ESPN Men's Basketball

In its own way, every offseason trip taken by college basketball programs -- in which a coach and his players go overseas for weeks at a time, bonding and chalking up early practice allowed by the NCAA -- is special.

College basketball players don't get much time (or, you know, money) with which they can take the customary collegiate trip to a foreign country. They don't have the opportunity to study abroad. So when teams go to Italy or Ireland or China, the trip is special. It's a unique experience. I am always jealous. (Although, much as I want to visit China, I am glad I was not with the Georgetown Hoyas last summer. That fight looked terrifying.)

But even by the very cool standards of most foreign trips, what Lorenzo Romar has planned for his Washington Huskies sounds especially neat. Washington will travel for two weeks, making stops in Spain, France and Monaco, which, OK, Eamonn's already jealous again. Monaco? Awesome. But even better -- the last leg of the trip is Senegal, homeland of senior forward Aziz N'Diaye. From the Tacoma News-Tribune:

The Huskies will play a game in Dakar Senegal. But they will also host and take part in several basketball camps and clinics as part of World Vision’s Area Development Program.

“You do home visits with kids when you are recruiting them and you meet parents and have an opportunity to see their world,” Romar said. “In this case, we not only get to see Aziz’s world, but his family and friends get to see the group he has been living with the last couple of years.”

It's a nice touch from Romar, who usually tries to schedule a game in the hometown of seniors. That's not possible for N'Diaye during the regular season, obviously, but the solution Romar found is an awfully nice one.

Note to my bosses: We should definitely be covering this trip! I'll submit my travel request soon. What's that? I'm not going? Well, it was worth a shot.

1. Baylor coach Scott Drew said an NBA draft early-entry decision from Perry Jones III and Quincy Miller will come at some point this week after he sits down and meets with the families. If both were to return then the Bears would be one of the favorites again in the Big 12 and possibly a Final Four.

2. Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said Tony Wroten Jr., would likely make up his mind sometime this week, as well. The Huskies lost Terrence Ross to the NBA Sunday when he officially declared for the draft. The Huskies underachieved this season by failing to reach the NCAA tournament despite winning the Pac-12 regular-season title.

3. Mississippi State pulled a sleeper out of the coaching carousel when they hired Clemson associate head coach Rick Ray. This was a stunner. But it also shows how difficult a time it is for these schools to lure a high-major coach away from another significant gig, let alone a head coach who is comfortable at a conference outside the power six. Times have changed in coaching as more coaches are content to stay put if they’re winning, compensated well, and have a chance to make the NCAA tournament.

Oregon State had one of the Pac-12's best nonconference wins.

And it was over a middling, young Texas team in overtime in New Jersey.

But that sort of summed up the Pac-12. The league was light on nonconference wins and when its teams got into league play, beating each other up only enhanced the perception that the conference wasn’t worthy of elite status.

Well, heading into Friday night’s semifinals, Oregon State has the best win of the Pac-12 tournament too, knocking off top-seeded regular-season champ Washington 86-84 on Thursday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

“It’s my best win ever, as a coach or as a player when I was at Princeton,’’ Oregon State coach Craig Robinson said late Thursday night by phone. “This team is starting to believe that they’re as good as we thought they were. It’s really nice to see. This is a watershed moment for these guys. Those guys on Washington are really good.’’

The Beavers (19-13) move into the Pac-12 semifinals against Arizona. Oregon State isn’t on the bubble. Arizona is probably a reach, or at least third in line for a possible bid among Washington and Cal on the at-large candidacy list.

Washington, even with the Pac-12 regular-season title, must now sweat out Selection Sunday.

The Huskies’ nonconference resume has nothing to shout about. The worst home loss -- a blowout to South Dakota State -- might look better now that the Jackrabbits won the Summit League title. But that’s still a team from the Summit going into Seattle and cleaning house.

“I’m not in there in the committee,’’ UW coach Lorenzo Romar said during the postgame news conference. “I know we haven’t won as many games as we should have in nonconference as a league. I would think the Pac-12 champion would be able to find a place in the NCAA tournament. We certainly didn’t help ourselves, but I would think we’d be able to find ourselves in there.

“But I am not on the committee. The committee, they’re meeting, and we’re kind of at the mercy of their decision.’’

As for the Beavers, their defense has tightened up in the two Pac-12 tourney games so far, coming back to beat Washington State and Washington on consecutive nights.

The offense is more than capable of beating Arizona and advancing to the title game if Jared Cunningham, Devon Collier and Ahmad Starks make sound decisions.

“These guys are starting to trust each other,’’ Robinson said. “We were hoping that we could play well in the first game. The way we started to come out I thought we could win.’’

In their one meeting this season, Arizona beat Oregon State in overtime in Tucson. There was a minor scuffle at the end of the game. But there is too much on the line in this one to expect any carryover to Friday.

