It has long been my belief that a college basketball program with Arizona’s brand, home-court advantage and access to elite recruits doesn’t need to do much more than show up to finish .500 in the Pac-12.
You can take that back 40 years, to the time UCLA gradually lost John Wooden’s aura and influence, and bit by bit the conference lost a bunch of its punch and national significance.
The Pac-12 hasn’t had a men’s basketball team finish inside Kenpom.com’s top 10 since 2015. Its highest-ranked team in the Kenpom.com rankings entering the weekend was No. 17 Colorado, which blew a 19-point lead at home Saturday and lost to Utah.
Even though it’s in a period of uncertainty and reconstruction, Arizona was No. 37 in the Kenpom.com ratings before the Cal game. In a normal year at McKale Center, that would generally be viewed as unacceptable.
Now? My guess is most fans view the UA season as encouraging. That’s what happens when you jump to a 7-4 conference record.
On Saturday, the Wildcats beat Cal 71-50 for their seventh conference victory. The Pac-12 is so bad at the bottom that Cal, Washington State, Oregon State and Washington are all jammed between No. 127 and 138 in the Kenpom.com metrics.
The Beavers, Cougars and Huskies remain on the McKale schedule in the next few weeks. Add it up. That’s 10-10, minimum.
Show up, finish .500.
Here are five observations about UA and Pac-12 basketball, one for each of Arizona’s home conference victories:
1. Sean Miller, a perfectionist, will not just “show up.” He framed Saturday’s game as if Duke or Kansas would be on the other end of the court. During a timeout with 1:16 remaining in the first half, Miller did a good impersonation of Newman from “Seinfeld” going on a rant. Miller’s cheeks bloated. His face turned a purplish-pinkish hue. With arms waving and eyes bulging, he read his team a basketball riot act.
Yet the Wildcats safely led 32-18. Don’t expect Arizona to be a no-show, even though there’s no tangible reward at the end of the regular season.
2. Cal guard Matt Bradley is the best player on a bad Pac-12 team I’ve seen since Ike Diogu on ASU’s last-place, 4-14 team of 2003-04. Diogu led the league in scoring that season, 22.8 per game, but it didn’t get the Sun Devils far. They lost at McKale 106-81 that year.
Bradley scored 21 points in just 25 minutes Saturday, but it didn’t make much of a difference. On his radio show, Miller didn’t discuss Bradley’s 21 points, but rather the six turnovers he committed.
“It was the product of the defense we put on him,” said Miller.
How did a player of Bradley’s skill wind up at a struggling program like Cal? He wasn’t evaluated accurately. He was offered scholarships by UC Santa Barbara, Nevada, UTEP, UC Irvine and Utah State three years ago. Cal was his only offer from a Power Five school.
Arizona Wildcats forward Azuolas Tubelis (10) takes a shot at the basket during a game against the California Golden Bears at the McKale Center, on Jan. 30, 2021.
3. Miller several times spoke about the grind of playing four games the last nine days. After losing to Stanford on Thursday, Miller said the Wildcats “wore down” in the last five minutes, citing the COVID-19-rearranged schedule.
But four games in nine or 10 days isn’t unusual. Arizona played four games in 10 days last season and swept Illinois, San Jose State, New Mexico State and South Dakota State. It also played four games in eight days in 2018-19, which might’ve been more difficult since it required travel to and from Hawaii for a November tournament.
Miller’s 2015-16 team played five games in 11 days, including the Wooden Legacy tournament in California. It didn’t seem to hurt much. Arizona went 4-1, losing to Providence.
I don’t think there’s an NBA-inspired “load management” issue in college basketball. The college kids want to play. They’d probably play four or five games a week if it were up to them. The load is on the coaches and their preparation.
4. The pandemic has not helped to create surprise Top 25 teams like the Coastal Carolinas and Libertys of the football season.
But it doesn’t take much to realize this isn’t anything close to a normal basketball season. Duke, Kentucky, North Carolina and Michigan State are not ranked. When did that last happen, 1950? That helps to shield an unranked Arizona program from a lot of unfavorable publicity.
It could be worse.
Through Friday, Duke had not played for 20 days and was 6-5 — though they won Saturday. Kentucky is 5-10 and lost six games in succession.
Michigan State is 2-5 in the Big Ten and lost 67-37 to Rutgers last week.
A year from now, it’s likely we won’t remember much of the 2020-21 college basketball season at all — unless you follow Gonzaga or Baylor.
5. For about 25 years, from 1990-2015, Cal was mostly a tough out in Pac-12 basketball with a strong home court advantage. Now the Golden Bears have gone 14-52 in the last 3ƒ conference seasons. How does something like that happen?
When Mike Montgomery retired in 2014, the Bears hired the wrong guy. Cuonzo Martin never bought into the Berkeley scene. He jumped ship after three seasons, timing it with the departure of his two big-name recruits, Jaylen Brown and Ivan Rabb, bolting to the NBA. Then Cal compounded the mistake by hiring untested Wyking Jones to be the head coach.
That was when Cal’s top recruit, Jemarl Baker, withdrew from his commitment to play for the Bears and enrolled at Kentucky. Yes, the same Jemarl Baker who’s now at Arizona.
Jones recruited poorly and was fired after two seasons. Playing at Haas Pavilion is no longer a dreaded engagement.
Cal gambled on hiring Mark Fox, who had been fired for going 77-79 in nine SEC seasons at Georgia, with no NCAA Tournament wins. Sometimes, athletic directors simply don’t have the best instincts. If you can’t win at Georgia, how can you be expected to win at Cal, which has more difficult entrance requirements and far less financial resources?
Yet Cal paid Fox a $100,000 signing bonus and guaranteed him $8.25 million through the 2023-24 season. Once Bradley, a junior, leaves Cal, it’s difficult to see the Bears returning to their former role as a tough out.
