One of the things that has come out of doing preseason ratings is that a team can survive a lot of attrition is they return a high-usage player. Oregon’s roster was gutted in the offseason for a variety of reasons, but they still had Joseph Young. They were preseason 34th and enter the Pac-12 tournament the 2-seed. (Though, their overall ranking is 49th.)
I’m sure Dana Altman has done a good job this season—actually I’m, not because it’s really difficult to evaluate coaching ability.—but because he had an extremely efficient, high-usage player coming back, there was a bigger margin for error in filling out the rest of the team. At least, that’s my theory.
Arizona won the league by three games, and to this point is the second-biggest favorite to win its tourney (Gonzaga was at 66.6%). Thus, the all-kenpom.com team is dominated by Wildcats. I’m pretty sure the Ducks are the least likely two-seed champ in all the land. They made up a three-game deficit on Utah with five to play to force a tie that was decided by Oregon’s win over the Utes, which was conveniently played in Eugene.
Utah’s rating is so much better due to its complete annihilation of the opponents in its wins. The Utes had just one single-digit win in Pac-12 play (at Washington State) and three all season (Wichita State and at BYU).
The top three seeds are locks for the NCAA tournament, with UCLA and Stanford looking to play their way in with a couple of wins.
Pac-12
All-kenpom.com: Stanley Johnson, Arizona (kPOY); Delon Wright, Utah; Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Arizona; T.J. McConnell, Arizona; Brandon Ashley, Arizona.
March 11-14 at Las Vegas.
Qtrs Semis Final Champ 1 Arizona 100 95.8 85.6 64.9 3 Utah 100 78.5 63.1 24.3 2 Oregon 100 68.5 19.8 3.6 4 UCLA 100 60.8 8.7 2.9 6 Stanford 74.8 18.9 11.1 2.2 5 Arizona St. 73.3 33.1 4.1 1.2 10 Colorado 53.6 17.6 3.0 0.3 7 Oregon St. 46.4 13.9 2.1 0.2 8 California 61.1 3.0 0.9 0.2 11 Washington 25.2 2.6 0.8 0.08 12 USC 26.7 6.1 0.3 0.05 9 Wash. St. 38.9 1.2 0.3 0.03