“Winner Stays” is a sports debate column.
There are few types of sports content as engaging as a good debate, and that’s exactly what “Winner Stays” is all about.
Here’s how it works: Each week, two of Annenberg Media’s many excellent sports journalists will go head-to-head in debate over a certain topic. When we tweet the article from the @ANNMediaSports account, we’ll let you — the readers — decide who argued their point better via a simple Twitter poll. You’ll have 24 hours to cast your ballots. That week’s winner will stay on and debate someone new the following week. And so the cycle continues.
Two-time defending champ Sam Reno and Will Simonds bring you edition No. 3.
Topic: How many Pac-12 men’s basketball teams will make the NCAA Tournament?
Will Simonds: I am a firm believer that the Pac-12 will be a four-bid league this season. That opinion was only reinforced by the Oregon Ducks’ 68-63 home victory over No. 12 UCLA on Thursday night.
Sure, the Ducks have been one of the most inconsistent teams in the nation, with big road wins at USC and UCLA negated by awful losses at home to Cal and Arizona State. It’s hard to look past a measly 4-3 record against Quad 3 teams despite a fairly decent 3-5 mark against Quad 1 teams.
But you just have to keep in mind that this is a Dana Altman-led squad. Altman’s teams at Oregon tend to be unimpressive through the first 80% of the regular season. Then, something just switches, and the Ducks are as consistently dangerous of a program as any in the nation from mid-to-late February through March.
Take the 2018-19 Oregon team, for example. That squad lost three straight games to rival Oregon State and the Los Angeles schools to fall to 15-12 overall and 6-8 in conference with four games to go in the regular season. Those Ducks would go on to win ten straight games, including the Pac-12 Tournament Championship against Washington and two NCAA Tournament games, before falling to eventual national champion Virginia in the Sweet 16.
This is just what Dana Altman does, and I expect this year to be no different. These Ducks, currently 18-10 (11-6 Pac-12), have another chance for a quality win Saturday at home against USC. Remember, Oregon already overwhelmed the Trojans 79-69 in Los Angeles on Jan. 15. Furthermore, USC point guard Boogie Ellis’ status for Saturday is in doubt after missing Thursday’s game at Oregon State.
Even if the Ducks can’t get another win against the Trojans, I think that a sweep of the Washington schools plus a quality win in the Pac-12 Tournament will be enough for the committee to give Oregon one of the last few spots in the Big Dance on Selection Sunday.
Sam Reno: It takes two to tango, and this Big Dance is only getting one more than that from the Pac-12 in 2022.
Sure, if we rewind the clock to early January, this Oregon team had improved to 12-6 after rattling off six straight wins — a run that did include back-to-back top five wins against UCLA and USC.
However, the calendar will soon be turning to March, and these Ducks are just 18-10 with two losses to an abysmal Arizona State team and a double-digit home defeat to a Cal team that has just four wins in conference — to provide more context to your first point.
Oregon is sitting not in the “First Four Out” of ESPN’s Bracketology, but in the dreaded “Next Four Out.” The Ducks find themselves behind a BYU team that obliterated them by 32 points earlier this season as well as Memphis, who holds a win over a Houston team that smoked these Ducks by 29 points.
Of course, Dana Altman teams always seem to come alive late in seasons. Their postseason track record is a sufficient enough endorsement of that. But let’s look at that 2018-19 team you submitted as evidence.
A Sweet 16 run is no small feat, but Oregon was not sniffing that year’s field of 68 had they not upset their way to a Pac-12 tournament title. So much so that the committee gave them a No. 12 seed for goodness sake.
This team could absolutely make a similar run in Las Vegas this season, but that prospect grants them a status no different from the other eight teams in the Pac also on the outside looking in.
The Ducks will need either a win against a top 20 USC team or a road sweep to finish the season — a feat they’ve only pulled off once — to even hit the 20 win mark. Oregon has slipped up too many times already, and the Pac-12 will have to pay as a result.