“I like the fact that we lost to them in overtime,’’ Robinson said. “That bodes well for us psychologically. I like our offense. We haven’t had trouble scoring in either game. But it will come down to whether or not we defend well.’’

Oregon State looked like it had floundered a few weeks ago, losing five in a row. But the Beavers then rallied to sweep a homestand with Utah and Colorado heading into the 8-9 game against the Cougars.

“That gave us some momentum,’’ Robinson said. “You sometimes see with veteran teams they’ll play well in a tournament, but we’re doing it with a bunch of freshmen and sophomores and it took them a little while to figure it all out.’’

The Pac-12 only gets more convoluted and confusing with each passing week, but the conference power rankings, like any good Broadway show, must go on. Here's my latest attempt to make sense of this muddled West Coast landscape as the Pac-12 prepares to commence league play this week. (Spoiler alert: The Pac-12 is bad.)

1. Stanford: Surprised? So am I. After all, Stanford's only result since last week's rankings was a 71-66 home loss to Butler, which came after the Cardinal allowed the offensively bereft Bulldogs to streak to a downright shocking 45-point second-half. Considering Stanford has no great wins, and much of its early ranking hinged on that close contest with Syracuse in November, you'd think Johnny Dawkins' team would take a tumble in the conference power rankings. When I sat down to write these rankings, I didn't think Stanford stood any chance of staying in the top spot. But as you dig in to the rest of this league, you realize that Cal remains the only other contender for this spot, and I find it difficult to move Stanford below the Bears when Mike Montgomery's squad was so thoroughly trounced by UNLV last week. So Stanford remains. Someone has to be No. 1, I guess.

2. California: The Bears may well be the best team in this league. Ken Pomeroy's advanced metrics indicate as much. But Cal isn't doing anything to inspire confidence that its efficiency in wins over inferior opponents can be replicated against top competition. Consider Friday's drubbing at UNLV. The Bears entered Friday's game having outscored their last four opponents 301-189. Then, in Vegas, Montgomery's squad looked absolutely dreadful -- stagnant offensively, weak defensively and arguably timid in many respects -- as the Rebels blitzed for 40 minutes en route to an 85-68 blowout. This was Cal's second game against a ranked opponent. Its first, against Missouri, ended 92-53. Add it all up, and you get a team that has 10 wins against inferior opponents, one forgivable one-point road loss to San Diego State, and two absolute blowouts at the hands of top competition. So, yeah, maybe Cal is the best team in this league. But if they only look good against bad teams, what does "good" even mean, anyway?

3. Arizona: The Wildcats didn't do much last week, but they'll hold steady at No. 3 if only because they didn't lose. Rather, Zona got past a tricky Oakland team at home and put 100 points on Bryant two nights later, and that -- plus their promising if uneven performances throughout the nonconference schedule -- doesn't offer any obvious reason to move them below any of the teams that follow.

4. Oregon State: OSU is now tied for the best record in this conference, with its 10-2 mark matched only by Stanford. And that record isn't all fluff, either: A Nov. 19 win against Texas might in fact be the best nonconference win the league has (as sad as that is). But since Dec. 9's home loss to Idaho, Oregon's State's four wins have come against Illinois-Chicago, Howard, Portland State and, this week, Chicago State. Those are some of the worst opponents in Division I hoops. For that reason, it's hard to trust that gaudy record, not until the Beavers can test this apparent improvement against someone ranked higher than No. 230 (that would be Portland State) in the Pomeroy rankings.

5. Oregon: The Ducks notched three wins in three days last week, but all three (NC Central, Prairie View A&M, Stephen F. Austin) were cupcakes. Meanwhile, last week's missed opportunity -- when Oregon let Virginia escape from Matthew Knight Arena with a second-half comeback win -- is still a cause for concern. Given Dana Altman's track record as a coach, and the way he got the maximum from his first team in Eugene last season, it's fair to expect some improvement in Pac-12 play. But the Ducks still have a long way to go.

6. Washington: The Huskies looked much sharper in a home win over Cal-State Northridge last Thursday, but really, there's nothing new to report here. The Huskies still look like the most talented team in this league. They should still be considered a favorite to contend for the regular-season crown. Unfortunately, they're still maddeningly inconsistent, confused about their offensive roles, defensively porous and, to paraphrase Washington coach Lorenzo Romar's words, missing that distinct, hard-to-define chemistry all good teams must develop before they can become more than sum of their parts. The talent here is undeniable, but league play starts this week, so the clock is already ticking. This could go either way. We'll see.

7. Washington State: The lack of movement in these rankings is the theme of the week, and Ken Bone's team is no different. The Cougars are getting decent play out of senior guard Faisal Aden and aggressive interior work from junior forward Brock Motum, but they remain sloppy and turnover-prone and have spent their December racking up five wins against decidedly inferior competition. This team isn't bad, per se. But we can't exactly call it good, either.

