After sweeping Stanford and Cal at home last week, Arizona stood atop a rare 5-6-7 Pac-12 trio near the top of the AP Top 25 poll, that was released today, with UCLA ranked No. 6 and Oregon No. 7.
Only one of those teams was no surprise to UA coach Sean Miller, and it wasn't the Wildcats.
"I would have predicted Oregon, they were a 1 seed a year ago," Miller said today, at his weekly news conference. "One of the deceptive qualities of Oregon that not a lot of people talk a lot about, especially by today’s standards in college basketball, is they have incredible experience. (Chris) Boucher and (Dylan) Ennis are in their fifth or sixth years and they have been good players. Ennis was at Rice and Villanova — think about that program — and he was a key cog in their wheel."
"UCLA we knew they had a lot of good experience as well but obviously with their freshmen, T.J. Leaf and Lonzo Ball, those guys are incredible. The third I didn’t know if it would be us. I wouldn’t have predicted a top 10 ranking in mid to late February. I would have certainly signed up for that if somebody presented it to me in August.
Milller then added some expected caution: That No. 5 mark will be on the line at WSU and Washington this week.
"Rankings are great but it’s about performance on the court," he said. "We've got five games left in the Pac-12 and three on road. We have big trip coming up all the way to the Pacific Northwest, and that's not an easy trip for us. We're playing two teams that played us very close here at home; hopefully we can learn from that and be better."
Miller also referenced the big picture:
"I would rather be in the poll than not in it, that’s for sure, especially if you’re in the Top 10," he said. "That's a credit to this year’s team, it really is. The ranking in mid- to late-February, there’s a lot that has been earned and in our case the consistency from the beginning of the year until now, overcoming adversity, playing through injuries and the situation we had with Allonzo, I think we have a resilient group and a great group of guys to coach.
"When you get to mid-February with March being so close, now is when you want to hit on all cylinders and I think you rely a lot on that chemistry and that togetherness to continue to compete and improve not stop and think about where we're at, continue on that quest to be at our best."
FWIW, I had Oregon No. 7, Arizona No. 8 and UCLA No. 10 on my ballot.
