Click here for Part 1 including the projected conference standings.

Arizona St.: Everyone knows about last year’s super-frosh PG Jahii Carson, but the player who amuses me most is stretch-4 Jonathan Gilling. Despite great rebounding numbers and post-play on defense, he lived on the perimeter on offense. Gilling took four times as many three pointers as two pointers, and made 84 threes on the year.

And that will be useful because the biggest question market for Arizona St. next year is outside shooting. There just aren’t many attractive candidates at the off-guard position. Last year’s Hawaii transfer Bo Barnes wasn’t able to contribute much. And I’m not that much more excited about Michigan St. transfer Brandon Kearney. Kearney rarely took outside shots at Michigan St. and made them even less often. Freshman Chance Murray might eventually be the answer, but his recruiting rank suggests he may not be ready this year.

Arizona St. has more depth at forward with Valparaiso transfer Richie Edwards and JUCO transfer Sai Tummala joining the team. But the lack of perimeter shooting will hurt.

Oregon: Here is something you may not know. Oregon wasn’t a very good offense team last year. They got out in transition and so their games weren’t stuck in the 50’s, but they were much less skilled offensively than you might think.

The reason Oregon had its best season under Dana Altman was that Altman’s defense was the best of his career. Somehow, after back-to-back years of lackluster defense, the Ducks had an elite defensive unit. A large part of that was the late addition of Arsalan Kazemi. He personally ate up so many defensive rebounds that Oregon’s defensive rebounding improved from 162nd to 27th nationally. To say Kazemi will be missed is an understatement. Expect Oregon to be competitive defensively this year, but more in line with Altman’s historical performance.

Thus to return to the tournament the team will have to be better on offense. And while Oregon adds some nice pieces, they also lose four of their five most efficient offensive players (EJ Singler, Carlos Emory, Tony Woods, and Kazemi).

UNLV transfer Mike Moser can replace some of that production. Elite recruit Jordan Bell can replace some of it. Top 10 JUCO Elgin Cook is another nice piece. And Dominic Artis should be able to chip in by avoiding injury this year.

But it will take a special season for all those players to replace what was lost. In expectation, Oregon looks a little worse on offense, and meaningfully worse on defense, which should make them a fringe bubble team. My model currently has them 60^th nationally.

But Altman has proven he can win with a whole new group of players, and if anyone can prove my model wrong, I would not count him out.

Oregon St.: With Oregon St. returning nearly 70 percent of its minutes, you might think this will be a veteran squad next year. But many of those minutes went to players like Challe Barton and Jarmal Reid who do not appear to be Pac-12 caliber players. Because of the need to look for better options, the team is going to have to give a lot of time to new lineup pieces again. The team has three Pac-12 quality starters in Roberto Nelson, Devon Collier, and Eric Moreland, but the rest of the lineup is relatively weak.

Washington St.: Brock Motum, the team’s best player is gone, and there aren’t any players who can replace his star quality. This is the only team in the Pac-12 without any Top 100 athletes. Teams can win without elite talent if the coach is good at developing players, but after four seasons Ken Bone has proven to be below average in that regard. If Bone doesn’t develop a few hidden gems this season, he will likely be replaced.

Assuming last year’s partial qualifier Que Johnson has his academics in order now, he could help. And transfers Brett Kingma (ORtg of 97 at Oregon), Jordan Railey (ORtgs of 85 and 68 at Iowa St.), and Danny Lawhorn (46th ranked JUCO) will try to upgrade the offense too. I don’t want to make it sound hopeless, but Bone absolutely must break the trend if he wants to keep his job.

USC: Omar Oraby is the only returning player with an ORtg over 100. Worse yet, the retuning players that couldn’t score last year had a quality point-guard feeding them the ball in scoring position. Now Jio Fontan is gone and the team’s PG prospects are thin. Will the highly inefficient P’Shon Howard become eligible immediately? Will the team turn to unranked freshman recruit Julian Jacobs or Kahlil Dukes? Will former walk-on Chass Bryan, who played major PG minutes last year get the call? None of them is a particularly attractive option.