8. UCLA: If you can't always tell by my tone, yours truly tends to get a little frustrated when teams spend huge stretches of their nonconference schedule toasting cupcake teams. Go out and play somebody, you know? But UCLA's December of inferior competition couldn't have come at a better time. After a November that featured blowout home losses to Middle Tennessee and Loyola Marymount, a disastrous trip to the Maui Invitational and the eventual dismissal of forward Reeves Nelson, UCLA needed some comfortable, confidence-inspiring victories, and it appears to be paying dividends. At the very least, this record -- 2-5 through a Dec. 3 loss to Texas -- is back above .500 in time for the start of Pac-12 play. We don't know if UCLA is actually better, or just beating up on bad teams, but either way, it doesn't really matter. This is why (or at least partially why) coaches schedule so many cupcakes. Sometimes, your team just needs a few wins.

9. USC: Unlike most of the Pac-12, USC actually had an important fixture on its calendar last week, a date with Kansas at the Galen Center in LA. And USC was essentially USC. The Trojans played a slow-paced game and held KU to 63 points, a product of the rapacious defense Kevin O'Neill's team has played so often this season. The only problem with this, of course, is that SC just can't score. The Trojans scored a mere 45 points against the Jayhawks. They rank No. 245 in the country in adjusted offensive efficiency. You should expect O'Neill's squad to stifle more than a few of their Pac-12 opponents in the coming months, and they'll no doubt steal a few wins against allegedly superior squads between now and March. But this putrid offense is like an invisible ceiling. Without at least some offensive output -- something, anything! -- this team can only go so far.

10. Colorado: The Buffaloes' 7-4 record is better than the Trojans' and Bruins' and the Huskies'. So why does Tad Boyle's team still rank so low in this league? Because unlike those teams, the Buffs don't do any one thing particularly well. For the sake of brevity, Colorado is average offensively and awful defensively. I wouldn't be surprised if this team shows real improvement in the weeks to come, but with per-possession numbers this pedestrian, I'm hesitant to make that prediction.

11. Arizona State: If Herb Sendek didn't have more pressing things to worry about -- namely, how to get his apparently awful team moving in a positive direction -- he could some spend time lavishing everyone responsible for bringing Utah to the Pac-12 (conference commissioner Larry Scott, Utes brass, even Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany) with gifts. For yet another week, only Utah's near-historical ineptitude is keeping this Sun Devils squad out of the power rankings cellar. In any other season, we'd look at this team -- now 4-8 with three straight home losses to Northern Arizona, Southern Miss and Fresno State -- as the "worst power-conference team in the country" contender it would have been. Either way, Arizona State is in a bad way, and if the current trend continues into league competition, the nascent questions about the "future of the program" (read: Sendek's job security) will only grow more vociferous.

12. Utah: And then there's Utah. (Last week, I tried on a few alternate, Utah-related headlines for this column. But I think "And then there's Utah" might be our winner.) The good news first: The Utes topped Idaho State and Portland two weeks ago. Wins are wins. The bad news? Both teams are ranked outside the top 225 or so teams in the nation in adjusted efficiency. Even worse, Larry Krystkowiak's team followed those meager signs of progress with an 80-51 road loss to Weber State, a thrashing at the hands of a team that, for reference's sake, lost by 20 to Cal. In the meantime, the 3-9 Utes are ranked No. 316 in the country in adjusted efficiency; the list of teams in their statistical vicinity (The Citadel, Radford, Mount St. Mary's, Texas Pan-American, et al.) is comprised those for whom a trip to the NCAA tournament play-in game is a basketball season's ultimate hope. This is some historically bad basketball coming from Salt Lake City. With Pac-12 play commencing this week, where do the Utes go from here? I don't know. But it could be fascinating to behold.

What's wrong with Washington? It's a fair question. The Huskies are clearly talented -- arguably the most talented team in the Pac-12. They can clearly play with very good teams, as they showed in a thrilling loss to Marquette in Madison Square Garden. Before Sunday's 19-point home loss to South Dakota State, in which Washington gave up 92 points to Nate Wolters and the Jackrabbits (a good mid-major team, but one Washington should easily beat at home), the Huskies had yet to suffer a truly bad loss yet this season. At the very least, every loss was close.

It was easy to look at this team, see some rather promising per-possession numbers, and assume Romar's young players were still just figuring things out. They'd get there eventually, right?

Maybe. Maybe not. The jury is still out. But it must be a bit of a bummer to Huskies fans to hear their coach cite the team's three problems to date, as related by the Seattle Times's Percy Allen. According to Romar, the three issues are as follows:

1. Defense
2. Offensive rhythm (particularly movement, spacing and passing)
3. Chemistry

Hold on. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't those three huge problems?

