Dime will be in the building all week for the 2012 Pac-12 basketball tournament to bring you updates on how the league is screwing with the NCAA selection committee’s collective head and the awesome Staples Center buffets.

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Day 2 of the Pac-12 Tournament just had to be better than Day 1 as far as quality was concerned. I knew this from the onset, but I didn’t know how crazy of a day it’d become. Look, this is a conference where some silly people think the regular season winner could potentially miss the Big Dance. Read More »

OK, college football, you got this one.

Responding to a week of college basketball that started strong with ESPN’s 24-hour tip-off marathon, then got scandalous with news of a potential catastrophe at Syracuse, the gridiron guys regained the spotlight with some Top-5 upsets and plenty of down-to-the-wire thrillers.

But even though college hoops took a comfortable backseat to the BCS, NFL and NASCAR, that doesn’t mean it was uneventful. Here are the best and worst of the weekend: Read More »

It’s players like incoming Washington freshman Tony Wroten Jr. who have me ready for college basketball. Forget BRI, the lockout, George Cohen and 50/50 splits. College basketball should be extra fresh this year. The powerhouses are back to take the throne, and the talent level – as far as future NBA players – is higher than it’s been in a minute. Wroten Jr. is one of those guys, a 6-4 lead guard who has a chance to be much bigger than his hype. At least he did before. His hype just took a steroid hit, courtesy of his coach at U-Dub, Lorenzo Romar. Read More »

It’s not a sprawling city, nor the mecca of all things urban where Washington’s diminutive and demonstrative point guard Isaiah Thomas grew up. No, I’m guessing Tacoma, Wash., with its evergreens – the Western Hemlock is the state tree, and yes, I looked that up – and mountainous skyline doesn’t have the same hoops culture as New York City.

But that indeed is where the point guard who’s the closest thing to the Bronx’s Kemba Walker grew up. Thomas, dubbed a “little monster” by Arizona head coach Sean Miller, brings a dangerous No. 7 seed Washington Husky squad into the NCAA Tournament with gusto. The team just might be as underrated as their pint-sized leader. Read More »

“The Decision,” as LeBron James and ESPN are billing it, will be revealed during an hour-long presentation tonight beginning at 9 p.m. EST.

You could compare the LeBron event to a blown-up version of a high school recruit picking his college. Which makes sense: LeBron wasn’t too heavily recruited in high school, because back then every college coach knew he was going straight to the NBA. So for him, this is a fun part of the game he missed out on.

We decided to chat with some Class of 2010 high school stars, all of them now incoming college freshmen who — not too long ago — were in the same position LeBron is in now. Read More »

Parity is real in college basketball. For the Dime editorial team, that was never more clear than a couple days ago when somebody pitched the idea that we make up lists of our Top-10 favorite players from each the Sweet Sixteen programs, and we quickly realized there aren’t that many tradition-rich options on the board. Ranking your 10 favorite Baylor basketball players would be like making an all-time Charlotte Bobcats team. 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 »