Pac-12 Men's Basketball Power Rankings: After the Pac-12 Tournament

The Pac-12 Tournament ended with the least-surprising result—victory for Arizona. But how did that affect the rest of our Pac-12 Rankings? Probably in some means, but I'm not here to tell you.

The number of first-place votes earned by each team is listed parenthetically b the team's name; in the event of a tie, those teams are listed alphabetically.

The rankings

1. Arizona Wildcats (3) 

Last week: 1

Nick Kranz: Final Four talent. We'll see if they also have Final Four luck, because most teams need both.

boomtho: Destroyed the field en route to a Pac-12 tourney title. Hoping for a Wisconsin-Arizona game. That will be a fun one as the Wildcats have length, athleticism, and defense to throw at Kaminsky and Dekker.

Ruey Yen: I would not be completely shocked if these Wildcats win the NCAA this year rather than those blue ones from Kentucky.

2. Oregon Ducks

Last week: 3

Nick Kranz: The only change from my rankings last week is to flip Oregon over Utah. Maybe that's silly since the teams were only separated by a Joe Young buzzer beater—but Oregon has a 2–0 edge, and Oregon's win really cemented that the Ducks are playing better basketball right now. That might not mean anything in a week, but it matters at the moment.

boomtho: Like Nick, edging them over Utah by a relatively narrow margin.

Ruey Yen: I concede and give them the edge over the Utes based on that h2h result in the Pac-12 semi.

3. Utah Utes

Last week: 2

Nick Kranz: Really don't know what to expect from this team next week. They have the talent and cohesiveness to make a run, but there are clearly some big question marks.

boomtho: Time to prove they can win big games away from home.

Ruey Yen: Utah will go further in the tourney than Oregon.

4. UC L.A. Bruins

Last week: 4

Nick Kranz: Ended the season on a solid 9–4 run, and are widely considered to be right on the edge of the bubble. If they don't make it, it's because some random dude from Cornell decided he wanted to go to grad school at Berkeley and also play basketball.

boomtho: Here kind of by default as I think there's a big gap between #3 and #4. Still, have to give Alford some credit in stabilizing the team.

Ruey Yen: Not sure who they bribed to make the Madness.

5. Stanfurd Cardinal

Last week: 6

Nick Kranz: Johnny Dawkins has one 10-seed tournament team on his 7-year Stanford resume. He also brought in three 4-star recruits last year and will have three more 4-stars next year. Go figure.

boomtho: 2-point win over UW is as 'meh' as it gets in the Pac-12 tourney. Let's keep Dawkins forever please.

Ruey Yen: More of the same mediocrity from Furd this year. Please never change.

6. Arizona State Sun Devils

Last week: 5

Nick Kranz: Blowing a big lead to USC is an odd end for a team that had seemingly figured a few things out over the last few weeks of the regular season.

boomtho: Befuddling loss to USC in the tourney. Though taking a step back, they were picked 9th in the preseason media poll and finished tied for 5th. Nice season for Sendek.

Ruey Yen: I know, ASU is in the NIT but Cal is not. Still, losing to USC is bad.

7. California Golden Bears

Last week: 8

Nick Kranz: The Bears looked great against Wazzu, then gave Arizona as tough a game as anybody else has given them of late. I would have liked to see what Cal could have done on the other side of the bracket.

boomtho: Looked GREAT against the Cougars, and briefly traded blows with Zona before their length, athleticism, and transition game overwhelmed us.

Ruey Yen: I am overvaluing how close and for how long the Bears stayed with Arizona in the final game of the season.

8. Oregon State Beavers

Last week: 7

Nick Kranz: Dropped 7 of their last 8 when the schedule started to get tougher. If they can put some talent around GP2, they could go places. Two 4-star recruits next year just might do it.

boomtho: Jumped them below Cal for losing in the first round of the tourney. Still, nice freshman season from coach Wayne Tinkle.

Ruey Yen: Good season overall for them, even with the weak finish.

9. Colorado Buffaloes

Last week: 10

Nick Kranz: As much as we like to make fun of Askia Booker's hero ball, Colorado is going to have big time guard trouble next year.

boomtho: Decent win over OSU, but a CBI is a rough, rough consolation prize for Tad Boyle.

Ruey Yen: Not too proud for the CBI.