This also explains why UNLV transfer Katin Reinhardt was willing to sign with USC this off-season. Reinhardt left UNLV because he wants to play the PG position. And Reinhardt is likely going to have to sit out this season. But USC’s options at the PG spot are so under-whelming that Reinhardt is confident he will be the starter next season.

It is possible that a less structured, run-and-gun, dunk-city offense help the team score more effectively. I certainly trust that kind of system more in the Pac-12 than a league like the Big 10 where you run into coaches like Bo Ryan on a regular basis. But give Andy Enfield some time. Wait until Reinhardt and fellow transfer Darion Clark become eligible next year. Until then, this could be the worst offense in the Pac-12 again.

Utah: I expect Jordan Loveridge to become a household name as a sophomore. He is a former top 100 recruit and he was an aggressive and surprisingly efficient given his large role as a freshman. But the Utes bring in seven new players including three junior college transfers. Expect more growing pains.

While the NCAA Tournament has cachet all its own, one way of looking at the Tournament is through the lens of the NBA. While the lottery guys get plenty of buzz leading into the Tourney, I like to spend more time on the players on more middling teams for the first few days since it is less likely that their teams survive long enough to evaluate them further.

On that note, here is the day-by-day:

Thursday

Headline games:

Pittsburgh vs. Wichita State (1:40 PM Eastern)- This game makes the list primarily because of Steven Adams. The big man from New Zealand has not produced as much as many of us hoped during the season but has the chance to show his potential this weekend. The Shockers rebound well enough to challenge him and I am intrigued by Carl Hall.

Memphis vs. St. Mary’s (2:45 PM Eastern)- While Memphis has a slew of intriguing athletic question marks (Adonis Thomas, Joe Johnson and DJ Stephens are just three of them), St. Mary’s has Matthew Dellavedova. Matthew stands out as an unusual draft prospect because of his age (22) and subpar athleticism for his position but has the shooting stroke and basketball IQ to stick in the league longer than expected. We will learn a ton about everyone in this game. 

Other games to watch:

Syracuse vs. Montana (9:57 PM Eastern)- Michael Carter-Williams vs. Will Cherry. My bet is that one of them will massively help his draft stock in this game.

Oklahoma State vs. Oregon (4:40 PM Eastern)- Marcus Smart will have his hands full with future prospect Dominic Artis. We’ll see how Le’Bryan Nash handles the spotlight as well.

Michigan vs. South Dakota State (7:15 PM Eastern)- Senior sensation Nate Wolters gets the chance to show his value against a Michigan team full of potential NBA players (Trey Burke, Glenn Robinson III, and Tim Hardaway Jr among them).

UNLV vs. Cal (7:27 PM Eastern)- Anthony Bennett and Allen Crabbe will be the headliners but I am focused on how UNLV matches up on defense.

Friday

Headline game:

UCLA vs. Minnesota (9:57 PM Eastern)- After the injury to Jordan Adams, this could be our only chance to see lottery pick Shabazz Muhammad in the Tourney. Kyle Anderson, Trevor Mbakwe and Rodney Williams are three other likely pros worth keeping an eye on.

Other games to watch:

Wisconsin vs. Ole Miss (12:40 PM Eastern)- Marshall Henderson. That is all.

North Carolina vs. Villanova (7:20 PM Eastern)- Despite deeply disappointing this season, UNC has plenty of NBA talent in the form of James Michael McAdoo, Reggie Bullock and PJ Hariston. Each of those guys needs to make an impression over the next few weeks in order to rehabilitate their stock.

Creighton vs. Cincinnati (2:45 PM Eastern)- One of the best potential tests for Doug McDermott makes this one particularly fascinating.

San Diego State vs. Oklahoma (9:20 PM Eastern)- Jamaal Franklin has been underappreciated by the national college hoops media but has a chance to make his own statement on the opening weekend. If the Aztecs can get past Oklahoma, a potentially star-making meeting with Georgetown looms.

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.

Follow @DanHanner