(AP Photo/Jason Redmond)
More often than not, parity acts as a breath of fresh air throughout college basketball. The idea that any school, regardless of location, size or budget, can knock off a top competitor is what keeps the soul of college hoops pumping for a 30+ game season.
The overall decrease in David vs. Goliath matchups has also been a welcome sight, replaced instead by a two opponents who have more in common than they would ever like to believe. Goliath may still exist, but it appears that David has doubled in size.
Still, the one thing that has remained constant over the years has been the dominance of the six power conferences (ACC, Big East, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and SEC). Even as hordes of players flock to the NBA and high schoolers are hand-picked as replacements, these six conferences usually have one big thing in common: They almost always have a legit title contender in their ranks.
Of course, that was until last season when the SEC famously stepped up to the plate and struck out looking on three consecutive pitches. Only three teams (LSU, Tennessee, Mississippi State) gained entry into the '09 NCAA Tournament, breaking the SEC's 13 year streak of sending at least five schools to the Big Dance. In a nutshell, this set a new precedent for how underachieving BCS conferences are viewed by the selection committee.
It's through that same precedent that the Pac-10 could be in serious trouble this spring because of their actions so far this season. To put it bluntly, there isn't a single Pac-10 school that has done ANYTHING of substance this year. While that might sound like an overstatement to some, it hardly takes a genius to look at the results and see just how pathetic the Pac-10 has been in the first month and a half. Other than Arizona State's neutral court win over LSU, the conference has zero quality victories. Heck, only two other schools even have wins over competition ranked in the top 100 RPI. These guys might as well be filling out their tournament resumes in crayons at this rate.
The Pac-10's two preseason favorites, Cal and Washington, have floundered. Former powerhouses Arizona and UCLA are currently fighting it out for last place. In-state rivals Oregon and Oregon State look to be nothing more than 15 win squads. Even USC and Stanford have been a joke, dropping games to the likes of Oral Roberts and Loyola-Marymount. The lone success stories, if we're being generous here, are Washington State and Arizona State.
The Cougars were an obvious sleeper team to begin the year with star swingman Klay Thompson, but the Sun Devils, even after losing James Harden and Jeff Pendergraph, have managed to keep themselves relevant with some respectable wins. But honestly, how long can these two teams actually last? I get the feeling that each is playing very close to their max potential, making it hard to ignore the mindset that each one will eventually fall back to earth like the rest of the conference has. If that does indeed happen, then where does that leave the Pac-10?
By all accounts, Washington and Cal are still the two most gifted basketball teams in the conference. But the fact that neither has been able to beat an NCAA Tournament-caliber school stands to adversely affect the rest of the conference's chances. The window to pick up non-conference victories is nearly closed. Basically, that means that all of these middle-of-the-road Pac-10 teams need to pad their tournament resumes by beating the crap out of each other. This is similar to what we saw in the SEC last year, when there were a handful schools that continued to jostle for position, thus benefiting nobody in the process. Sadly, with the way things are currently headed, sending three teams to the Big Dance seems like a best case scenario for the Pac-10.
Comments