Player of the Game: Capers. 16 and 6.

Unsung Hero: Motum. 14 and 5.

Stat of the Game: something something free throws.

One last stomach punch, for the road.

This too shall pass...

Try not to crush it with pictures this time.

Dancing Football Edit: Except for this one:

via omfgames.archonic.com

The Time: 8:10 PST

The Place: The Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA

The Coverage: FSN National. I even have it in HD! Sadly, I will have to stay up to midnight to watch it in full, and east coasters until 1 am.

KenPom says: No. 116 WSU 70 No. 125 Oregon 69 (52% confidence, 67 possessions)

Key to the Game

The most important thing the Cougs must do tonight is score more points than the Ducks. They failed to do this on Saturday.

Yay for playing teams twice in a row!

More photos » Paul Sakuma - AP

Your player of the year... much to the chagrin of Lorenzo Romar, Mike Montgomery and Pac-10 player of the week award fans.

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We've had our initial reaction. You've had your chance to comment.

Now, we throw down the gauntlet. Nuss, Craig and I make our choices known for the 2009-2010 Pac-10 All-Conference team. You will notice some stark differences between our selections and those of the conference coaches. We don't care about points per game, for example. Anyone - even our beloved Klay - can jack up 20 shots a game and score a lot of points. How efficiently someone scores matters more. Also: how efficiently a player rebounds, assists and/or steals the ball. No wussy old-school stats here (well, at least not most of the time). Tempo-free stats are the standard. Also - defense matters. Silly idea, I know.

We also did our best to make the teams look like actual teams. Meaning that, in theory, one of these teams could be thrown out on the court and actually function as a unit - not just consisting of four or five point guards out there at the same time.

It goes without saying the selections for this year were extremely difficult. Sometimes I wondered if there actually were 15 good players in this conference. The most disagreement among the three of us, naturally, came on the third team where there just aren't any clear-cut choices. You hit players 12 through 15 and already feel like you're scraping the bottom of the barrel. In some ways, you are. This conference is just that short on elite players.

I had to become overly, painfully aware of the kenpom.com profiles for all ten teams in the conference. The result was my ballot turned out quite a lot like Nuss'. Great minds study Ken Pomeroy, apparently. Craig's picks were fairly similar, but I feel he valued defense more than the rest of us. In some ways I wish I had done that - after all, score prevention is just as important as scoring - but there just aren't many good defensive metrics available to us. The eye test becomes the key - and that's how a zone defender ends up being named defensive POY by the coaches. Don't worry, Seth Tarver didn't make our defensive team.

I'll post the winners here. Read on for the explanations:

Individual awards: (* indicates unanimous selection)

Player of the Year - Landry Fields, Stanford
Coach of the Year - Herb Sendek, ASU
Defensive Player of the Year - Nikola Vucevic, USC
Most Improved Player - Nikola Koprivica, WSU*
Freshman of the Year - Derrick Williams, Arizona

All-Pac-10: First Team

G - Jerome Randle, Cal*
G - Patrick Christopher, Cal
G/F - Landry Fields, Stanford*
F - Quincy Pondexter, Washington*
F/C - Derrick Williams, Arizona

Second Team

G - Ty Abbott, ASU
G - Isaiah Thomas, Washington
G/F - Theo Robertson, Cal
F - Jamal Boykin, Cal
F/C - Nikola Vucevic, USC

Third Team

G - Nic Wise, Arizona
G - Derek Glasser, ASU
G/F - Jeremy Green, Stanford
F - Nikola Koprivica, WSU
F/C - DeAngelo Casto, WSU

Freshman Team

G - Reggie Moore, WSU*
G - Trent Lockett, ASU*
G/F - Tyler Honeycutt, UCLA*
F - Reeves Nelson, UCLA*
F/C - Derrick Williams, Arizona*

Defensive Team

G - Venoy Overton, Washington*
G - Jorge Gutierrez, Cal*
G - Patrick Christopher, Cal
F/C - Nikola Vucevic, USC*
F/C - DeAngelo Casto, WSU*

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More photos » George Nikitin - AP

Your Pac-10 Player of the Year.

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The Pac-10 just released its all-conference awards, and in what calls into question the validity of the entire process, Klay Thompson was named to the conference's first team.

