Turns out, Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle was more than able to deliver when he promised his Beavers wouldn't finish last this season.
While Arizona (fifth) and Utah (eighth) finished exactly where they were expected to in the Pac-12's preseason media poll, the Beavers' sixth-place finish and ASU's dive to ninth were the conference's biggest surprises.
For the purposes of keeping us media voters accountable, here's how it all played out (with predicted finish in parentheses). While Stanford and OSU tied for sixth, we're gonna call OSU the sixth place finisher and Stanford in seventh because of Pac-12 tiebreaker rules (OSU beat the first-place Ducks and Stanford did not).
1. Oregon (picked 3rd)
2. USC (4th)
3. Colorado (7th)
4. UCLA (1st)
5. Arizona (5th)
6. Oregon State (12th)
7. Stanford (4th)
8. Utah (8th)
9. ASU (2nd)
10. WSU (11th)
11. Washington (9th)
12. California (10th)
That's a cumulative difference of 34 "spots" between predicted an actual finishes among the 12 teams (i.e. Oregon finished two spots ahead of its predicted finish).
My individual ballot was slightly worse at 38 even though I picked Oregon to finish second; seems both Sean Miller and I were wrong in saying Arizona's fifth place prediction was too high...
Oregon's Chris Duarte (remember him?) was named the Pac-12 Player of the Week on Monday and could now be the frontrunner for the Pac-12 Player of the Year award that will be announced Tuesday.
Meanwhile, USC's Evan Mobley won Pac-12 Freshman of the Week and he's a lock to win Pac-12 Freshman of the Year on Tuesday.
Arizona had nominated James Akinjo for Player of the Week and Azuolas Tubelis for Freshman of the Week. Both are strong candidates for postseason honors; Akinjo for the first or second all-league team and Tubelis for all-freshman.
French speakers may want to check out this interview Bennedict Mathurin did with RDS in his hometown of Montreal, talking about his year at UA, playing in the NBA Academy and his goals ahead (he did not suggest he is leaving the Wildcats).
Curiously, Oregon did not get into the Associated Press Top 25 poll Monday, even though the Ducks won 10 of their final 11 games and won the Pac-12 regular-season title outright.
Colorado was ranked 23rd and USC 24th.
On my ballot, I had Oregon 18 and USC at 24.
