The Pac-10

It's a sad state for the Pac-10 these days. As far as the RPI, they are ranked 7th, behind the Big East, Big 10, ACC, Big 12, SEC, and the Missouri Valley (no that's not a typo).

As of right now, UCLA leads the conference, and definitely looks like the strongest, even though they've had lots of injuries to basically every player on the team. Ed Graney writes about that here.

But the real surprise of the conference has been the mediocrity of teams such as Arizona and Washington, who are now fighting just for a bid in the NCAA tourney. Both of these teams lost a lot of talent, but they've both got good coaches, good remaining talent, and both teams started off relatively well, especially Washington. As of this writing, Arizona is 6-5 in the conference, and Washington is 5-5 in the conference.

This leaves, right now, Stanford and Cal as the top two contenders to UCLA. Both teams are 8-3 in the conference, and both teams are playing very well of late. Cal is led by Leon Powe, who has a legitimate case for the Pac-10 Player of the Year, as he is averaging a double-double right now. Stanford has a big game against Adam Morrison and Gonzaga coming up on Saturday, which should give a better indication of how good these guys really are.

But at this point, it looks like 4, maybe 5 bids for the Pac-10.

Other Basketball Thoughts:

- Seth Davis is reporting that he's heard rumors that Tubby Smith might be interested in the NBA this time around.

- Very impressive win by Pittsburgh tonight over West Virginia, 57-53. Their offense really wasn't impressive, but their man-to-man defense was excellent tonight. West Virginia hardly got any decent looks, as they shot 35%, including 6/27 from beyond the arc. Pittsnogle was especially awful, shooting 0/12 with 0 points before fouling out. I still love West Virginia this year and think they got real good chances in the tourney, but Pittsburgh definitely impressed tonight!