Pac 10 on Life Support

Remember 1995?  If you lived on the West Coast of the US it was a wonderful time.  San Francisco won their league-best 5th Super Bowl against Cali opponent, San Diego. Yahoo was founded in Santa Clara, California.  The OJ trial was sweeping America.  Steve Nash was lighting it up at Santa Clara University. Also in 1995, the heralded UCLA men's basketball program was winning its most recent National Championship.  On that roster was an unheralded sophomore guard by the name of Cameron Dollar most famous for inbounding the ball to Tyus Edny for the full court scramble and last second lay up in the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament against Missouri.

That is my lame attempt at a relevant introduction for Cameron Dollar.  After his career at UCLA, Dollar went right into coaching at the collegiate level.  To his credit, he has worked his way into his first head coaching position at the Division 1 level this season.  And this barely happened.  Seattle University, his current team, entered Division 1 as an Independent school this season.  For the last 30 years, they had been playing at the Division II level.  So there you go... Seattle University is now a Division I basketball team and their coach is Cameron Dollar.

That being said, the Pac 10 is garbage this year.  I am not being mean, they are bad.  UCLA is a paltry 7-8 and that includes losses to Cal State Fullerton, Portland, and Long Beach State.  Stanford is .500 with losses to San Diego and Oral Roberts.  USC has a self-imposed post season ban which means no post season tourneys whatsoever.  Most "Bracketoligists" have the Pac 10 earning 2 bids this year to the big dance.  TWO.  Translation: the west is off.  Things that should be up are down.  Its craziness.

And that brings us to last night.  Cameron Dollar took his newbie Division I squad into Corvallis, Oregon to face Pac 10 heavyweight, Oregon State.   Seattle didn't just beat them.... the crushed them, humiliated them, left them naked shivering on the floor.  How bad?  Tied for the worst lost loss in school history and now stands as the worst  home loss in school history.  The final score was 99-48.  A 51 point massacre.  And this was with Seattle's leading scorer and 9th in the nation, Charles Garcia, only scoring 2 points in the first 35 minutes before scoring 8 in the final 5 minutes.  I just can't make sense of it.  A total beat down.  The Pac 10 is just a mess.