Of course, Romar isn't wrong. His team has not defended well to date, particularly on the ball, where the Huskies somehow manage to foul shooters frequently while forcing opponents into turnovers on just 18.2 percent of their possessions (which ranks No. 297 in the country, per KenPom (subscription required)). Usually, teams that foul often force turnovers for their trouble. Or vice versa. (No fouls, few turnovers.) The Huskies have somehow inverted that logic, and not in a positive direction.

Let's leave offensive stuff alone, because that looks like the area Romar should expect the most improvement going forward. Despite its struggle and high roster turnover, his team has played pretty well on the offensive end already this season. I wouldn't freak out about that.

But chemistry? That's the kind of vaguely defined quality a coach knows when he sees. If you have it, you can exceed the sum of your parts. If you don't, you may be bound to disappoint. From the Times:

Repairing a broken defense that's allowed 76.3 points per game and getting players to share the ball is easier than improving Washington's sour chemistry, which is the third and arguably most important area of concern for Romar.

It might require shifting responsibilities, redistributing shot attempts among five players who average at least nine points and redefining roles.

"We have not settled on that yet," Romar said. "Who's supposed to be taking shots and where. We're still evolving that way."

These things may come. Washington is still young. It's still incorporating an unfamiliar backcourt of Abdul Gaddy and Tony Wroten Jr., two players whose skill sets don't necessarily align. It's still early in the season. Another down Pac-12 should prove rather forgiving. Perhaps it can be used as a learning lab as well as a full-on competitive environment.

Either way, when you ask a coach what he thinks are his team's three main problem areas, and he says, in so many words, "defense, offense and chemistry," well, no wonder that team is struggling. It's like saying: "Hey, Mr. Engineer, what's the biggest thing holding back your bridge project right now?" "Well, we're still figuring out where to put the cables. Also, the support beams aren't ready yet." In other words: everything.

Even one of the Huskies' issues would be cause for concern. All three are downright discouraging.

NEW YORK -- A season ago, Marquette won 22 games and went all the way to the Sweet 16 -- yet was just 4-7 in games decided by 5 points or fewer.

This season is starting very differently, as evidenced by the Golden Eagles’ thrilling 79-77 victory over Washington on Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden.

Marquette, ranked No. 11 in the country, is now 8-0 on the season. Coach Buzz Williams was happy with the victory, but not with his team’s play early in the game, nor with himself.

“I thought [Washington’s] energy and their intensity to start the game, we were not able to match. And I think I did a poor job of helping our team when Chris Otule got hurt," Williams said of Marquette’s starting center, who sprained his knee less than two minutes in and did not return; he will have an MRI on Wednesday. "Because that changes how you have to guard ball screens. That changes when and if you’re gonna trap the post, and who you’re gonna trap the post with. And I didn’t think that I handled that very well.

“I thought once we kinda got in a groove, we were better.”

They certainly were. After falling behind quickly 11-2, Marquette rallied back to take its first lead of the game, 27-26, just under 6 minutes before halftime. The Golden Eagles led 37-34 at intermission.

The second half of this game was a classic seesaw battle, with 18 -- yes, 18! -- lead changes. Neither team led by more than 5 (and that was only after Marquette’s first bucket of the second half).

The game came down to the final minute. Washington’s Terrence Ross (team-high 19 points) hit a tough foul-line bank shot to give the Huskies (4-3) a 77-76 lead with 17 seconds left to play. Williams elected not to call a timeout -- he had already gone over a play with his team in a previous timeout, in case Washington scored on the previous possession.

The ball ended up in senior forward Jae Crowder’s hands. “My man showed pretty hard, I got a good screen from Jamil Wilson to pop out to the [right] corner,” Crowder said. “Once that happened, I knew I had a good look at the rim.”

The shot, from just beyond the 3-point arc, was on the money, giving the Golden Eagles a 2-point lead with 6.3 seconds remaining.

Washington elected not to call a timeout, instead pushing the ball up the floor. Abdul Gaddy’s well-defended desperation heave from the right wing was way off at the buzzer.

“Yeah,” said UW coach Lorenzo Romar, when asked if he thought about calling a timeout to set up a last shot. “Probably in retrospect, probably would have liked to.”

This is the Golden Eagles’ second win by 5 points or less this season, following a 59-57 victory over Norfolk State in the championship game of the Paradise Jam on Nov. 22.

Marquette was also coming off an impressive 61-54 win at No. 7 Wisconsin on Saturday. Williams admitted that fatigue may have played a role in his players’ struggles Tuesday night, particularly at the start.

Leading scorer Darius Johnson-Odom had 23 points, but shot just 6-for-17 from the field. Crowder added 18 points, 16 of them coming in the second half.

“I think we’re whipped,” Williams said.

On the bright side, Marquette -- picked to finish sixth in the Big East this season in the conference’s preseason coaches’ poll -- looks like it’s capable of being much better than that, as we inch closer to the beginning of conference play.

Losing Otule for a significant period of time would hurt, to be sure. But this Marquette team is deep -- Williams used 11 players on Tuesday, with seven of them contributing 4 points or more.

