Saturday, September 23, 2017

Pac-12: USC Hoops Could Surpass Arizona Hoops and Even USC Football

The USC Trojans thrashing of Stanford gives hopes of a tough Pac-12 Championship and National Title, however Value Add pegs their basketball team as the third best in the country and a challenge to those who believe Arizona will win March Madness brackets. If Andy Enfield adds a title to his successes, which include marrying a Maxim model and a lucrative deal for his business - many should be jealous.

Many observers, including the great team at Athlon Sports, project Arizona as the best team in the country, while Value Add projects them slightly lower at 5th, two spots behind the Trojans and a few spots ahead of the greatest historic team - UCLA. USC appears to be the only conference team with elite programs in both sports, while Washington could win the football title but their basketball projects 103rd, while Arizona's football team ranks 74th.

Here is where Value Add ranks each Pac-12 team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools. Updates will be provided here.

Pac-12 / 2017 BidHoopsFootball
USC 1135
Arizona 2574
UCLA 31855
Stanford4029
Utah5022
Oregon 35732
Oregon St.7696
Washington1038
Colorado13025
Arizona St.17075
California17830
Washington St.32727

Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order. As colorful and entertaining as Bill Walton is while calling all of the "Conference of Champions" games, his contention last year that Arizona was a better team while Allonzo Trier was out injured was truly comical. He leads a trio of Arizona players ranked in the top 82 in the country, a very formidable team and only exceeded by USC's best five players all being in the top 5% (top 200) of all players.

While the Ball family will continue to score at UCLA for years, with Lonzo Ball gone to the pros and LeMelo Ball, who scored 92 points in one game, not there yet, and the middle brother LiAngelo is considered just a three-star recruit.

Top 15 Pac-12 PlayersValue AddSchoolHt
Allonzo Trier 359.00Arizona`6-05
DeAndre Ayton8.83Arizona`7-00
Chimezie Metu 47.93Southern California`6-11
Reid Travis 227.24Stanford`6-08
Rawle Alkins 17.07Arizona`6-05
Troy Brown6.97Oregon`6-06
Justin Bibbins 216.86Utah`5-08
Elijah Stewart 306.64Southern California`6-05
Thomas Welsh 406.60UCLA`7-00
De'Anthony Melton 226.57Southern California`6-04
Jordan McLaughlin 116.48Southern California`6-01
Aaron Holiday6.20UCLA`6-01
Dorian Pickens 115.93Stanford`6-05
Bennie Boatwright5.90Southern California`6-10
Kris Wilkes5.84UCLA`0-00

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Pac-12 sixth of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed here with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.

Sports IllustratedFox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.

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