Pac-12 Men's Basketball Power Rankings: Week 10

A big week for Pac-12 Men's Basketball had showdowns between the top and the bottom teams, to help confirm the boundaries of our conference. As such, your CGB writers were tasked with figuring out all the messy in-betweens. The parenthetical number listed next to the team name (if any) is the number of first-place votes that team received. If any teams are tied, they're listed alphabetically.

The rankings

1. Arizona (5) 

Last week: 1

Nick Kranz: Deserved back-to-back champs.

boomtho: The king stays the king.

Ruey Yen: Your Pac-12 conference champ. Would remain here even should the Bears beat them this week.

atomsareenough: Top-5 team, league champs. 'Nuff said.

ragnarok: Well, that's settled (at least until the conference tournament). ‘Zona becomes the first team to win at Utah this year, sweeping the Utes and clinching the top seed in the process. Easy no. 1 pick.

2. Utah 

Last week: 2

Nick Kranz: Will rue missed opportunities, but all will be forgotten if they can make a deep tournament run.

boomtho: Very solid season, but ultimately fell a little short. Like Reef has pointed out, their tourney run may get cut a little short given relative struggles on the road.

Ruey Yen: A very good team poised for a deep March run.

atomsareenough: Really solid team with some occasional lapses and occasional brilliance. Solid #2 in the conference.

ragnarok: The gap between no. 1 and no. 2 is a lot smaller than between no. 2 and no. 3. Their halftime score against ASU was 41–9!

3. Oregon 

Last week: 3

Nick Kranz: Offense is really clicking, to the point that I can see them beating anybody on any given day if they come out shooting hot.

boomtho: Ducks just keep on winning, including a pretty impressive Bay Area road sweep. Continue to tip my hat to Altman for the job he has done

Ruey Yen: Big Bay Area sweep may allow Ducks fans to feel more comfortable about Selection Sunday.

atomsareenough: I am still amazed that this team is any good, but here we are with the season almost over. Really impressed by the Ducks.

ragnarok: A sweep in the Bay Area is no easy feat, even this year. The Ducks get their first win over Cal since Ben Braun was coaching the Bears.

4. UC Los Angeles 

Last week: 6T

Nick Kranz: Should have handled Wazzu/UW with more ease. Season rides on the Pac-12 tournament.

boomtho: A sweep, though fans are likely still not jumping back onto the Alford bandwagon.

Ruey Yen: At home against the two worst Pac-12 teams, took care of business.

atomsareenough: Alfords, et al... manage to survive Wazzu. Somehow they are also in tourney contention.

ragnarok: Just this side of middling.

5. Stanfurd 

Last week: 4

Nick Kranz: Loss to Oregon just another blow to tourney chances. Sets up a potential 4/5 elimination game against UCLA in the Pac-12 quarterfinals.

boomtho: Huge win over OSU but then dropped a winnable home game vs the Ducks. Can we extend Dawkins already?

Ruey Yen: I'm very fine with their NCAA chance being hurt by that Oregon loss

atomsareenough: The Cardinal are contending for a tourney berth again. Sometimes I wonder if Johnny Dawkins actually learning how to coach... Loss to Oregon at home keeps them at #4 though.

ragnarok: Can we say "NIT"?

6. California 

Last week: 8

Nick Kranz: One more split and the Bears could improbably finish in the top half of the standings after starting 1–6 in conference play.

boomtho: Decent week for the Bears, capped off with a senior-night win for Kravish. Also, I thought people were crazy for picking us 7th (thought it was far too low).. but that's exactly where we are today.

Ruey Yen: Bears in the upper half of the Pac, it's a possible final standings outcome

atomsareenough: It's come in fits and starts, but I think this team has progressed over the course of the year. It's nice to have Christian Behrens back. Like I said for ASU, the matchup this Sunday will tell us a lot, I think.

ragnarok: I only wish we could say "NIT".

7. Arizona State 

Last week: 5

Nick Kranz: Did you know that Herb Sendek has been at ASU for NINE years now? He has two NCAA appearances in that span.

boomtho: Had the misfortune of drawing the angry Utes. 42 points is an insane margin of victory

Ruey Yen: Mountain-school sweep hurts their NIT chances

atomsareenough: The Sun Devils can be feisty, but they fell absolutely flat against the Utes this week, losing in a humiliating blowout. The matchup with Cal this weekend will be an interesting indicator of where the two teams are.

ragnarok: 9 points in the first half? Utah is good, but even so...

8. Oregon State 

Last week: 6T

Nick Kranz: Will be interesting to see if Tinkle can build an offense over the off-season. He's never had a top 100 offense in his nine years as a D1 head coach.

boomtho: Went back and forth having them or ASU at 7. Not a good week including huge losses to both Cal and Stanford.

