Nate Rob played well against the sonics

Highlight reel here. Looks like Nate is trying hard to play point. Good for him.

Rivals.com has Jrue commiting to UCLA

A video here about it. Bummer

Bob Condotta has strange justifications for his power poll

Here's his post. Here are his rankings:

1. UCLA - agree, and now that they got Jrue, looks like they can stay there in 2009 too.
2. WSU - agree, they lose no one of consequence, play great team ball, and have their coach coming back. Big problems after this...
3. Arizona
4. Stanford
5. Oregon
6. UW
7. USC
8. Cal
9. Arizona State - agree, they sucked last year but oregon state is falling apart
10. Oregon State

It feels like a lazy post. He's basically saying USC is going to be much worse, and OSU will be worse than ASU this year, but other than that, the landscape is the same. Arizona loses as much as USC and has just about as much new talent coming back into the mix. Bob, are you telling me that Nick Young + Gabe Pruitt + Lodrick Stewart is a much bigger blow than Marcus Williams + Mustafa Shakur + Ivan Radenovic?

Arizona loses:
43.6 ppg
18.3 Reb
11.2 Ast

USC loses:
43.8 ppg
10.9 reb
8.3 Ast

Looks like Arizona is a bigger loser so far. Kirk Walters does not mitigate this. His best production was 6 points, 3.5 rebounds. AWESOME!!! Arizona does have a good recruiting class, but still doesn't have a point guard on the roster, excluding walk ons that won't play. Also, Taj Gibson is better than any player in Arizona's frontcourt, and that OJ Mayo kid is pretty damn good.

I also have doubts about Oregon's ability to maintain the success it had last year. Brooks made that team go, and Oregon does not have a point guard on their roster. Last year, Tejuan Porter had a negative assist to turnover ratio (2 assists to 2.5 turns). He's going to be expected to be the point guard for that team and that spells trouble. I was at the UW-Oregon game last year and they looked bad without Brooks. That said, Oregon will be a senior laden team (8 seniors next year!).

Stanford only loses one player this year - Fred Washington. He's kinda a funny player, and led the Cardinal in assists last year. He's one of those glue guys that does a lot for teams and I think his loss will hurt. Take a look at his game log - his stats were much much better in wins than in losses (which I know is true for the whole team too), and he was much bigger for them in pac 10 play than in the preseason when they played crappy teams. Stanford, unlike the other two teams, has great size AND athleticism, so they can handle the loss of a key player like Washington.

But I can't really post a "your rankings suck" post without posting my own rankings so here goes:

1. UCLA - Will be #1 team in the nation come tourney time
2. Washington State - Loses basically nobody, 1 more year under crooner Tony Bennett
3. Stanford - has two more decent 7 footers than anyone in the conference
4. UW - I'm a homer, but UW returning to a style that Romar is good at teaching will make them much much better
5. Oregon - seniors put them ahead of these next two
6. USC - just a bit better than Zona
7. Arizona - Lute starts to think about retirement
8. Cal - not a bad team, just not better than those above
9. Arizona state - crappy but not as crappy as a sinking ship
10. OSU - when losing Sasa Cuic is a huge blow, you're in trouble...