Oregon at Cal
Cal is likely to run into Arizona, Washington St., or Oregon in the first round of the conference tournament.
How good is the Pac? Arizona and Oregon could finish in the top 25 yet have to win four games in the tournament. That’s bad news for #11 Cal and #12 Arizona St.
I considered some best cases for Cal, and if the best cases result in running into Oregon St. in the first round, holy crap.
The Oregons are in Berkeley this weekend. I’m skipping chess to see the Ducks tonight, and to watch the Beavers Sunday, I risk arriving late at the San Francisco Sketchfest program “A Narfy Afternoon” with the “Pinky and the Brain” voice actors.
I hesitate to make any forecasts involving the Ducks. There’s something about that team that isn’t ringing true.
Southern Cal at Utah
The three best defensive teams in the Pac-12 are Southern Cal, Stanford, and Colorado. Utah’s already lost to two of them, while USC visits tonight.
Utah scores 80 points per conference game, and USC allows 50 points to be scored against them. Doesn’t take a genius to call 65 for the Utes, then make some guess at the Trojans’ number, but it’ll probably come down to each team’s success in transition. Then you have to figure in that the 4th-best defensive team in the conference is Utah.
I went on last week about the ‘team that let you leave’ factor, but I suspect it won’t be as useful for USC transfer Alissa Pili than it’ll be for USC conjuring a method for dealing with her. If there’s an algorithm for that, I’d think USC is likelier to bake it successfully than others, though that assertion is based on Coach Gottlieb spending 20 hours per day in the film room, and that’s probably changed since she had a second child.
Used to be that I could just ask Gottlieb for what she thought. When she and Roberts were in the Big West, I was sometimes the only beat writer in the building. Then they moved up to the Pac, where media members place digital recorders on the tables in front of them (I think that’s laughable, since my sense of humor is drawn in ink on cheap paper).
I have a hunch that a number will emerge from tonight’s game in Salt Lake that has great bearing on the result, yet isn’t typical. Irresistible forces meeting immovable objects screws with normal physics.