There have been some pleasant surprises as well. Among them are freshman Todd Mayo, the younger brother of NBA player O.J. Mayo, who scored 11 points off the bench against Washington, and has scored in double figures in five of the team’s eight games.

There may be some increased competition for playing time in the weeks ahead, and talk of that made Williams grin at the postgame podium.

“Yeah, I like that,” he said. “It’s good. Recruit as many good players as you can, win as many games as you can, and play as many as you can along the way.”

This summer, at the Nike Skills Camps in Chicago, one guard consistently stood out from the rest. He was left-handed. He had good vision, a solid outside shot and a knack for making the well-timed pass to a streaking forward on the break or appropriately deciding to finish the play himself.

At 6-foot-5, he stood taller than most of his fellow guard attendees, all of which were (or were about to be) the best point guards in the country. By the end of the day, he had NBA scouts raving. In a sea of talented-but-too-short point guards, here, finally, was a player with the skills and size to play the position at the next level.

This player was Tony Wroten, Jr.

This college hoops writer, wary of small sample sizes though he is, allowed himself to throw his data-oriented caution to the wind. I was sold: Wroten was going to be great, and the 2011-12 Huskies were going to be better than anyone had reason to expect.

Moreover, Wroten's commitment to Lorenzo Romar's team couldn't have come at a better time. This summer, the Huskies waved farewell to point guard and spiritual leader Isaiah Thomas, a ball-dominant, left-handed guard who led his team in minutes, points, assists and steals in 2010-11 and won the conference tournament title over Arizona with a floating jumper at the buzzer. With Thomas gone and Wroten in, the Huskies were replacing a very good but undersized lefty point guard with a much bigger, much more naturally talented version -- and a guy with plenty of his own swagger, too.

After seven games, at least one thing is clear: Wroten is every bit as important for the Huskies as Thomas. Maybe even more so.

The question is whether Wroten is ready for that sort of responsibility. On that front, the jury is still very much out.

The freshman guard has had no shortage of opportunities this season. After seven games, per Ken Pomeroy's adjusted efficiency stats, Wroten ranks No. 4 in the nation -- to be clear, that's No. 4 out of every college basketball player in the country -- in usage rate. Wroten finishes 35.9 percent of his team's available possessions when he's on the floor; the next-highest of the Huskies, sophomore Terrence Ross, checks in at 21.7 percent.

Wroten has dominated possessions: He brings the ball up the floor and initiates Washington's offense, but he also has the freedom to create for himself whenever he chooses to do so. He takes 28.8 percent of his team's available shots.

The problem? Wroten's efficiency isn't just so-so -- so-so would be good for a player that shoulders this much of his team's offensive load. No, Wroten's efficiency numbers are downright bad. After seven games, the guard's offensive rating, per KenPom, is 86.0. (For comparison's sake, Ross' 118.5, while teammate C.J. Wilcox is among the best in the country at 131.2.) His effective field goal percentage (which accounts for the added value of a 3-point shot) is 46.2 percent. His true shooting percentage (which factors in free throw percentage) is 47.2. Wroten's turnover rate is 27.6 percent.

According to Synergy Sports Technologies data, Wroten has scored 88 points on his 119 possessions this season -- an average of .739 points per possession. Wroten has been much better in transition (27 points on 26 possessions) than he has in the half court, but half-court possessions have accounted for 78.2 percent of his possessions on the floor. His tallies in those trips: 93 possessions, 61 points, .656 points per possession. Synergy's built-in descriptors politely describe this mark as "below average."

Weirdly enough, it's not as if Wroten has been forcing bad jumpers or obviously trying to do more than he's capable of. According to Synergy, 71.4 percent of his shots are "around basket (not post-ups)." Essentially, as the Wroten film backs up, these are drives to the rim. He simply hasn't been finishing. Throw in the close misses with the turnovers, and you have a recipe for severe individual offensive frustration.

Fortunately, there are plenty of positive signs in Wroten's game. Despite all the turnovers, his turnover-to-assist ratio is still positive, because Wroten has been finding open teammates with regularity. (Assist rate: 30.1 percent, which ranks just outside the top 100 nationally.) Wroten has also turned those drives into plenty of trips to the free throw line; he's drawing nearly 7.2 fouls for every 40 minutes he's on the floor (national rank: No. 32).

In the meantime, the Huskies' problems aren't limited to their freshman guard. He isn't the only one turning the ball over, for example. Plus, Romar has said that he's allowed his team to experiment in the first few weeks in order to better find out what he was.

"I've looked at that quite a bit, and obviously that's my fault," he said. "Early on, as you're putting your team together, a lot of times offensively you kind of let the guys play more just to try to find out who can do what when they're actually playing.

"Sometimes you can restrict players and hold them back and you don't know what they are capable of giving you. I kind of let the guys blow it out early on, probably too much. It usually bites us early because we don't do as good of a job offensively as we should do."