10. Washington State Cougars

Last week: 9

Nick Kranz: Kent made lots of progress, but I'd be concerned that the departure of Lacy will set them right back to square one.

boomtho: Meh.

Ruey Yen: Thanks for the memory of a career night for David Kravish.

11. Washington Huskies

Last week: 11

Nick Kranz: This team will be completely and totally turned over this year. Of the current contributors, Nigel Williams-Goss & Andrew Andrews might be the only guys holding onto meaningful roles.

boomtho: Double meh.

Ruey Yen: Almost embarrassed Furd.

12. USC Trojans

Last week: 12

Nick Kranz: Pac-12 tournament a reminder that USC does have a bit of talent, and also a reminder that there is still a long, long way to go.

boomtho: Triple meh.

Ruey Yen: They did beat ASU

The data

These rankings are derived by taking the average of the votes from our panel. And theose votes are:

Rk	boomtho	Nick	Ruey
1	Arizona	Arizona	Arizona
2	Oregon	Oregon	Oregon
3	Utah	Utah	Utah
4	UC L.A.	UC L.A.	UC L.A.
5	Stanfurd	Stanfurd	Stanfurd
6	ASU	ASU	Cal
7	Cal	Cal	ASU
8	OSU	OSU	OSU
9	Colorado	Colorado	Colorado
10	WSU	WSU	WSU
11	Washington	Washington	Washington

Table 1. Terrifyingly similar votes from the CGB writing staff.

Well, that's a whole lot of agreement. Boomtho and Nick decided to be twinsies (not that there's anything wrong with that) and Ruey was quite close, but just a tad bit more of a Cal homer. Because of these near-identical votes, looking at the standard deviation for each team is almost as boring as I am. But, I'm a creature of habit, so let's habit away!

Figure 1. Taking a closer look at this week's Power Rankings, where the standard deviation is given by the error bars.

So, yeah. Only two error bars due to the aforementioned differences in ranking Cal and ASU. This is definitely the most unanimous week in the years upon years of Power Ranking (well, just the 2014–15 season).

Figure 2. Following the teams' precise rankings for the year.

The top duo is no longer Arizona and Utah? WHAAAAAT? Mind you, these were also two of the top teams in our penultimate football rankings. Great job monopolizing revenue-sport success, guys. Beyond that, it was a pretty boring week with just a few teams moving one spot.

I also track the more standard rounded rankings, shown below.

Figure 3. The rounded, integer rankings for the season.

There's not much to analyze here based on the agreement in the rankings... Or I'm just too dumb to notice interesting trends. Or I'm too busy to invest the time here. Or I'm too burnt out to type another wo

The movements of the teams up and down the rankings are summed over the course of the season and termed the Madness.

	Change on week
	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	Team's Madness
Arizona	0	-1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		2
ASU	-1	-2	1	1	0	3	1	0	-2	2	-1		14
Cal	0	-4	-2	0	2	2	1	-1	2	-2	1		17
Colorado	4	-1	-2	1	0	-2	0	0	-1	0	1		12
Oregon	1	0	-4	3	0	2	-1	1	0	0	1		13
OSU	1	6	0	0	-2	3	-5	2	-2	1	-1		23
Stanfurd	0	0	0	0	0	-2	0	1	-1	-1	1		6
UC L.A.	-4	5	1	-2	3	-3	4	-3	2	0	0		27
USC	-2	3	-2	0	-1	0	1	-1	1	-1	0		12
Utah	0	1	-1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	-1		3
Washington	-3	-5	6	0	-5	0	-1	1	-1	1	0		23
WSU	4	0	1	-3	2	-2	0	0	1	0	-1		14
Total Madness	20	28	21	10	15	19	14	10	13	8	8

Table 2. Let's measure the Madness of the Pac-12 season!

Well, the big development of the week is Oregon cracking the top two at Utah's expense. After 12 weeks, this finally breaks the tie between Arizona and Utah for Least Mad team of the year. If the Wildats can outperform the Utes, then they'll most likely end the season with this prestigious title. After all, it's the namesake of "March Madness!"

On that note, it's time for radio silence for about a month. The Power Rankings team will take a little break until the end of post-season play, when we'll release our final Power Rankings of the season. I know it'll be hard, but the distance is good for us. I promise.