Last season’s Pac-10 basketball player of the year was Arizona’s Derrick Williams, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2011 NBA draft.
The leading scorer in the Pac-12 conference to date is Oregon State’s Jared Cunningham, who isn’t getting so much as a sniff at the NBA’s first round by draft experts and is relatively unknown to those outside of the conference’s scope.
That is just one difference that separates this season’s Pac-12 basketball conference from those in years past. This conference season isn’t likely to produce a top-tier NBA draft pick or a Final Four team, and the old adage that “anyone can beat anyone on a given night” is especially true this season.
“It’s a little surprising how our conference stacks up against other conferences,” redshirt sophomore forward Travis Wear said. “But I feel that we have a lot of good teams in this conference and we could beat the elite schools in other conferences on any given night.”
Five Pac-12 teams have losing records and ESPN’s latest edition of Bracketology projects that only two conference teams (Stanford and California) will make the NCAA tournament, neither of them above a No. 9 seed.
UCLA coach Ben Howland feels that the only way his team will get into the NCAA tournament is to win the conference tournament; his players agree.
“I think everyone on the team is pretty much aware that we have to win the Pac-12 tournament to go to March Madness and that’s what we’re fighting for,” sophomore guard Tyler Lamb said.
It would stand to reason, then, that the Pac-12 regular season is next to meaningless.
Not so fast, says Wear.
“We want to win the regular season and be the No. 1 seed,” Wear said in anticipation of the Bruins’ trip to Oregon this weekend, where they will face Cunningham and Oregon State on Thursday, followed by Oregon on Saturday. “That would alleviate a little bit of stress but we know that every game from here on out is a must-win.”
Wears catching on
Redshirt sophomore twins David and Travis Wear took a lot of criticism early in the season for not living up to expectations, but after their last two weeks of play, their dissenters seem to be singing a different tune. The pair are in the team’s top four in both scoring and rebounding and claim to finally be settling in after transferring from North Carolina almost two years ago.
“After missing a year and a half, you can work out as much as you want but nothing can simulate or prepare you for games,” Travis Wear said. “I think we were pressing in the beginning because we wanted to get to the point where we are now so quickly that it was hurting us a little bit. Now that we’re more comfortable and we’re taking our time, it’s a lot easier and it feels good.”
“It was just the layoff,” David Wear said. “It had been a long time since I had played college basketball at that level and just being more comfortable, I know what to expect when I’m out there. It just took getting some games under my belt and getting adjusted.”
Parker likely to transfer
Howland said Tuesday that junior guard De’End Parker is likely to transfer to be closer to his ailing mother in San Francisco. Parker has only played in two games this season and has been bothered by a knee injury.
Anderson banged up
Senior guard Jerime Anderson bruised his tailbone in the first half on Sunday’s win over USC. He said he planned on practicing Tuesday.