Will Simonds: I don’t disagree with you in the fact that Oregon still has work to do, but that’s exactly my point. Altman and his teams thrive in these must-win situations, and it’s evident that this team is starting to come out of its shell right now.
After the Ducks’ hard-fought loss in Tucson last Saturday, Altman said, “Our effort was good; we played hard … I told our guys that the only thing I’m upset about, we don’t play this hard all the time.”
Oregon doesn’t have that choice of whether or not it wants to try on any given night anymore, as we commonly see in the NBA regular season. And when Oregon plays hard like it did Thursday, it can beat just about anyone with talented players all over its roster.
Which leads me to my next point about the eye test. I am really inclined to believe that the committee will give the Ducks a chance in the tournament simply because of how good this team looks when it plays up to its potential. It helps the game to give players like senior guard Will Richardson a chance to shine in March.
Finally, I’ll finish with one more idea that doesn’t necessarily relate to Oregon. After all, this debate isn’t just about the Ducks — it’s whether or not the Pac-12 will see a fourth team make the NCAA Tournament.
You brought up the fact that there are eight other teams in the conference. And the Pac-12 is no ordinary conference. The Pac-12 is arguably most well-known for big teams losing to inferior opponents when it matters.
Remember just last season, when Oregon State came out of nowhere to win the Pac-12 Tournament before its Cinderella Elite Eight run. And Oregon’s surprising run in 2019. Heck, that run by a DeMar DeRozan-led USC all the way back in 2009.
To quote college basketball analyst Jon Rothstein, “Bid stealers are out there. And they will emerge during Championship Week.”
I don’t care how good this year’s Arizona team is; it just makes too much sense for something weird to happen in the Pac-12 Tournament.
Sam Reno: I wouldn’t exactly describe losing three out of your last five games as “thriving” in must-win situations. And yeah, Altman’s squad is certainly capable of beating anyone, but they’re also equally capable of losing to anyone.
Ben Simmons’ LSU squad finished third in the SEC, but the Tigers weren’t extended a lifeline. Kentucky’s title-defending team won 21 games in 2012-13, but the committee didn’t throw them a bone either. I have a hard time believing the committee will do its best to include the Ducks to ensure the world can watch Will Richardson, all due respect to the Oak Hill product.
Oregon is a measly No. 58 in the NET Rankings. I’ll remind you that there are 32 automatic bids to the Big Dance, and only about a third of those conferences are represented in the spots ahead of them.
Continuing with that math, we must assume that roughly 20 teams below the Ducks will make the tournament, meaning only those in the 40s and up should consider themselves remotely safe.
This Oregon team is far from that safe zone, and their resume inspires no belief they’ll ascend to it. Those three Quad 3 losses you mentioned earlier are more than every single team ahead of the Ducks save for UAB.
Let’s also take a closer look at those three Quad 1 wins. The Ducks’ two biggest wins this season — back-to-back road wins against UCLA and USC — came when both Pauley Pavilion and Galen Center were closed to the public.
The third? A five-point home victory against a UCLA team that was forced to play the majority of the contest without Johnny Juzang, who left the game with an ankle injury in the first half.
To sneak into the NCAA Tournament, you need to have the resume and be undeniably hot. Altman’s team has too many bad losses — even their quality wins don’t seem so quality upon closer examination — and is anything but streaking at the moment.
Of course, a Cinderella could emerge in Sin City and steal their way into the field of 68, but the Pac-12 that last year’s Beavers and the 2019 Ducks won was a far cry from our current iteration. Three different Pac-12 teams are currently in the AP top 20, and each of them has spent time inside the top five, something that can’t be said of either of those seasons.
If you are going to count on a “bid stealer” to take over the conference tournament and grab that elusive fourth spot for the Pac-12, then that’s an even greater endorsement that the Conference of Champions is merely the conference of three bids.