Women's Hoops Blog

Inane commentary on a game that deserves far better


Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Pac-10 coaches (or at least coach Daugherty) are complaining that they aren't getting enough respect in the polls.

I'm not sure they deserve any more respect than they're getting. The Pac-10's overall RPI is still lowest of the six major conferences.

Stanford is obviously a good team, but probably not deserving of a much higher ranking than they have. Other than the USC upset, it's been flawless in conference. But it lost its two toughest nonconference matches to Tennessee and Texas Tech. Its best win of the year was in November over Georgia.

Arizona has losses to UCSB, Virginia, LSU, and Stanford. It has beaten Washington, ASU, and USC in conference play, but it doesn't have a single quality win in nonconference play.

ASU has 6 losses, and its best nonconference win was over Western Michigan.

USC has played a very tough schedule and had very close games against UConn and Colorado. Admirable as it is to play a tough schedule, you have to actually win some of those games to get ranking respect, and USC hasn't. They're only 3 games over .500.

Washington has been perhaps the biggest disappointment. It had one nice quality win over Notre Dame in early December, but since then it's been only 6-7.

Against nonconference opponents currently ranked in the coaches' poll, the Pac-10 has only 2 wins: Stanford over Georgia, and Oregon (pre-Kraayeveld injury) over LSU. So what do they expect?

None of this is to say that the Pac 10 isn't improving. Several teams -- ASU, USC, and Cal, e.g. -- seem to be moving forward. And the Pac 10 will probably merit 5 teams in the NCAA tournament this year, compared to three last year. But the judgment of the coaches and writers that only Stanford is a top-25 team is sound.