A sad-Pac situation for men's basketball

By the miracle of videoconferencing, we take you now to Pac-10 Conference headquarters, where marketing strategists are discussing possible new slogans to promote men's basketball:

"Pac-10 hoops ...

... Catch Us at The NCAA Play-in Game in Dayton March 14!"

... Find Us on the Web at Sub-200 RPI.com!"

... Some of Our Ballers Know Reggie Bush!"

... You Won't Find Our Guys Leaving Early for the NBA!"

... We're a Water Polo and Volleyball Conference, You Want to Make Something of It?"

In the interest of truth-telling, there was no such meeting, just as, after a month of the season, there hasn't been much Pac-10 basketball.

A question: What do these teams have in common — Eastern Michigan, Utah Valley State, Tennessee Tech, Cal-Irvine, Cal-Davis and Cal State-Northridge?

The answer, of course, is that all have beaten Pac-10 teams, a fraternity losing cachet almost by the game.

Not in recent memory has the conference begun a season so dismally, especially in a year when there were big expectations.

Take Oregon's racehorse team, which finished out of the Pac-10 tournament last year but was extremely young, returning six of its top seven scorers. It ended a three-game losing streak Tuesday night against Santa Clara, but three nights before in Portland, the Ducks lost to Illinois by 30 and the coach, Ernie Kent apologized.

Afterward, uber-sophomore Malik Hairston, referring to Illinois, told the Eugene Register-Guard, "They want to win basketball games and they know what it takes. I don't think we have the least clue, to be honest."

Across town, Oregon State (3-3) was in the process of losing to Portland, a team that lost at Winthrop by 31. The Beavers, even with a veteran backcourt, still can't beat anybody on the road. Coach Jay John told reporters, "It's a mystery to me, to be quite honest. I'm not convinced I'm playing the right people."

In its first month, the league has been a national punchline. As of Monday, the ACC was 73-20, the Big Ten 63-20 and the Big 12 61-22. The Pac-10 is 49-21 but that doesn't begin to describe what's taken place.

The Big Ten and Big East have played 26 teams apiece from the so-called Bowl Championship Series conferences. The ACC has played 25. The Pac-10 has played 10. Fully half the teams in the league haven't met one yet. So the conference has not only not scheduled particularly hard, it isn't beating those teams consistently.

Roughly, this is how the league breaks out:

• Exceeding expectations: Washington (8-0) and Washington State (5-2). Well, after football, both of them owed the league one.

• Hanging tough: UCLA (7-1), California (6-2), USC (5-2).

• Underachieving: Arizona (4-3), Oregon (5-3), Oregon State (3-3), Arizona State (4-2).

• Surely you're kidding: Stanford (2-3).

This is how life is among the consensus co-favorites to win the league: Stanford hasn't yet played anyone of note and it has lost by 16 to Cal-Irvine (UCI went on to lose to Cal State-Stanislaus), by 19 at Montana and at Cal-Davis (insert your own one-liner here).

Arizona has abandoned, at least temporarily, coach Lute Olson's four-perimeter-one-post realignment it had worked on all preseason because of the lousy results. It's shooting a league-worst 40 percent, albeit against the toughest schedule anybody in the Pac-10 has played.

But when the Wildcats lost their third game on Dec. 3, it marked the earliest an Olson-coached team at Arizona had lost three. In fact, even the feckless Ben Lindsey, who coached Arizona to a 4-24 record in his single year before Olson arrived in 1983, didn't lose his third until Dec. 4.

What does it all mean? The league has already established a baseline that will be difficult to white-out the rest of the year. The RPI report this week had the Pac-10 No. 10 nationally, and it plays only four more games out of the conference against teams ranked in either poll this week.

Prospectively, that could affect everything from Washington's seeding entering the NCAA tournament to bubble teams. Three Pac-10 teams have sub-200 RPIs — Stanford (298), Oregon State (238) and Arizona State (233). Stanford's is so abysmal that it will take a meteoric rise by that team for a victory against the Cardinal to mean anything.

Pac-10 games begin earlier this year, on Dec. 29. For most of the league, it can't get here soon enough. Better to keep the dirty little secret in the family than to spray it all over town.

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