By the time the conference call had dialed up University of Washington men’s basketball coach Lorenzo Romar, almost every other coach in the Pac-10 had already put in his two cents about what has gone wrong in the once-mighty basketball conference.
And so the question was posed to Romar in a slightly different way: Other than the glut of players declaring early for the NBA draft in recent years, why are Pac-10 teams struggling right now?
“That’s almost like asking (about) a guy who can really shoot: ‘Aside from his arm being broken, why can’t he shoot anymore?’” the Huskies’ head coach and metaphor master said.
If basketball fans are looking for answers in a conference that has a 50-36 pre-conference record — by comparison, the mighty Big 12 is 93-20 and doesn’t have losses to teams such as Montana, Sacramento State, Cal State Fullerton and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi — they need look no further than NBA rosters.
O.J. Mayo. Kevin Love. Russell Westbrook. Brook Lopez. James Harden. Jordan Hill. DeMar DeRozen. Jerryd Bayless. Spencer Hawes.
All were NBA lottery picks. And all would be playing in the Pac-10 this season had they not decided to leave school early.
“If you look at who has left this league early the last two years, and imagine they’re still here, it would be the best conference in the country,” Arizona State coach Herb Sendek said.
As preseason play winds down, Pac-10 coaches held their first conference call this week and spent most of the two-hour session trying to explain what’s gone wrong.
Only one Pac-10 team — the 24th-ranked Huskies — is currently in the Associated Press Top 25. At one point this season, the West Coast Conference (Gonzaga and Portland) had more ranked teams than the Pac-10. The Mountain West (New Mexico and UNLV) has more this week.
In the RPI ratings, which are a major factor in determining NCAA tournament bids, only UW and Cal rank among the top 77 teams in the country.
The Pac-10 is most certainly down this season.
“This is always going to be a great basketball league,” USC’s Kevin O’Neill said. “Down is not having six teams in the (NCAA) tournament.”
Even the conference’s lone ranked team, 6-2 Washington, has been struggling. UW has piled up wins against mid-majors such Montana, Belmont and Portland State, but is 0-2 against teams from power conferences. Saturday’s loss to 15th-ranked Georgetown saw the Huskies get blown out in the opening minutes of the second half.
This week, Romar said the Huskies lack a third scorer to go with Quincy Pondexter and Isaiah Thomas, they stand around too much on offense, and they lack concentration on the defensive end.
And that’s the Pac-10’s best team.
In a conference that includes historically strong programs such as UCLA and Arizona, no one seems too concerned about the Pac-10’s slow start. Another group of star players could be on the horizon, and future NBA drafts will be ready to pluck them up.
“Were they still playing, this league would be a monster right now,” Cal head coach Mike Montgomery said. “You get another group of first-round picks, and this league will be right back where it’s always been.”
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