PAC-12 Basketball power rankings: Colorado climbs to top, UCLA rises

#10 – California

The Golden Bears have been forced to play the role of a doormat for the conference’s upper half as of late. They have had the most difficult matchups in the past week out of the entire conference, going on the road to Boulder and Salt Lake City to face their second and third over-0.500 teams in a row. And this is a team that still does not have a single road win this year. Not in conference, but for the whole year.

That will probably change at some point, but the stark difference in their play away from Haas Pavilion is interesting. It seems like the kind of issue that would start improving by now.

In truth, Cal’s situation is not unlike Wazzu’s. Their ceiling is higher, but this is another team with a first-year head coach who is already exceeding (meager) expectations from the man he replaced. Mark Fox has already led his team to better win totals than Wyking Jones’ last two years before he was canned, and a promising showing against Colorado will give fans some hope.

#9 – Oregon State

In the mire of what could’ve been an ugly losing streak, the Beavers are heating up a bit and separating themselves from the bottom of the conference. Unlike UW, they were able to end their losing streak last week, defeating Stanford thanks to the best shooting performance of the season from Jarod Lucas (21 points off the bench) and Kylor Kelley absolutely dominating at the rim (7 blocks). They showed signs of improving synergy in a nailbiter against Cal, too, but kept coming up short late when the game was on the line.

Then came the Ducks game, and the biggest win of the season so far. The Beavs taught Dana Altman’s team some humility and showed they can compete when firing on all cylinders. But amongst the good wins (Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Stanford) the not-so-good ones (Washington, Cal, UCLA) can’t be forgotten either. It’ll take a few games to see if they can keep up what they’ve been doing.