Ruey Yen: This season is a success for them even if they don't win another game

atomsareenough: Such a great start, but the wheels seem to have come off of late. An NIT berth is still in play, though.

ragnarok: I don't have anything interesting to say about this team.

9. Washington State 

Last week: 10

Nick Kranz: notched a road win over USC and played UCLA tough. That's enough to move up in this conference's power rankings. Make of that what you will.

boomtho: Beat USC, close loss to UCLA. Pretty decent week for the Cougs.

Ruey Yen: Played UCLA tough.

atomsareenough: The Cougars have been much more competitive than expected, but are still down at #9 for me.

ragnarok: Clearly better than the bottom two.

10. Colorado 

Last week: 9

Nick Kranz: Nice win over ASU balanced out by a home capitulation to Arizona. A reminder that Askia Booker can go off if you're unlucky.

Ruey Yen: They do get the Washington weaklings in the last week.

atomsareenough: Relative to expectations, it's been a terrible year for the Buffs. Even their vaunted home court advantage has less of a benefit this year, as opponents have defeated them in Boulder 5 times this year.

ragnarok: Only this high because they beat ASU just a couple days ago.

11. USC 

Last week: 12

Nick Kranz: Will end the year with the 2nd worst offense in the conference, which is hardly why Enfield was hired. Oddly, defense comparatively reasonable!

boomtho: Screw it, I'm giving them a little bump for actually winning a game this week.

Ruey Yen: 15-point win over UW

atomsareenough: The Trojans have been mostly quite bad, but at least they blew out the Huskies this week.

ragnarok: Climbs out of the cellar with a home win over Washington! In other, more important rankings (i.e. the conference standings), they're unfortunately still in the cellar. Does Enfield get another year?

12. Washington 

Last week: 11

Nick Kranz: Romar's entire team relied upon a volatile transfer, and they've been 1–8 without him. Average margin of defeat in that span? 11 points.

Ruey Yen: 15-point loss to USC.

atomsareenough: Since a thrilling buzzer-beating win at Boulder on January 22nd, the Huskies are 1–9 in conference play. Is Romar on the hot seat? Should he be?

ragnarok: This was a mediocre team with a coach who consistently underwhelmed even before they became really shorthanded midway through the year.

The data

I don't know how to write an intro right now, so let's just go straight to the data!

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

Table 1. The ballots from five of CGB's medicorest writers.

Let's crunch the numbers and spit out some pretty little precise consensus rankings (Figure 1); the vertical error bars represent the standard deviation as a means to quantify how varied the voters were on each team.

Figure 1. Week 10's Pac-12 Power Rankings!

Holy consensus! Our voters were all on the same page for the top three teams and for last-place Washington. (Makes sense for that terrible poop of a school.) Thus, they have no error bars. On the other hand, we were conflicted heavily on ASU and Colorado, so they have the biggest standard deviations this week.

These precise rankings are charted each week because why not?

Figure 2. The Pac-12 season in terms of precise power rankings.

Well, with their win over second-ranked Utah, Arizona is securely ranked first. We've got similar security for the Utes and the Ducks, right behind the Wildcats. We've also got a pair of near-ties in ASU-OSU and WSU-Colorado. Those crazy State Universities. This degree of resolution is lost with the traditional rounded rankings, but that's the standard, so why not conform?

Figure 3. The traditional Power Rankings for this season.

UC Los Angeles keeps bouncing up and down. Good job, Alford! After asking if Cal had peaked and was beginning to slip, they answered with a nice win over OSU; can we carry that momentum against the Arizona schools? USC and Washington continue to trade the basement, but with USC beating Washington, that's pretty damning reason for this week's basement. Will that change?

Finally, let's take a look at how bipolar these teams have been—how much they've been jumping around. We measure this with our homebrewed concept of Madness.

	Change on week
	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	Team's Madness
Arizona	0	-1	1	0	0	0	0	0	0					2
ASU	-1	-2	1	1	0	3	1	0	-2					11
Cal	0	-4	-2	0	2	2	1	-1	2					14
Colorado	4	-1	-2	1	0	-2	0	0	-1					11
Oregon	1	0	-4	3	0	2	-1	1	0					12
OSU	1	6	0	0	-2	3	-5	2	-2					21
Stanfurd	0	0	0	0	0	-2	0	1	-1					4
UC L.A.	-4	5	1	-2	3	-3	4	-3	2					27
USC	-2	3	-2	0	-1	0	1	-1	1					11
Utah	0	1	-1	0	0	0	0	0	0					2
Washington	-3	-5	6	0	-5	0	-1	1	-1					22
WSU	4	0	1	-3	2	-2	0	0	1					13
Total Madness	20	28	21	10	15	19	14	10	13

Table 2. The Madness of the season.

Arizona's and Utah's consistencies make them shoo-ins for Most Boring and Least Mad. Meanwhile, UC L.A. is pulling away with the title of Maddest, but OSU and Washington aren't too far behind.