couldn’t erase National Player of the Year Luka Garza. Instead, the Ducks challenged Iowa’s shooters. Hawkeyes other than Garza went 5-for-21 from long range, and the better-balanced Ducks won by 15.
Conversely, there was no way Colorado could shortcut a poor game by McKinley Wright IV, at least not against Florida State.
The best players in the Pac12, Wright included, play well with others. USC freshman Evan Mobley has a teenager’s spring and a 30-year-old’s comprehension. UCLA’s JThree combination of Johnny Juzang, Jules Bernard and Jaime Jaquez Jr. has become irresistible. Each can find shots on his own, and at least one will be productive in each game, but they all know when to feed the hand that’s hottest. Oregon’s Chris Duarte influences almost every play on both ends.
But in a season when nonconference play was curtailed, there was no forewarning of any of this.
The four Pac-12 teams in the Final 16 played eight nonconference games against
Top 100 teams (in KenPom. com’s current standings) and lost five. The three victims were BYU (20th, losing to USC), Seton Hall (70th, Oregon) and San Francisco (97th, Oregon). The best nonleague win for any Pac-12 team was Stanford’s victory over Alabama (8th) in the season opener, more than four months ago. Oregon State played no Top 100 teams in the nonleague season and lost to Portland, which is ranked 313rd.
They all benefited from the way the dominoes fell, the way Abilene Christian removed Texas from UCLA’s path, plus the VCU COVID19-related forfeit that buzzed Oregon into the second round. Colorado’s first-round victim was Georgetown, the eighth-best team in the Big East regular season.
But the Pac-12ers couldn’t control any of that. They simply took care of business. In lieu of rational explanation, one must listen to the former Bruin great who tells us how plastic decomposes and how to survive volcano life, and who predicted all four teams, plus Colorado, would make the Final Four.
Don’t leave now, Bill. It’s time to take your children home.