Look, I love Klay. I'm very happy for him to get this award, because I'm happy anytime a Cougar wins something, considering how often it seems like we get overlooked. But there is no way on God's green earth that Klay Thompson deserved to be on the first team (or even second team, for that matter) of this conference after his performance over the last 18 games, which is what I thought the criteria was. Sorry.

EDIT: Some of you might be wondering why this is true when a guy averaged nearly 20 points per game. First off, he didn't average that in Pac-10 play, which is supposed to be the criteria for these teams -- he averaged 16.1. Second, raw stats don't tell the whole story. He took more shots than everyone in the conference but Landry Fields, yet could only muster 16 points per game? 

That's why his tempo-neutral stats tell the better story. He had the 32nd best effective field goal percentage and 51st overall offensive rating. FIFTY-FIRST! Klay was great at times, but in Pac-10 play -- when you take into account just how many shots he took -- he was probably the least efficient scorer in the conference. There aren't many guys in this league who wouldn't score 16 or more points per game if they took nearly 15 shots a game.

I'm not trying to hate on the guy. I love him. I'm glad he's ours. He's going to challenge for conference player of the year next year. But he didn't deserve to be on that team this year.

However, if we want to talk about people who were correctly recognized, let's talk about DeAngelo Casto making the all-defensive team. Congratulations to him, although I think he should have been on the all-conference second team ahead of Calvin Haynes.

Also, congratulations to Reggie Moore for rightfully being selected to the all-freshman team, although that was kind of a no-brainer.

While we're criticizing the coaches, by the way, how about their choice of a zone defense player (OSU's Seth Tarver) as their defensive player of the year? I know he racked up a ton of steals, but c'mon ... that's like giving the Heisman to a Texas Tech quarterback because he threw 50 touchdowns. Silly.

Complete results after the jump. We'll have our CougCenter all-conference awards in the next couple of days. I can virtually guarantee we will differ significantly in some spots.

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Oregon "sweeps" the Cougars, and we're headed for the play-in game.

Meanwhile, I think Vince Grippi needs a bonus for still having the ability to write stuff about this team. Cue the sad charts:

Player of the Game: DeAngelo Casto. No one on this team is coming to close to what Casto's doing right now. 16 points on 5 of 8 shooting, 10 rebounds, 2 blocks.

Unsung Hero: Nikola Koprivica. Again. 10 points on 2 of 6 shooting (2 of 5 from three), 7 rebounds, 2 assists.

Play of the Game: Without the benefit of seeing the game, I'm going with the Capers rebound-dunk in the first half.

It was over when... 36% three-point shooter Tajuan Porter made 2 of 3 threes in the second half. Of course.

Stat of the Game: I don't really care enough to research this.

More photos » Rick Bowmer - AP

May not see this face again for a long time. Or possibly next week.

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Cal beats Stanford, so the Cougs can earn the #7 seed in the Pac-10 tourney with a win (eighth place overall).

If the Cougs lose, they are the worst team in the conference, but not really (because we already beat Oregon once). And whichever school finishes last has strange distinction of having the most wins of any last place team in conference history. So there's that.

I hate Oregon. Let's finish this regular season off right.

More photos » Rick Bowmer - AP

With scenes such as this repeating themselves game after game, is it any wonder I just can't do it anymore?

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There are things that are both great and terrible about managing and writing for a popular website.

On the great end, it's awesome to be able to share great experiences with other fans as passionate as I am about my favorite team. Also fun is the ability to make an observation in my head, write it down for the world to see, and have others find it thought provoking. It's pretty cool.

Then, there's the terrible end. You know, the part of the spectrum where whatever emotional thought that's running through my head ends up flowing to my fingers, through the keyboard, and onto the site. I like to try and maintain this even-keel persona around here, but I'm just as susceptible to emotional fits as anyone else. I just think sometimes I'm a little bit more disciplined about screaming at my television in my house without exposing it to the world.

Last night was not one of those nights where I was able to do that.

I have reached my breaking point, and it's not pretty when a patient, hopeful person loses all patience and hope.

Because Grady, Craig and I have all tried so insanely hard to be the guys who keep a level head and try to coax reason out of everyone who participates in the site, I feel like I owe people a little bit of an explanation.

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