Bud Withers' take on an odd half-season of Pac-10 hoops

Musing on the most mystifying (alarming?) Pac-10 basketball race ever, California coach Mike Montgomery said the other day, "To be very honest, there's several teams, that if they finish up top, it's going to hurt everybody."

Translated, that means something like, "Get away from me, you yellow-toothed scalawags!!"

What more can we add, other than it's the halfway point of the league race, and time for the annual demis, celebrating midseason accomplishments (based only on Pac-10 games).

The half-season all-league team: Landry Fields, Stanford; Quincy Pondexter, Washington; Derrick Williams, Arizona; Jerome Randle, Cal; Nic Wise, Arizona.

All-Freshman: Williams, Arizona; Reeves Nelson, UCLA; Tyler Honeycutt, UCLA; Trent Lockett, Arizona State; Reggie Moore, Washington State.

Best player: Fields. Pondexter tempts me, but Fields leads the league in scoring and is third in rebounds, with less help around him.

Best freshman: Williams, Arizona, although Moore might be as important to the Cougars.

Best coach: Sean Miller, Arizona. The Wildcats waited a long time and paid a ton to get him, but it's apparently going to be worth it. He cobbled together a good recruiting class — thanks to the collapse at USC that drove its prospects to Tucson — and has a young team playing well around a senior point guard in Wise.

The real standings: If you believe the old plus-minus equation — road victories minus home defeats — Arizona is alone atop the Pac-10. The numbers: Arizona, plus 2; Cal, plus 1; ASU, UCLA, WSU, USC and Stanford, all even; Washington, Oregon and OSU, minus 1.

The weirdest half-season ever: Oregon began it by winning at WSU when officials whistled a technical foul on a Cougar who came off the bench in celebration, a call criticized by NCAA rules committee secretary-editor Ed Bilik. The Ducks ended it by benefiting from a technical on USC student manager Stan Holt for barking at an official. Oregon thus bookended a five-game losing streak with a pair of sweeps.

Biggest disappointment: Washington (14-7, 4-5). There's ample time to reverse this, but that appearance by the ESPN College GameDay crew Feb. 20 for UCLA is looking like a CollegeInsider.com tournament elimination game.

Where's my jumper? Washington State's Klay Thompson, the best shooter in the conference, is hitting 24 percent of his threes in conference play.

Well, the President's not having a very good year, either: Playing as it did a year ago, Craig Robinson's Oregon State team might win the league. Playing as it is, OSU is 9-12 and 3-6 and alone in last place.

But the weekly papers really like it: For the first time, the Pac-10 office is providing media outlets with transcriptions of Tuesday coaches teleconferences. Last week's rendering hit the inbox at 4:37 p.m. Thursday — or about 52 hours after the session ended.

Who said it's not a tough league? Oregon is 12-9, 4-5 and tied for fifth in the conference. By Thursday night, without playing, it could fall to ninth place.

Harmonic convergence: The other day, Ohio State honored its 1960 national champions — Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Mel Nowell, Larry Siegfried, Bobby Knight, etc. — who beat Cal in the final. That must mean the Bears, who haven't won a conference title since that season, are going to break through this year.

Bud Withers: 206-464-8281 or bwithers@seattletimes.com