The Pac-12 has been suffering through a long dark period. The Big Ten has been dominant (at least in the pre-conference schedule) for the last few years. Should we expect a change this year? Is the Pac-12’s slump over? Is the Big Ten’s boom about to come to an end? Let’s take a quick look at some basic roster data and see if we can uncover any trends.

Part of predicting the season is noting the number of elite high school prospects on each roster. Not only are these players more likely to play well as freshmen, but they are also more likely to breakout later in their career. Recall, for example, Michael Snaer of Florida St. Snaer was a former Top 20 recruit, and while it took him three seasons, he broke out in a big way in 2011-12. After adding up the numbers…

- The Big East has the most former RSCI Top 100 prospects on rosters heading into the season with 58.

- But the Big East has more teams, and the Big East has only 3.9 elite recruits per team. The ACC has the most former Top 100 recruits per team with 4.6 per team.

- But James McAdoo is the only former Top 10 prospect in the ACC this season. That seems like an unprecedented lack of super-elite talent for the conference. If you want super elite talent, you probably want to watch the SEC, assuming everyone is declared academically eligible. John Calipari never lets us down on the recruiting trail.

- The SEC, however, is only welcoming ten Top 100 freshmen this year as a whole. Even the Big Ten, the land of typically poor recruiting, is welcoming more Top 100 freshmen than the SEC this season. And yes, the slumping Pac-12 brings in quite a few elite recruits this year.

The next table isn’t really roster data, but it does reflect some of my preliminary projections about playing time.

- The ACC is going to be the youngest conference in the nation this year, according to my projections.

- The Big East has a startlingly low number of key seniors on rosters this year.

- As usual, the MWC and A10 have more mature rosters. They lose fewer players to the NBA and that helps the top MWC and A10 teams compete, even without a plethora of blue chip talent.

The Pac-12 is getting older in a hurry, thanks in no small part to an influx of transfers. Note that your transfer numbers may vary slightly. I’m excluding transfer walk-ons and a few JUCOs who seem unlikely to play in the next table.

The transfer table doesn’t mean the Pac-12 has suddenly become the conference of transfers. This is all a natural consequence of recent league history. The Pac-12 teams have struggled the last few years making those teams particularly attractive places for transfers to matriculate. If you want to transfer and PLAY in an elite league, you would have chosen the Pac-12 too.  On the other hand, the Big Ten has been on an upswing and few coaches have needed to dip into the JUCO ranks as a quick fix. Deverell Biggs of Nebraska is currently the only incoming JUCO player projected for the Big Ten this year.

Overall, the Pac-12 was a depleted league, but it is adding a number of impact freshmen and key transfers this year. The days of the league failing to field a Top 25 team are over. As for the Big Ten, the jury is still out. The teams at the top still have plenty of talent, but programs like Purdue could be in for a bit of a slip without an influx of can’t miss players coming in.

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Major Conference Tournaments Day 4

I will get to the bubble talk, but first a few observations from other games:

Baylor – Baylor went 0 for 4 against Kansas and Missouri in the regular season and it caused many people to question the team’s toughness. But in the Big 12 semifinals, the Bears finally broke through and beat the Jayhawks. Hot three-point shooting contributed to the win, but it wasn’t the only thing Baylor did right. After Kansas went on a run to take the lead late in the game, Baylor’s defense didn’t crumble like in previous games. Instead they forced several turnovers. I’m not a big proponent of the 1-3-1 or the poor man-to-man defense that Baylor often plays, but with their length and athleticism, when they swarm the ball, they can be extremely disruptive. And Baylor caused just enough chaos to win this game. It was also notable that both Quincy Acy and Perry Jones came through with huge inside buckets when the game got close. Acy had a relatively poor game, but he had at least one offensive rebound and put-back that drew Bob Knight’s praise. And Perry Jones had a great spin-move near the bucket for a key inside basket late.

Missouri – Missouri beat Texas, but in the process Kim English bruised his thigh. It was a scary moment that reminded everyone what it means that Missouri has only 7 scholarship players. The short rotation has been great for building chemistry, but if someone on the Tigers were to get hurt in an early round of the NCAA tournament, a deep run would be almost impossible.

Duke – With Ryan Kelly out, Duke struggled against Virginia Tech, but I caught one play in this game that still amazed me. With 20 seconds left, the ball was loose and four players race for it. Austin Rivers showed his quickness by coming from behind to win the race, and while sliding through a pack of three players he calmly flicked the ball up on the rim for a bucket and one. Rivers did not have a great game, but he showed his incredible athleticism with that play.

