Two games into the Pac-10 schedule and one thing has become perfectly clear ““ this conference season is going to get messy.
Excluding the Bruins, who are not surprising anyone by their early wins and top 10 ranking, it’s the rest of the conference that nobody can get a handle on.
Unlike the Atlantic Coast Conference, which has been the Duke-North Carolina showdown for decades, and the Big 12, which will be a Texas-Oklahoma shootout, the parity in the Pac-10 is just befuddling.
Last season there were four teams ““ UCLA, Stanford, Washington State and USC ““ who were pretty much expected to round out the top of the conference. Which they did. This season it’s only the Bruins who have established themselves worthy of any hype.
USC was supposed to be the tin foil in UCLA’s microwave this year but their stock has dropped faster than Morgan Stanley’s after suffering losses to Seton Hall, Missouri and perennial Pac-10 doormat Oregon State.
(On a side note, Oregon State’s win over USC was their first conference win since Feb. 22, 2007. You could almost hear the shouts from Corvallis, Ore. after the upset on Sunday: “Beavers win! We’re going cow tipping!!”)
The Trojans, with frosh star DeMar DeRozan, have a talented squad but their resume so far is not impressive. They were the trendy preseason pick to knock off UCLA for the Pac-10 title but haven’t been in the top 25 since week one.
Despite the bad losses, USC has more talent than a three-ring circus ““ they just need to stop playing like one.
The revitalized Arizona State program was also supposed to be a contender at the top of the Pac-10, but skeptics are weary of the Sun Devils, who have not been better than .500 in conference play since 2003. Having experience winning ball games, surprisingly, is a big part of knowing how to win. ASU has little to none. On Sunday, they got torpedoed in Berkeley by 10 points but also demolished Stanford by 30 the same weekend.
With a style of offense that calls for giving the ball to James Harden (23.4 points per game) and getting out of his way, the Sun Devils will go as far as he takes them.
Their loss to the Bears on Sunday brings up another question: Is this the year Cal begins a stay in the top half of the conference? Only twice since 2003 have the Bears finished over .500 in conference play, but their unbelievable ability to shoot the trey may put them over the hump this season.
Cal leads the nation by shooting 50.5 percent from beyond the arc and they shoot better from downtown than they do overall. (Advice: keep your shoes behind the line, Bears.) It’s more backwards than selling ice picks at the equator but it’s been working. They’re off to a 14-2 start.
Then there’s Washington, which has grown strong after a surprising season opening loss at Portland. They’ve ripped off nine wins in a row and will look to their big man, Jon Brockman, to take them back to the NCAA Tourney. The Huskies will need to find a suitable big-shot replacement for Ryan Appleby, whose four-year reign as the Most Annoying Player in the Pac-10 is finally over.
If Washington can find someone who can hit late-game shots as irritatingly well as Appleby could, they might be able to sneak into the top of the conference.
That leaves a handful of mediocre conference teams who aren’t bad enough for anyone to blindly roll over them but just good enough to pull off some season-changing upsets. It’s all going to make for some serious drama on the hardwood.
So get your waders on because it’s going to get real sloppy.
E-mail Feder at jfeder@media.ucla.edu if you’ve ever pushed over farm animals in celebration.