Pac-10 Teams Jockey For Position

California 57, Washington State 50
I keep waiting for Washington State to show some signs of life, but they just completely lack any offense whatsoever. Once they fall six or eight points behind, the game really is over. In this one, a long drought (only 2 points scored in nearly 5 minutes of basketball) led to a 44-35 deficit midway through the second half, and you could have just turned the game off right there. On the back of another efficient performance out of Patrick Christopher (22 points on 9-14 shooting, with zero turnovers), Cal becomes the first Pac-10 team to collect its third conference victory. Their record is an extremely gaudy 14-2, but it's really not that deceptive. They are 4-2 against the RPI Top 100, including 2-0 against the RPI Top 50. And they are 6-0 against the RPI 101-200, which is a very underrated stat. The good teams play a lot of teams in the 101-200 RPI range, and win them all. The mediocre teams are the ones that slip up from time to time against that group of teams. That said, Cal's out-of-conference resume isn't that sexy, with their two best wins coming over UNLV and Utah. While those are two likely Tournament teams, it still doesn't look that good when you have no nice wins over BCS conference teams before Pac-10 play starts. And with the Pac-10 fairly weak this season, I think Cal needs at least a 10-8 record to just earn a Tournament bid. Of course, 3-0 is a great start, and the Bears have to be considered a likely Tournament team. For Washington State, they continue to fail to collect the big win. They are 0-6 against the RPI Top 125, and 8-0 against the RPI 126+. Considering the fact that they only have two games remaining against a team outside the RPI top 125 (Oregon State), that's a bad omen for Wazzu. If they're going to get back on track it has to start now, as their upcoming three-game stretch is a home game against Stanford, followed by road games against the two Oregon teams. If Washington State can't collect at least two wins in those three games then I think we can consider their Tournament chances pretty much dead.

Washington 84, Stanford 83
Speaking of Stanford, this was a really tough loss. They took Washington's best shot, and still had an excellent shot for the win, getting the ball with 3 seconds to go to the guy you want with the ball (Landry Fields). But the best laid plans oft go awry, and Fields lost the ball out of bounds, effectively ending the game. For Washington this was a real essential victory, as it's only their third victory over the RPI Top 100 (with one of those victories being over Cleveland State). Up to this point they had really just been running up the score on bad teams, while struggling against the good teams. They are now 2-0 in the Pac-10, but have to keep collecting those wins as they head into a pretty easy stretch (Cal, at Oregon, at Oregon St, USC). They're going to need at least three wins there, because they follow it up with a brutal stretch (UCLA, at Arizona, at Arizona State, at Cal, at Stanford). They could easily lose all of those games. For Stanford, I know that it took a bit of a fluke play to cost them the victory, but they were exposed as a team that struggles with tall opponents. Lorenzo Romar coached that well, giving extended time to 6'9" Matthew Bryan-Amaning. With him and Jon Brockman in there at the same time, Stanford just couldn't collect a board. For the game, Washington had 20 offensive rebounds while Stanford had 18 defensive rebounds. When you look at that stat, it seems as if the only thing that kept Stanford in the game was some timely three-point shooting, as well as some poor free throw shooting by the Huskies. The Cardinal, despite the great start, are only 3-2 against the RPI Top 100, and 1-2 in the Pac-10. They're heading to a desperate Washington State team next, which is never a good place to be. Despite the good start, Stanford could potentially go 10-8 in the Pac-10 and still miss the Tournament due to the lack of a signature win. So they really need to head into Pullman ready to battle.

#19 Minnesota 52, Iowa 49
This was a pretty ugly game in all aspects, with poor shooting, poor ball control, and all sorts of other problems. The fact that this game was on national tv is one of the reasons that everybody is debating whether the ACC or Big East is the best conference in the nation, despite the fact that the Big Ten has the highest RPI. Still, it was a very solid win for Minnesota, and the key for them was the coaching advantage with Tubby Smith. He mixed and matched his players, giving double-digit minutes to nine players, and six or more minutes to two others. No Gophers player had more than 10 points or played more than 29 minutes. Iowa meanwhile really missed Cyrus Tate, who left the game early after a nasty twisted ankle during a rebound. You sort of get the feeling that Iowa is cursed, as they finally have a pretty good team and had a chance for a huge home win, but lose their star in the first half and despite a fierce effort late in the game could not come all the way back. It's unclear how long Tate will be out, but Iowa is not going to make the Tournament unless he gets back very soon. They're heading into a very tough stretch (at Michigan, at Purdue, Wisconsin, at Penn State, Michigan State), and without Tate will end up falling so far behind the pace that it will be very tough for them to get back into an at-large position. For Minnesota, they followed up a good win over Ohio State with this solid victory here. They're a scrappy team that doesn't have the firepower to compete for a Big Ten title, but they're going to be hanging around all season. If the season ended now, Minnesota would be in the Tournament, and how many years has it been since somebody could say something like that?