Previewing Tonight's Pac-12 Title Game

Reags 3/10/2018 4:06 PM

Pac-12 Championship – Las Vegas
No. 2 USC vs No. 1 Arizona – 10:00 pm

The final major conference championship tonight takes place in Vegas with the Pac-12. It’s about right we have USC vs Arizona for the Pac-12 title with what happened all throughout the season. Both teams have lost an assistant coach due to the FBI investigation. That said these teams are talented, especially Arizona.

Here’s the thing with Arizona. They will pretty much always have the two best players on the floor and often times will have 3 out of 5. They will also always have the best player on the floor. We saw that last night with Deandre Ayton and what he was able to do against UCLA. Thomas Welsh was going bucket for bucket with Ayton and then Ayton absolutely took over. The man is a monster out there and you have to respect him from 15 feet out too.

I do have a soft spot for this USC too. I know they don’t have De’Anthony Melton and Bennie Boatwright, but they do have Metu and McLaughlin. Watching USC play, the thing they can do is beat you a couple different ways. Elijah Stewart can attack off the bounce or catch and shoot. They can attack Arizona, especially from the wing. This season the biggest problem for Arizona has been its inability to defend the wing. Part of that is what happens when you play both Ristic and Ayton at the same time. If you want to look for a possible mismatch, McLaughlin can attack PJC off the bounce. The one thing McLaughlin can do is probe from up top and wait for an opening.

Neither of these teams want to shoot a ton of threes. They want to get the ball to the post and let their guys operate there. With Arizona they can do a couple of different things. They’ll run Ayton to the high post while putting Ristic on the baseline. Both guys can step out to 12-15 feet and keep the lane open. That allows PJC/Alkins to drive. It also allows Trier to attack from an ISO set up top. That’s what I like Arizona here. I think they are starting to figure it all out and we saw them get some stops against UCLA.