posted December 10, 2007 at 14:36 in NCAA B Articles

This weekend has been about drinking and partying and living the life as an old Wildcat, wondering, in the heat of the moment, how the Cats, their loveliness coming from the ultimate of basketball emptiness, will go on, as their leader, the impenetrable Lute Olsen, has decided to take the year off.

That leaves everything in the hands of Kevin O’Neill who, for those Cat fans who might not remember, was once the Pillsbury Dough-Boy of the college basketball world, to lead the Cats to the Promised Land. How O’Neill will do is up to the Gods of B-Ball, as the Cats, their claws depending so much on the young hands of Jeryd Bayless and Chase Budinger, must make their way through the Apocalypse Now that we call the Pac-10.

The Arizona Wildcats will live on. In fact, no offense to Lute, I have a feeling that the Cats will not only learn from this “debacle” but will, in fact, become one of the better teams in the Pac-10. Why do I believe this? Is it hope? Is it a hard-core belief in the Tucson magic that Olsen for so long has conjured? Nope. It’s none of those things. It is an understanding that when a player like Jeryd Bayless, at the tender age of eighteen, is on your side, you may never lose. In any case, you will always be in the “thick of it”, as the saying goes.

Bayless is unstoppable. As my friend Scott Norris once said, “You can never beat him, you can only hope to contain him.” What Bayless did in the second-half of the Illinois game was an absolute thing of beauty. He was the ultimate Marc Macon type freshman, taking things into his own hands, making basketball his personal game of hop-scotch - - “all-over the court, Bayless was,” as Yoda might say, “shooting and scoring, he is,” Yoda may say to all of us “unbelievers”.

With all of the Pac-10 freshman hype going to Kevin Love of UCLA and O.J. Mayo of USC, college basketball bettors forgot about the little man from St. Mary’s high-school in Phoenix, AZ. Jeryd Bayless is every bit as good as either one of those guys. In fact, right now, he’s better. Without a doubt, Bayless is one of the top players in the country. Why? Because he won’t be denied. Bayless scored 18 points in the second-half of the Wildcats’ win over the Illinois Illini - - in Champaign - - this past Saturday. That’s what great players do. If they have a bad half, they don’t just pack it in, they keep going. They do what they have to do to will their team to win. Bayless is going to be a very special player at Arizona and a very special player in the NBA.

He’s a Steve Nash in the making and that makes the Wildcats every bit as good as UCLA, Washington State, Oregon, or USC in the Pac-10. Bayless is special. Special players make things happen and if college basketball odds bettors forget that they are going to lose a lot of money betting against the Arizona Wildcats this year.

Kevin O’Neill understands how special Jeryd Bayless is. He won’t let his freshman get out of control. In fact, I think O’Neill is a better fit for this Cats’ team than Lute would have been.

Of course, the realization that the Cats might actually be better with O’Neill as their coach instead of Lute wasn’t the only thing I saw this past weekend.

I also saw these few tidbits:

1. Tim Floyd’s young USC team almost beat the #2 ranked Memphis Tigers on the road last week. I still believe that Floyd is doing exactly what a college coach is supposed to do, getting out all of the kinks before the conference schedule starts. I love USC going forward. Forget about all of that talk about how O.J. Mayo needs to grow up. Lest we forget, the Trojans have A LOT more than O.J. Mayo. This team is good.

2. UCLA, another top Pac-10 team, has some work to do. I like them a lot but they’re playing in the top conference in the country and Kevin Love, the Bruins’ highly-touted freshman, has to step it up in order for UCLA to deal with the likes of Washington State, Arizona, and USC. I’m not saying that the Bruins won’t get the number one seed in the West, I’m just saying that things are going to be tougher for them than most prognosticators thought it would be.

3. The Duke Blue Devils are for real. I know that there has been some talk about how Coach K’s program has lost a few steps, but I’m telling you right now that these guys are good. North Carolina has a lot to prove once ACC play starts because the Blue Devils aren’t just going to hand the ACC Conference title over to the Tar Heels. In fact, at this point, I’m leaning towards the Blue Devils winning the ACC. They have that perfect balance of an outside/inside game as well as Coach K’s signature man-on-man defense. Like UCLA, NC has some work to do before getting that number one seed.

4. I wrote an article about week ago saying that I don’t believe either Indiana or Michigan State would lose more than 5 games this year. I stand by that article. Indiana throttled the Kentucky Wildcats and Michigan State almost beat Duke. The Hoosiers and Spartans will both make their presence felt in the Big Dance in March.

5. The Louisville Cardinals will bounce back from their loss at the hands of the Dayton Flyers. Louisville hasn’t been playing Louisville ball in this early part of the NCAAB season, but I have faith in Coach Rick Pitino. I still think that the Cardinals are the class of the tough Big East. Let’s wait until conference play starts before putting a nail into the Cardinals’ coffin.

6. What are college basketball bettors going to do with the SEC? LSU should have won, on the road, versus a very good Villanova team. Tennessee is great. Kentucky will be in every game this year after their coach, Billie Gillispie, finds out what to do with them, Vanderbilt will surprise some folks, Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, and South Carolina can beat you on any given day - - this conference is starting to resemble the SEC football conference. Make sure you are aware of EVERY single thing that happens or might happen to any team you want to bet on who plays in the SEC. Like their football brethren, this conference is up for grabs.

That’s it for now. Until next week, good luck!

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