North Carolina – John Henson came down on his wrist which was X-rayed at halftime. Preliminary reports said it was just a sprain, but UNC fans have to be holding their breath. North Carolina is not a deep team this year and Henson is the key to the defense.

Michigan – Evan Smotrycz was 1-for-4 from the floor, scored only three points, and fouled out of the game against Minnesota. But he hit a three pointer to tie the game at the end of regulation, and that will make this one of the best days of his career. Michigan came back from 7 down with 4 minutes left to beat the Gophers in OT.

Wisconsin – Rob Wilson scored a career high 30 points on 7-for-10 shooting from three point range in the Badgers win over Indiana. It is amazing how often an unheralded Wisconsin player will make seven threes in a game. You can’t blame Indiana for poor scouting because Wilson had never scored more than 11 points in a game this season. In fact Wilson had zero points and played just two minutes the last time Indiana and Wisconsin met.

Louisville – Thursday Louisville forced 26 turnovers in the win over Marquette. And all season long their dominance has been based on defense. But somehow they shot 56% against Notre Dame, and all of a sudden a team that had been disappointing for much of the year is putting things together.

Syracuse – I don’t buy for a second that the semifinal game wasn’t very important to Syracuse. The Orange have owned Madison Square Garden and had some of the biggest moments in team history in this tournament. To say that the loss to Cincinnati didn’t mean anything because you’ve already locked up a 1-seed is disrespectful to the Bearcats.

Bid Stealing?

I hate the term bid-stealing, because the teams on this list are earning bids by winning their conference tournaments. In some sense, the at-large teams are the bid-thieves. But if your team is on the bubble, you will be rooting hard against this list:

Marshall – Southern Miss has had poor three point defense this year, but a day after East Carolina hit 15 threes against USM, Marshall hit 9 threes on only 17 attempts. A day after fouling out, Marshall’s Damier Pitts scored 24 points. And to add some comedy late in the game, Pitts accidentally tripped USM head coach Larry Eustachy on the sideline. I would like to say Marshall can earn a bid on Saturday, but Memphis has won its last 6 games by 18+ points, so it will take a huge effort to win that game.

Ole Miss – Skylar McBee hit a three pointer at the end of regulation for Tennessee that might have given Ole Miss head coach Andy Kennedy a heart-attack, but Mississippi regrouped and won in OT. Now all they have to do is beat Vanderbilt and Kentucky/Florida to earn an NCAA bid. Good luck with that.

UMass/St. Bonaventure – Here is where things get interesting. With Massachusetts upset of Temple, one of these two teams is going to play in the A10 final on Saturday, with a real chance of taking home the league’s automatic bid. The great thing about this match-up is that the country is either going to learn a lot about the versatile shooter and driver, the 5’9” Chaz Williams of UMass, or the country is going to learn about 6’9” NBA prospect Andrew Nicholson of St. Bonaventure. Nicholson has almost single-handedly turned around a St. Bonaventure program that hasn’t been to the A10 semis since 2000. And even though Massachusetts’ victory over Temple is probably more impressive, St. Bonaventure’s win over St. Joseph’s was no less special. Langston Galloway and Carl Jones have been two of the best guards in the A10, and St. Bonaventure forced Galloway into a charge and Jones into a bad shot along the baseline in the final seconds to defend a one point lead.

Helping their cause

Xavier – Trailing Dayton by one point in the final seconds, Xavier’s Mark Lyons drove the lane and banked home the game-winner. Then on the other end the Musketeers bothered Dayton’s Matt Kavanaugh enough that he missed a three foot floater in the lane, and Xavier prevailed. This was a terrific game as was the OT victory earlier this year against Dayton. Suffice to say that Tu Holloway and Kevin Dillard have had a fantastic rivalry this year. Xavier seems to be more of a lock after this win, but if UMass or St. Bonaventure win the tournament, you have to wonder if that might knock Xavier out of the field. Xavier’s best bet is to keep winning.

NC State – NC State’s win over Virginia certainly helps state their case, but I think that win is more an indictment of Virginia’s flaws than NC State’s worthiness for an NCAA bid. With Tony Bennett announcing earlier in the week that Assane Sene will not be returning this season, Virginia just lacks the size in the paint and the depth to beat quality teams.

Stubbing their toe

Miami (FL) – The Hurricanes have two solid wins over Duke and Florida St., but to only have 3 RPI Top 100 wins is almost certainly not enough. Even a team like Harvard has 5 RPI Top 100 wins. The Hurricanes were hurt by the weakness of the ACC, and Jim Larranaga’s inability to improve the team’s defense this year.

Southern Miss – The tempo free crowd may hate this team based on their poor margin-of-victory numbers, but the truth is they racked up the quality wins, including beating bubble teams Colorado St. and South Florida. Southern Miss is in despite the loss to Marshall described above.

