The Left Coast Biased

Yesterday I went for a walk with a familiar feeling of annoyance at the 90 degree weather, stopped and got a news paper and flipped through the sports page to find two articles about Arizona football. Then I get to the grocery store and I see full on, Chevy Chase enthusiasm level Christmas displays as soon as I step inside.

I don't know where I am.

What is today's date? What is going on? Is it September still? Is this hell? What is going on?!?

Let me break down for you how the year flows, chronologically, here in Tucson, from the moment that UA loses in the NCAA tournament. We have a set schedule. Unlike every other school on the planet, we know exactly where our season will end. In the tournament. I was 6 months old the last time we didn't go to the tournament. We KNOW how this ends, and as soon as it does two things happen, immediately: we begin berating the referees, the dirty opposing players, and defend vehemently our pick of Arizona to make the Final Four, and then we get on Rivals.com and start imagining what next year's team is going to look like. The debate begin on whether Player X should or will leave early,and this is a part that can get painful, as we picture what a senior Gilbert Arenas or Mike Bibby would have done on the college landscape. This rolls through the NBA draft as every single year we pump the first round 2-3 players, then we settle in to talk about the new recruits. For the next 6 months.

There will be a bit of a hiccup in the basketball coverage in September as everyone remembers that there is a football team on campus, but then someone like Oregon, Cal, or USC (or if we have been exceptionally naughty - Penn State) will roll into town and remind us that there really isn't a football team here. By October we are back into full swing in the anticipation of the real sporting season, and it is all basketball all the time.

This year our schedule got skewed a bit. We didn't have any new recruits. We didn't have a coach. There was the two months where we signed Miller, then he went on a recruiting whirlwind that was nothing short of extraordinary, and we were back on schedule. Then something unusual happened. Or rather, didn't happen. We didn't get shelled by {insert X Pac-10 football school here}. We were winning. Sometimes we even won emphatically. We were ranked. We were ranked higher than Oklahoma. We were favored in a November game by 35 points. Now this could be due to the most back weighted Pac-10 schedule we could have gotten, facing Oregon, Cal, and USC at the end of the year, setting us up to run to the top of the Pac conference standings before losing 3 straight games and being grateful to go to a bowl game and remembering that this football thing really isn't our game anyway, and wait basketball has already started?

Regardless of exactly how good the football team is, and all the drama surrounding our basketball program over the last 3 years, we are a basketball school. I for one have been counting the days until this Sunday, when we get to see exactly how much work Sean Miller has out for him this year. All that being said, here are some things that we know about the upcoming Pac-10 season:

1. Down is relative: all the media has been saying all off-season is that this is going to ba down year for the Pac, that we might only get 2-3 teams into the dance, that there aren't any big time players to watch, to which we politely point out that this is the Pac-10. Down in the Pac-10 is still better than Big-10 basketball doing their best WNBA impersonation (lots of 'fundamentals' and 'defense' not a lot of dunking). This is the conference that spews out NBA All-Stars like they are PEZ candies. Put me down for at least 3 "upsets" in the Pac-10/Big-12 Hardwood Classic.
   
2. You are looking at the wrong team from Oregon: In the previews that I have seen around our glorious interweb (ESPN, Yahoo, AllPac10), the consensus seems to be that Oregon State is the Team on the Rise in the Pac, and they are in the mix for one of the few spots experts are allotting the Pac in this year's tourney. Right across the state you will find the most balanced team in the conference, with the best big man, dangerous guards and some exciting wing play. Oregon is going to surprise some people this season. Even if their coach doesn't have the White House on his speed dial.
   
3. Ben Howland can build a program: But can he run one? Building a program is different than running one. Building is setting things in motion, changing everything, doing things that are new and exciting, selling guys on how you want things done and selling the school on the team. Howland has shown that he can build a program, at NAU, at Pitt, and here at UCLA, but he has never stayed at a school for longer than 5 years. If Howland finds the balance of running the program after the honeymoon excitement of building it fades, then UCLA is going to be scary for a long time. If he doesn't, then they flounder into relative mediocrity and he rides out his sweet 6 year extension on the laurels he earned in those thrilling first five years.
4. Freshman will steal the show: Alright, maybe this isn't much of a revelation as this conference lost 6 first rounders in last year's draft, leaving a bit of a talent vacuum, but this is what I know: the Freshman of the Year race will be more exciting than the Player of the the Year. Between Jamil Wilson at Oregon, Abdul Gaddy at UW, Tyler Honeycutt at UCLA, and the Frosh Five at UA, these young players are the reason that "down year" in the Pac doesn't mean what it does to other conferences.
   
