If you haven’t heard, this is supposed to be a down year for the Pac-10.

Over the summer the conference lost James Harden, Jordan Hill, DeMar DeRozan, Jrue Holiday, Darren Collison, Taj Gibson, Jeff Pendergraph, Jon Brockman and Chase Budinger to the NBA Draft. Going back to 2008, the Pac-10 also lost O.J. Mayo, Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook, the Lopez twins, Jerryd Bayless and Ryan Anderson, all of whom would still been in school today had they not gone pro early. Read More »

The Washington Huskies are stacked this year. Let me start over. The Washington Huskies lost arguably their two best players from last season and are still stacked.

After saying goodbye to seniors Justin Dentmon, the 2009 Pac-10’s most improved player, and Jon Brockman, UW’s all-time leading rebounder, Washington is still predicted to roll through its west coast rivals thanks to freshman phenom Abdul Gaddy. Read More »

That’s right, the start of the college hoops season is just one week away and you know what that means: it’s time to unleash the mother effing fury! For the past seven months, I’ve been bottling up a vicious mixture of excitement and rage, just waiting for the moment to release my emotions onto the rest of the world. Well that time has come. Your boy Matty D is back to give you a look at the top teams in the country and to separate the champs from the chumps. Read More »

Dime’s Aron Phillips e-mailed the crew earlier today: “Ty Lawson has been getting as much coverage as Cyrano de Bergerac’s nose.” Although I wouldn’t have gone for the random French literature reference, Lawson’s injured toe has been one of the major story lines of this NCAA Tournament so far. After missing UNC’s first-round win over Radford, the junior point guard returned for today’s game against LSU. Read More »

If Day One of the NCAA Tournament lacked the drama everybody expected, Day Two more than made up for it. Put it this way: two of the late-night batch of games went into overtime (one to double-OT), and they still got outshined by another game in that same time slot. The biggest story was 13-seed Cleveland State knocking off Wake Forest, who if you remember was the No. 1-ranked team in the country not too long ago. This wasn’t your storybook Bryce Drew/Princeton-backdoor kind of upset, either; Read More »

Going into this year, DeMar DeRozan was supposed to be the next O.J. Mayo — not because he and the possible NBA Rookie of the Year play anything alike, but rather because DeRozan was supposed to follow a similar path as his USC predecessor: one-and-done, a quick Big Dance appearance, and onto the Green Room. Read More »