That quote came before Washington's loss at Nevada, but it's no less true for the passage of time. It's safe to assume Romar will gradually attempt to tighten Wroten's game, to accentuate the things he's good at -- leading the Huskies in transition, creating matchup problems on the perimeter, penetrating and working toward the rim -- and minimize the problem areas.

There are other caveats, too. Here's a big one: Wroten is still just a freshman. Much like Austin Rivers or Harrison Barnes or anyone else, it's unfair to judge him after four weeks of college basketball. There's a learning curve, and Wroten is on it.

Likewise, it's important to remember that whole small sample size thing. It's just seven games. It's early.

More likely than not, Wroten will finish more of those plays around the rim, improve his efficiency and have a very productive freshman season in Seattle. He'll adjust to collegiate defenses, realize he can't get away with certain things at this level, and cut down on his turnovers in the process. He'll get used to playing with guys like Ross and Wilcox and Abdul Gaddy, and he'll defer more frequently when the shots don't fall. If I had to guess whether Wroten will improve, worsen or perform at roughly the same level all season, I'd bet the house on "improve."

But as early as it is, we do know this much for sure: Few players in 2011-12 will be as important to their teams' success -- or failures -- as Wroten. The Huskies' potential mirrors their silky 6-foot-5 freshman point guard's. They can't improve if Wroten doesn't.

In other words: Stay tuned.

Washington cancelled an alumni scrimmage that would have featured the current team playing against NBA players such as Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Jon Brockman and Spencer Hawes because the scrimmage could have been a NCAA violation after coach Lorenzo Romar publicized the event, according to the Seattle Times.

Romar said the game against the alumni would have been the best competition the Huskies faced this season. But he put the scrimmage in jeopardy by talking about them during a pair of interviews Tuesday. And several players also tweeted about the scrimmage, which may have been a compliance issue.

According to NCAA exception 14.1.8.1.6: "A former (student-athlete) at the certifying institution ... may participate in an organized practice session on an occasional basis, provided the institution does not publicize the participation of the former student at any time before the practice session."

The cancellation caused Hawes to tweet that the "NCAA is such a joke," adding, "NCAA should embrace former athletes going back to school and supporting their athletic programs. What harm does it do? Everyone benefits." Recent NBA draft pick Isaiah Thomas took aim at the NCAA as well, tweeting, "NCAA has TOOOOOO many rules... Like too many STUPID rules."

What would have been a fun event for the fans and former players now won't be taking place because Romar discussed the game on the radio. The current Huskies also miss out on playing NBA talent that has been idle during the lockout. The early glimpse of the team in action will have to wait until an exhibition game next week, as Washington tries to get back to the NCAA tournament.

Nobody seems to win in this situation.

Washington's preseason practices continued to be hampered by injuries, as freshman guard Tony Wroten underwent arthroscopic surgery on his right knee Thursday. The Huskies' top incoming recruit said in a statement that the surgery was "minor" and that his goal was to return to action by the time the Huskies play a Nov. 4 exhibition game.

A team spokesman would not comment on if the discomfort was related to a torn anterior cruciate ligament Wroten suffered in high school while playing football, forcing him to miss his junior season.

"Tony could have probably gone the whole season with a little discomfort at times and played through this," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said in a statement. "But he and his family, plus our staff, thought it would be better to take care of this now so he would be fine for the rest of the year.

"It has been nagging him a little bit, but he'll be ready to go in no time soon."

Wroten, the nation's fifth-ranked point guard recruit for the class of 2011 by ESPNU, is expected to make a significant impact on the team after missing some practice time due to the procedure.

The surgery comes less than a week after Washington's top 3-point shooter, Scott Suggs, underwent foot surgery that is expected to sideline him at least eight weeks.

Washington, which received votes in the coaches' preseason top-25 rankings released earlier in the day, does have point guard Abdul Gaddy returning to the team after recovering from a season-ending ACL injury from January.

The Huskies' guard play will be an important factor after top scorer Isaiah Thomas unexpectedly left school for the NBA draft following his junior season.

Washington guard Tony Wroten is one of the most highly-touted freshman guards in the country, and Huskies coach Lorenzo Romar isn't exactly shy about his excitement.

Over the weekend, there was Romar on 950 KJR comparing Wroten to Magic Johnson, saying, "Sometimes guys see things, but they see it a second late. He sees things right as they are developing and he delivers the ball on the spot. And he can do that while going full speed. And those are things that Magic was able to do."

On Tuesday during his first news conference of the season, Romar also talked about the under-appreciated part of Wroten's game on defense. Romar learned that while speaking with the coach of the USA Under-17 team that Wroten helped win a gold medal.

"When he did come into the game, the game would change because defensively, he would lead the charge," Romar said. "That was pretty impressive. When the game was on the line, that’s how he would respond."

