NCAA Basketball Mailbag: Clemson’s struggles, UCLA’s turnaround, and more

 What are the biggest NCAA Basketball and NBA Draft questions you have this week? We answer them all in this week’s Mailbag.

Welcome back to the NCAA Basketball Mailbag where we answer all of your biggest questions about college hoops and the NBA Draft!

Conference play is now in full swing all across the country and it’s largely complicating matters for teams we thought were good or that we thought were bad.

UCLA was so bad they fired their coach, but then won their first two Pac-12 games in blowouts! Louisville, who had a great non-conference run, lost to Pitt, who went winless in the ACC last year! Kansas isn’t in first in the Big 12!

It’s still very early and there are two more months for everything to play out prior to the start of conference tournaments, but we start this week’s mailbag with a look at some of the more disappointing teams in the country.

Do you have a college basketball or NBA Draft question you want to have answered? Join the conversation on Twitter @brauf33. Thanks as always to those who contributed this week.

It is worth mentioning that the one starter who didn’t return was Gabe DeVoe, who was Clemson’s best player and their leader during last year’s run. He played such a huge role for them and that is hard to duplicate. Marcquise Reed as taken a step up in usage this year but no one has made “the leap” to really become a game-changer.

There are a number of other factors causing this down. They’re turning the ball over more (109th in turnover percentage last year to 287th this year), are struggling to shoot from deep (92nd to 267th), and no longer have an elite defense (seventh to 24th).

To be fair, all of Clemson’s losses have come against teams ranked in the KenPom top 40 – but they also don’t have a “good win” on their resume yet. Sometimes it’s tough for a program to deal with high expectations when it doesn’t usually have them, and that may be part of it as well.

No. UCLA certainly has a lot of talent and look so much better under Murry Bartow. They have an identity, like to run, and actually play with some purpose and intensity. However, turnovers are still a problem, they’re inconsistent on defense, and they still fall into stretches where they play iso-ball. The Bruins will play well at home but I think are too inconsistent to really be a threat.

Oregon is no longer there after the Bol Bol injury but Washington is still right there. They’re experienced, talented, and have two of the Pac-12’s best players in Jaylen Nowell and Noah Dickerson.

Arizona State, Arizona, and Washington will end up as the top three teams in the conference I believe.

Will Nevada lose another game this regular season? – Hayden Miller (@hbmiller27)

Yes, they will. A loss was coming sooner rather than later for them because of the way they struggled to get past teams like BYU, Grand Canyon, South Dakota State, and Akron, but I certainly didn’t think it would come in a blowout loss as it did against New Mexico.

The Mountain West is not as good as it traditionally is and Nevada will be favored in every game for the rest of the season. However, because the Wolf Pack have shown a tendency to play down to their competition, I think we’ll see them stumble at least one or two more times.

I think as long as St. John’s finishes in the top half of the Big East – something I have a lot of confidence they will do fairly easily – they’ll make the NCAA Tournament. The bubble is pretty weak this year given how terrible the Pac-12 is, so as long as the Johnnies pick up another win or two like they had over Marquette, it’ll be virtually impossible to keep them out with a top-five finish.

Wigginton’s injury has not hurt his draft stock, but it has kept him from improving it. We’ve seen a number of players really raise their stock during the first half of the season (Ja Morant, Brandon Clarke, Jaxson Hayes, and Coby White come to mind) and some of them leapfrogged Wigginton. It has kept him as projected second-rounder, which would work in favor of him returning to Ames for his junior year.

However, scouts know how good of a player he is and he has a chance to move up draft boards if he plays well in Big 12 play.

Yes, 100 percent. I think Romeo Langford will be a top 10 pick but he’s an absolute lock to be in the lottery.

With him putting up good numbers as well, I don’t see a scenario in which he turns down millions of dollars.