CGB's Pac-12 Men's Basketball Power Rankings: Week 5

Another week of Pac-12 play down, so we're here with another set of Pac-12 Power Rankings.

Tied teams are listed in alphabetical order (because our MBB ranks love being tied) and the number of first-place votes is listed in parenthesis

The rankings

1. Arizona (3) 

Last week: 1

Nick Kranz: As this team improves, weaknesses are harder and harder to find.

Reef: If you have NBA players lying around, anyone can coach them, and in this case, anyone is.

Ruey Yen: Almost considered knocking them down one notch for allowing the Cal Bears to hang around for almost a half.

2. Utah 

Last week: 2

Nick Kranz: Their margins of victory speak both to Utah's talent and to the state of the rest of the conference

Reef: May be tougher to get a win in Utah than the desert.

Ruey Yen: Took care of business at home against the Washington schools, but next 3 games are on the road.

3. Stanfurd 

Last week: 3

Nick Kranz: No shame in losing to Arizona. Hard to see the top 3 changing the rest of the year.

Reef: Putting up a 1.12 versus Arizona is impressive, but contrary to popular belief, the Cats do have an offense.

Ruey Yen: Single-digit loss to Arizona is understandable.

4. Oregon State 

Last week: 4

Nick Kranz: I wonder if we'll soon start talking about Reser in the same way that we talk about the other tough home venues in the conference.

Reef: They can't shoot, they turn the ball over, and they win anyway. Are you paying attention, Bears?

Ruey Yen: Swept the LA schools at home.

5. Oregon 

Last week: 8T

Nick Kranz: Altmann would be such a solid coach if he could recruit a stable team.

Reef: There's a really putrid middle of the pack in this conference, starting with Oregon. It's all the more discouraging because Cal can't find its way into this mess.

Ruey Yen: Also took care of the LA schools at home.

6. Washington 

Last week: 6

Nick Kranz: Romar's teams do typically improve as the season goes along and they learn how to play unstructured basketball together.

Reef: A road split in the mountains qualifies as a successful week.

Ruey Yen: Ahead of Colorado thanks to their win over them this week.

7T. Colorado 

Last week: 8T

Nick Kranz: Losing at home to UW should send alarm bells off. Josh Scott's nagging injuries have killed this team.

Reef: Stopped the bleeding against WSU, but this has been a disappointing season.

Ruey Yen: On the outside looking in right now for the NCAA, but may make things interesting down the line.

7T. UCLA 

Last week: 5

Nick Kranz: I really hate that gimmick where power rankers leave a space blank, but ranking UCLA as high as I did (6) makes me want to use that stupid gimmick.

Reef: So much for the idea that they've turned the season around.

Ruey Yen: The only road game won by the Bruins this year so far is at USC. They are poised to make a big jump if they can beat Utah in Westwood this week.

9. Arizona State 

Last week: 10

Nick Kranz: I can't believe this team blew us out at Haas. That couldn't have actually happened, right?

Reef: They're 2-5 in conference and I thought about moving them up. That's how bad the middle is.

Ruey Yen: Looked very good against the Bears

10. Washington State 

Last week: 7

Nick Kranz: 0-for the Mountain roadie, but that's no surprise. Will be interesting to see how they respond at home vs. the Bay Area schools.

Reef: Didn't show up at all in the mountains. It's a tough trip, but you gotta compete.

Ruey Yen: A couple of bad losses at the mountain schools

11. USC 

Last week: 11

Nick Kranz: Were competitive on the road, which is more than I expected

Reef: Virtual tie at the bottom, but they get the edge over Cal because their losses were on the road.

Ruey Yen: Swept by the Oregon schools on the road

12. California 

Last week: 12

Nick Kranz: A morbid part of me wants to see how Cal's offense compares to some of the worst in conference history.

Reef: Still trying to decide if they want to show up every night.

Ruey Yen: Offensive futility does not appear to have a solution.

The data

Up first, let's check out how our (reduced) list of voters ranked the teams:

Rk	Nick	Reef	Ruey
1	Arizona	Arizona	Arizona
2	Utah	Utah	Utah
3	Stanfurd	Stanfurd	OSU
4	OSU	OSU	Stanfurd
5	Oregon	Oregon	Oregon
6	UCLA	Washington	Washington
7	Washington	Colorado	Colorado
8	Colorado	UCLA	UCLA
9	WSU	ASU	ASU
10	ASU	WSU	WSU
11	USC	USC	USC
12	Cal	Cal	Cal

Table 1. This week's votes!

These ballots are crunched to come up with our precise rankings. The variety between how we all voted is quantified as the standard deviation and shown with the error bars (Fig. 1).

Figure 1. This week's precise rankings; the error bars denote the standard deviation.

Do you like graphs and data as much as I do? Well, who doesn't?! As such, these precise rankings have been graphed over time.

Figure 2. The precise rankings graphed over time.

First of all, look at that! Cal as far down in the basement as possible. Hurray! All the way at the top of the conference, we see this is the closest that someone has challenged Stanfurd for #3 since Week 1. As you may have noted up above, Colorado is tied with Oregon; this is the third-straight week that Colorado is in a tie. At this point, I'm definitely certain this is more than coincidence. Is this a sign that Buffaloes need to up their neck-garment game or something?

But what if you aren't interested in such a detailed degree of information? What if you want the nice and traditional rankings that are rounded to numbers that are whole as your foods? Then treat yo' self to Figure 3!

Figure 3. It's like Figure 2, but all rounded and whole!

All of the sudden, the lines are far more stable! A whopping seven teams maintained their status quo. In fact, this is one of the most stable (and least Mad) weeks in my short short history of Power Ranking. A full measurement of the Madness for this Men's Basketball season is provided below.

	Change on week
	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Team's Madness
Arizona	0	-1	1	0										2
ASU	-1	-2	1	1										5
Cal	0	-4	-2	0										6
Colorado	4	-1	-2	1										8
Oregon	1	0	-4	3										8
OSU	1	6	0	0										7
Stanfurd	0	0	0	0										0
UCLA	-4	5	1	-2										12
USC	-2	3	-2	0										7
Utah	0	1	-1	0										2
Washington	-3	-5	6	0										14
WSU	4	0	1	-3										8
Total Madness	20	28	21	10

Table 2. Measuring the rises and falls of each team this week and every week.

Pretty quiet week, with the biggest moves being Oregon (for upsetting UC Los Angeles) and Washington State (after being swept by the Mountain schools).