Wroten, the fifth-ranked point guard in the 2011 class, is perhaps better known for his flashy passes and athleticism. Wroten being well-rounded at such an early stage of his career would be even more dangerous for Pac-12 opponents hoping the Huskies experience a drop-off in the backcourt after Isaiah Thomas left for the NBA draft.

There will be a certain amount of pressure on Wroten as well because of the confident style he played with in high school and because the Seattle native will have the ball in his hands in front of a hometown crowd.

The fans will be expecting Wroten to deliver excitement, just as he did for Romar on the recruiting trail while with Team USA.

We've written at length about the NCAA's silly recruiting communications rules, especially the rules that disallow text messages and closely restrict phone calls, but allow coaches to send unlimited email, Facebook and Twitter messages. As anyone with a smartphone and an unlimited text-messaging plan knows, the distinction between a direct message on Twitter and a text message is practically nil. Most people have smartphones; lots of people have unlimited texting plans. Each method of communication can be acted on or ignored at will. Why levy unnecessary rules? Why not let the tech-savvy teens of 2011 handle recruiting requests with the same intuitive understanding they practice in every other facet of their digital lives?

In August, the NCAA's Division I Leadership Council made several recruiting-oriented recommendations, one of which was "deregulating the type of communication between coaches and prospects (including text messaging and other forms of electronic communication)." Modernity! It feels good, doesn't it?

Lost in the discussion about regulations and feasibility and what's best for the prospects is something Lorenzo Romar touched on in an interview with the Seattle Times's Percy Allen Tuesday. Just because a coach can send more messages doesn't mean he should. Too much contact can be counterproductive:

"The thing is kids just look at your text or look at the number and they don't have to respond. It's not like way back in the day when if you answered the phone you're stuck. (Laughter) Read the number. I you don't want to answer, you don't answer. It makes you wonder as a coach am I working hard enough? Am I calling enough? I've gotten enough feedback from the kids that it just becomes counterproductive after a certain point. You're calling too much and texting too much."

Yes, the same rules that apply to helicopter parents and jilted ex-girlfriends apply to college coaches: If someone's ignoring you, it probably means they don't want to talk. You may want to. But they don't. There's no way to force the issue. And if you repeatedly text or call or email or message, they're only going to be further turned off. Desperation is never attractive.

In other words, prospects can handle this stuff. The NCAA's current communications designations are an amalgam of ideas from a time before caller ID, email, text messages, social networks, ubiquitous cell phone (and now smartphone) use. Those technologies have changed the way many of us communicate. We don't even have to think about it anymore: Ignore that. Save that for later. Respond to that now.

Thanks to our shiny gadgets, we're simultaneously more informed and more distracted than any time in human civilization. Socially, we're simultaneously more open and more isolated than ever before. The important part is, we can choose between these effects at any time. Why would college basketball prospects be any different?

The best college hoops players don't take breaks. Their offseason is a mix of camps, workouts, exhibitions, workouts and more workouts. But the best players don't just work out. They construct finely tuned plans for their development, focusing on specific, tangible goals. You don't try to "become a better shooter." You try to make 18,000 shots before the start of practice in October.

Or, at least, that's what Washington guard Abdul Gaddy is doing. On Tuesday, Gaddy tweeted the following:

"18,000 Makes before preseason... Been tallying since I started... Getting closer... This how much I got now.."

His progress to this point was included in a Twitter photo, which you can see here. It's just a list of numbers written in pen on notebook paper with the title "Makes Before Preseason," which seems like a slightly spartan way to keep track of this much data. There's got to be an app for that, right?

No matter. The message -- Gaddy has already accumulated 8,280 makes this offseason, with a goal of reaching 18,000 by Oct. 15 -- is much more important than the medium. The Huskies guard struggled from beyond the arc in his freshman season but morphed into a 40 percent 3-point shooter before his sophomore season was derailed by a season-ending injury. Despite the limited time on the floor, Gaddy's sophomore year was hugely promising: He posted a 123.1 offensive rating, an effective field goal percentage of 57.4, a true shooting percentage of 59.0 and an assist rate of 26.8. Compare it to former teammate and Washington star Isaiah Thomas's season statistics, and even if you factor in some statistical decline thanks to more playing time and a greater role in the offense, there's still good reason to think Washington's backcourt won't suffer much of a drop-off without Thomas in 2011-12.

In the meantime, we know Gaddy is in the gym, firing up thousands of shots, recording each make in his notebook. The stats are good enough already. If he turns all this offseason work into legitimate improvement -- if he becomes a deadly outside shooter as well as an efficient distributor -- look out. Washington fans may have another backcourt star on their hands.

If you're an Arizona fan, you'll love the video from Yay Area's Finest, a compilation of top recruit Brandon Ashley's greatest hits.