5. Arizona will be better than they should be: Maybe I can't not believe in the Wildcats. It is possible. I have filled out 20 consecutive NCAA brackets where I wrote Arizona in the center square and worked my way backward from there, so maybe I am sipping the Kool-Aid a little heavy. Maybe. Three quick reasons I think we make a run at the tourney and a top 4 finish in the conference:

- Sean Miller is the right coach. It took us a while, but when we made the best move we could have made. Miller likes to run, and he will find a crowd who is completely on board with that and feeds into it. If he gets these kids, and he has the athletes, to play some defense, the Cats could cause some headaches for teams, especially the guard heavy teams at the top of the conference.
- These are the right recruits. As much as it pains me to get behind a guy from NY named Momo, I think he could be the perfect storm of a rebuilding recruit. he is charismatic and makes everyone else happy to be here (little known rule of basketball, especially college basketball - happy teams win more), and he makes other kids want to come here. On top of that, the kid can play both back court positions, and looks like he might actually enjoy defending, which will make him and Wise a pain to deal with.
- This is the right year. While the Pac-10 is always going to be talent heavy, there is not a lot of balance in the teams this year. There is no Love/Collison, Hill/Budinger combos that kill you one way or the other. In a year where with some good game management (and our boy can manage a game) we will be able to steal some games people don't think we should.

So there is our little teaser of a Pac-10 preview. If you want to get the double barrels of what we think, we went deep with our OPRTA partner UACatWrap in a two part podcast where we dig into every possible angle of the upcoming season. If you haven't checked them out yet, do so. You can find them on iTunes or just hit the link above. They have some people who really know their stuff, present company excluded. Speaking of our OPRTA, here is this week's One Parlay to Rule Them All, One Parlay to find them, One Parlay to bring them all, and in your pocket bind them:

49ers -3.5 Bears - we threw this out there before the Cutler Bomb last night
Jags +7 Jets - the Jets are broken. Look for 200 rushing yards for the Jags.
Broncos -4 Skins - I wouldn't give the Skins a 4 point spread against UC Boulder, let alone the Not Dead Yet Broncos
Bengals +7 Steelers - Um, maybe the Bengals are good? Maybe Benson is actually ready to be the back we thought he could be? Maybe Carson Palmer is recovered? Maybe Ochocinco isn't crazy? I am confident of three of those, and that should be enough to cover 7.
Titans -7 Bills - Right now I would take almost any line for almost any team against the Bills.
Vikings -17 Lions - Bye week=rested 40 year old arm. Rested arm=bad week for Detroit
Saints -14 Rams - See the above logic on the Bills. Add Drew Brees.
Falcons -2 Panthers - The Falcons are not bad! Steve Smith is actually considering car bombing Delhomme's house! How is this line 2 points?!?!
Dolphins -10 Bucs - Ok, the wildcat didn't work on the Belichick. Raheem Morris is not Belichick.
Oakland -2 KC - This game has the same line as the Falcons/Panthers. I still don't get it. Oh, and I hate this game, but we had to pick someone, since the 49ers pick was technically late and we want to keep the 12 team parlay rolling. Sidenote - we have gone 7-5 every week. Here's to upping the percentages.
Cards -9 Seahawks - Who has more yards here: Fitzgerald or the entire Seahawks offense? We won't even count penalty yards against them.
Chargers -3 Eagles - And I am reminded all over again why I always tried to trade McNabb after week 6.
Cowboys -3 GB - The Packers lost to Tampa Bay. I didn't think that my high school could lose to Tampa Bay. This might be the game that Aaron Rodgers pulls a Milton Bradley and throws his helmet into a wall before breaking a hand smashing every water cooler in sight.