Too many disappointing losses

  • By Mike Allende / Herald Writer
  • Tuesday, January 24, 2006 9:00pm
  • Sports

With the release of the official RPI rankings next week, it’s expected that the Pacific-10 Conference will know what has been believed for some time: That the conference could be in trouble in terms of getting teams into the NCAA Tournament.

The Pac-10 ranks seventh currently in the official Sagarin rankings and an unofficial RPI report, behind most of the major conferences as well as the Missouri Valley Conference. As it stands, only three teams rank in the top 64 of the RPI: Arizona (16), UCLA (18) and Washington (35).

The conference had a chance to help itself on Saturday, but UCLA lost a home game to No. 12 West Virginia. It was just another disappointing loss for a conference that has had a number of surprising losses, particularly in home games.

Chief among those defeats have been Arizona State’s loss to Utah Valley State, Oregon’s loss to Portland, Stanford’s loss to UC Irvine and USC’s loss to Cal State Northridge. The only real impressive road wins have been Arizona’s win at Utah and UCLA’s win at Michigan.

The conference does have wins against Gonzaga (Washington), North Carolina (USC), Nevada (UCLA), Georgia (Oregon State) and Kansas (Arizona) but also have losses to Memphis (UCLA), Georgetown (Oregon), Illinois (Oregon), Kansas (Cal), Iowa (Arizona State), Connecticut (Arizona) and Michigan State (Arizona).

That’s in addition to several other surprising losses such as USC’s loss to Oral Roberts, Stanford’s loss to UC Davis, Oregon State’s losses to Tennessee Tech, Portland and Northwestern State and Oregon’s loss to Portland State.

The Pac-10 has two more chances to help itself in the RPI ratings: Arizona plays at North Carolina on Saturday and Stanford plays at Gonzaga on Feb. 11.

“Both of them are critical,” Arizona coach Lute Olson said. “There were some early-season losses by teams in the conference that really hurt our conference on a national basis. Those kinds of things are not forgotten very quickly by the NCAA basketball committee. It’s important that we play really well. It’s important that Stanford plays very well.”

Fan factor: Olson said moving the student section to the center of the court rather than at the baselines has been very helpful in creating a difficult environment to play in.

“They line up early, first come first served,” Olson said. “It’s had a huge affect and has been handled quite well.”

Olson said students are not allowed to line up more than four hours before a game for fear that they would miss classes. He said there were about “50 or 60” people who did not get similar seats to their old season-ticket seats when the student section was moved.

Rodgers’ situation in the air: Olson said there is still a chance that guard Chris Rodgers could rejoin the team, though he didn’t say what the player would have to do to satisfy requirements to play again.

Rodgers, Arizona’s best defensive perimeter player, was kicked off the team last week, about the same time the Wildcats lost guard Jawaan McClellan with a wrist injury. But Olson later indicated there was a possibility that Rodgers could be allowed back.

“The ball’s in his court now,” Olson said.

What happened Cougs? Washington State seemed to be flying high after its victory over Washington. There was even talk of the Cougars making the NCAA tourney. Since then, WSU has lost four in a row to fall to ninth in the Pac-10 at 2-5. It lost home games last week to Oregon and Oregon State and now heads to Cal and Stanford.

Coach Dick Bennett pointed to a number of things that have gone wrong.

“Poor rebounding, soft defense,” Bennett said. “We have not contained the point guards at all. We’ve dropped our level of play. We were playing better in the first half of the season. We seem to have hit a wall.”

Bennett said the loss of point guard Derrick Low clearly has had an effect, and says opponents also have played well against his team.

“They might have had a tough game against Washington and faced us with more resolve some times,” Bennett said.

Bennett said his team may have bought into some of the hype after the Husky game.

“We were pretty happy with ourselves, I’m sure, after that game,” Bennett said. “Perhaps we overrated ourselves. That could have been a factor. You have to consider that Washington didn’t take us as seriously, didn’t play us as well, their best player was in foul trouble and Josh (Akognon) was on a roll. I might have made a good decision once in awhile, which I haven’t done lately. There’s a lot of factors.”

Holding a tryout: Oregon State coach Jay John reached deep down his bench to try to find a replacement for senior point guard Lamar Hurd. Against Washington, he put in freshman Brett Casey early in the first half. Casey had played just 15 minutes all season.

“We had to audition a point guard that was comfortable giving confidence to our team,” John said. “Brett does a really good job in practice. Against Washington State, Brett got a basket for us off a steal in the first half. There’s 40 minutes at that position. We need to at least defend at that position and not turn the ball over.”

Casey struggled against Washington’s pressure, turning the ball over once and got yanked after two minutes.

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