Huge Pac-12 weekends for Washington, Oregon State and Arizona. Also, minister of culture?
Pac-12 officiating ... what more can you say?
If you’re the Oregon Ducks basketball team or fan of, you’ve got plenty to say and most isn’t family-friendly. If you haven’t seen the controversial finish to Oregon’s game against Washington on Thursday — with 1.6 seconds left, UW’s Jaylen Nowell was fouled shooting a 35-foot 3-pointer. He sank all three foul shots to secure the 61-56 victory — it’s worth checking out.
Not only did that keep the Huskies in first place entering the weekend but now Oregon, at 11-8 overall and 2-4 in conference, is in a situation where their NCAA hopes could be given the last rites. And we haven’t even reached the month of February.
Saturday provides two games that could help continue to tell the story of the Pac-12 in this strange season.
Washington at Oregon State (Jan. 26 1 p.m. on Pac-12 Network)
The Washington Huskies (6-0 in Pac-12) can stretch their lead in the conference as we reach the halfway point in the schedule. Oregon State (4-2) has been one of the more entertaining teams in the conference but suffered an awful weekend getting swept by Arizona and Arizona State. With the conference lacking a second team to challenge the Huskies, could Oregon State be that team? We will find out.
Arizona at UCLA (Jan. 26 7 p.m. on ESPN2)
It was all so simple for Arizona. The Wildcats (5-2) beat USC (4-2) and you keep pace with the contenders in the conference going into Saturday. Was it simple? Nope. A 23-point beat down on the road at USC now turns the Saturday showdown with UCLA (3-3) into Arizona’s biggest conference game of the season so far. A win and you keep pace with Washington and you break away from the two-loss logjam that exists right now. A loss for the Wildcats and well, you can start to wonder if the league could get just one team in the NCAA Tournament.
Pac-12’s minister of culture
Matthew McConaughey has been labeled the “minister of culture” for the new on-campus basketball arena. To be honest with you, I’m not even sure what that means.
It made me think of what Pac-12 schools could use their own minister of culture. And it’s pretty easy, USC and UCLA.
I know some of the other schools would like to have their own minister of culture but tell me, who could do that at Oregon State or Utah? Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
USC-Will Ferrell
This is so perfect it hurts. You can see him at most USC football games and has even dressed as a mascot for a time or two.
UCLA-Bill Walton
Once again, it’s so perfect it hurts. The UCLA graduate loves his university so much, he’d probably spend and entire day talking about it. Plus, he’s already looked at someone to replace Steve Alford as UCLA’s head coach.