Bid Taken!

Arizona/Colorado: With Colorado’s late night upset over California, that means the Pac-12 will have a surprise winner of the league’s automatic bid. Carlon Brown’s windmill dunk for Colorado was the tasty desert at the end of another fantastic day of basketball.

When Reggie Johnson returned to the Hurricanes’ lineup, I thought that Miami might be able to compete for 3^rd place in the ACC. But his return has not quite provided the spark I anticipated. The Hurricanes offense is better with Johnson on the floor, but the defense has gotten worse, and the defense wasn’t that good to begin with.

But more than the stats, Miami is a team that just seems to be missing something in execution. Durant Scott and Malcolm Grant are fantastic basketball players. But for the last two years, they never seem to make enough plays in crunch time. Wednesday night’s loss at NC State was a perfect example. Miami’s Shane Larkin made an incredible diving steal in the final 20 seconds. He dove out of bounds, seemed to hover horizontally, and miraculously tipped the ball to Scott. Down one point, Miami had a fantastic chance to win the game. But instead of recognizing that there were now 15 seconds left and that Miami could regroup and get a good shot, Scott was out of control. Scott rushed the ball to the basket, took an off-balance shot, and that essentially ended the Hurricane’s chances.

With a weak bubble, Miami’s NCAA profile is still in the discussion. And they’ve been playing like the 39^th best team in the nation with Johnson healthy, so they probably should be on the bubble. But I think Jim Larranaga expected to be able to get a lot more out of this group when he left George Mason last spring.

On the pre-game talk shows in DC they keep talking about how Maryland is very close to being a great team. I’m not quite buying it. Even when Pe’Shon Howard was healthy and Maryland was at full strength, they were only playing like the 100th best team in the country. I think Mark Turgeon will eventually have Maryland playing at a very high level, but if they make a run in the ACC tournament this year, it should be considered a minor miracle. This team is not that close.

There are so many coach-of-the-year candidates in the Big East that Buzz Williams won’t get consideration. But he has done a wonderful job surviving without Chris Otule and Davante Gardner. Yes, the team’s defense has slipped a little bit without those big men in the middle, but not much.

There is a common thread in the table. With a smaller lineup, the offense gets better and the defense gets worse. Dayton has been a different team without Josh Benson. They aren’t necessarily better or worse, but their games are more high scoring. It is quite possible that Northwestern’s offensive improvement since Mirkovic left the lineup is just a coincidence. Perhaps they were all slumping in January and just got hot in February. But I think the loss of the team’s center is causing at least some of this result. With a 99.8 ORtg, Mirkovic was a black-hole in an otherwise prolific Northwestern attack.

That said, losing a player is never a great thing for a team. Wouldn’t the Cats have wanted Mirkovic on the floor to try and defend Jared Sullinger in the final seconds of Wednesday night’s loss? I don’t know if Northwestern is really an at-large candidate or not. Something tells me the bubble is going to tighten up quite a bit with upsets in the conference tournaments. Northwestern has certainly played better in the last 10 games, playing more like the 30^th best team in the nation. But when you can’t finish close games, you make it hard for the committee to put you in the field.

North Carolina is another team to survive an injury without much fanfare. When Dexter Strickland went down, the Tar Heels adjusted by giving more minutes to Kendall Marshall. And on net, that’s good for the offense.

I have heard some arguments that Oregon deserves extra consideration for the NCAA tournament because Devoe Joseph was missing early in the year. Well, he was missing for six games. Throw out two of their losses, is their Pac-12 resume impressive enough to merit a bid? How does Joseph’s injury compare to that of Pierce Hornung of Colorado St.? Hornung is an unknown to most college basketball fans, but he’s an under-sized rebounding machine. And Colorado St. was horrific without him in the lineup. If Oregon shouldn’t be dinged because Joseph was out for 6 games, Colorado St. shouldn’t be dinged because Hornung was out for 6 games. In my eyes neither team has played like an NCAA team. At full strength, Oregon has played like the 74^th best team in the country, while Colorado St. has played like the 66^th best. But if you want to put Oregon in because of injuries, don’t forget to argue for Colorado St. too. Finally, I want to end by updating some splits I have shown before:

Temple is a top 25 team with Michael Eric in the lineup, even if they have struggled over the last two games. Virginia is not a Top 25 team with Assane Sene out.

USF is not elite, but they’ve been around the 36^th best team in the country in games when they’ve had their full lineup, and in crazy fashion Cincinnati and Xavier have been very similar when at full strength. Not surprisingly all three have been on the bubble.