If you root for any other team in the Pac-12, the thought of having to face the No. 4-ranked recruit in the 2012 class in the near future has to be frightening after the 6-foot-8 Ashley committed to Arizona this week, joining top-50 recruits Grant Jerrett and Gabe York as future Wildcats.

Arizona vaulted itself into ESPNU's top spot in the team recruiting rankings after Ashley verbally agreed to coach Sean Miller, and that's not all. When I spoke with ESPN.com senior recruiting analyst Dave Telep, he was talking about a future national championship for the Wildcats based upon this latest class.

"They certainly are assembling the pieces," Telep said. "Every single recruiting class under Sean has gotten better than the previous one. The natural progression is Final Four and national championship. Those are reasonable expectations.

"The gauntlet's been thrown down by Arizona already. What they're doing from a recruiting perspective is putting distance between them and the rest of the league."

The Wildcats have awakened since Miller arrived. His first recruiting class resulted in Derrick Williams, who went on to lead the team to an Elite Eight and become the No. 2 overall pick in the NBA draft. This year's incoming freshman class is ranked No. 7 and includes top point guard Josiah Turner.

"In life, we make the assumption that everyone's great at their jobs, but there are guys that are a lot better than other guys," Telep said. "Sean Miller is in the upper crust of college basketball coaches.

"A guy like Miller who's willing to toe the line with [Lorenzo] Romar and [Ben] Howland is good for the conference."

That's because while it's undeniable that the Pac-10 has been down in recent years, Arizona's successes have raised the bar going forward. UCLA might have lost out on Ashley to its rival, but Howland continues to have his sights set on top overall recruit Shabazz Muhammad while already having compiled the nation's No. 13 class in 2012 with top-100 recruits Jordan Adams and Dominic Artis. Romar is consistently in the mix for top recruits on the West Coast. And Pac-12 newcomers Colorado and Utah have top-100 commitments from Josh Scott and Jordan Loveridge, respectively.

The league appears to be on its way back up, and it's Sean Miller and Arizona that lead the way.

Seattle will once again have a Shawn Kemp to cheer.

Shawn Kemp, Jr., whose father starred for the SuperSonics, has signed with Washington and gives the Huskies a much-needed big man.

Arriving in Seattle has been a long time coming for the 6-foot-9, 265-pounder. Washington was among the schools recruiting him out of high school, and the Huskies got back in the mix after his commitments to Alabama and Auburn were done in by academic issues. He attended high school in Canton, Ga., and then post graduate school at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va.

Coming to Washington means coach Lorenzo Romar was able to add another big man to a recruiting class that was in need of some. "He gives us additional size and athleticism up front," Romar said in a statement.

The son of one of the greatest leapers in NBA history began school Thursday in a Washington program called Summer LEAP, which is designed to give Huskies athletes an opportunity to get acclimated to college life and the school's academics.

For Kemp, Jr., who was once the No. 34-ranked center by ESPNU, simply getting a chance to play college basketball is big. He might not be the NBA prospect coming out of high school like his father was, but there was enough potential for Washington to give him a scholarship and Auburn to sign him back in 2009.

"Shawn Kemp has tremendous upside," then-Auburn coach Jeff Lebo said in a statement at the time. "He ... can shoot the ball from the perimeter and has a legitimate low post game. Shawn is a kid who has really unlimited potential to go certainly to the next level with his play. He can block shots. He can run.

"He is just on the first step of becoming a very good basketball player."

Isaiah Thomas had doubters during his college career at Washington, and such is life for a 5-foot-9 player who always exuded such confidence. When he struggled with his shot, he worked to get better. When he was forced into action as a point guard, he carried the Huskies.

So after leaving school early only to be drafted by the Sacramento Kings with the last pick of the second round, Thomas said the chip already on his shoulder has grown.

"Yes. You know it will," he said in a statement Thursday. "I will be in the gym tomorrow. While I'm disappointed that some of the players got chosen ahead of me, at the same time, everything happens for a reason. I'm just ready to get after it and show the other 29 teams that they made a mistake."

Thomas was the last of the six players from the Pac-10 to be drafted and was selected 25 picks after the Kings went with UCLA's Tyler Honeycutt. It was a surprise when he declared for the draft, and now he should feel fortunate to get picked.

"I'm excited for him that he got drafted," Washington coach Lorenzo Romar said in a statement. "With there only being two rounds and 60 players chosen, I'm glad that he was one of them. I know he would have liked to have gotten drafter higher, but he is a part of this draft. So, I'm happy for him."

"He already has kind of a permanent chip on his shoulder and I'm sure the chip just got bigger."

Thomas said he was alone during the draft, and didn't spend much time watching it, only occasionally taking a peek at the television. He eventually went home to his Seattle apartment to be with family members and got the call from his agent soon afterward and was able to share an emotional moment with them.

"It was just a blessing," Thomas said. "It is a moment I will cherish for my life, but at the same time I got my foot in the door and now I'm going to knock it down."