Basketball: UW nearly overtakes No. 7 Duke

The Pac-12 is now 0-10 this season against Top-25 teams . . .

— Duke 86, Washington 80: The Huskies (4-4) rallied from 19 points down in the second half but could not catch the No. 7 Blue Devils (9-1) at Madison Square Garden. UW scored just 26 points in the first half, then erupted for 54 in the second period. Freshman Tony Wroten Jr. scored 23 points off the bench and C.J. Wilcox had 22 for the Huskies. Duke won despite missing 17 free throws.

— Oregon 74, Fresno State 70: Devoe Joseph, a senior transfer from Minnesota, scored 18 points in his debut and the Ducks (5-2) won at home. Garrett Sim added 17 points and E.J. Singler scored 14.

— Arizona 63, Clemson 47: The Wildcats (7-3) got 14 points from freshman Nick Johnson and 13 points, seven rebounds and six assists from Solomon Hill.

— UCLA 77, Penn 73: In their first game since Reeves Nelson was booted from the team, the Bruins (3-5) used 21 points from Lazeric Jones to topple the Quakers (5-6) at Anaheim. Joshua Smith scored 12 points for UCLA and twins Travis and David Wear had 12 and 11 points, respectively.

— New Mexico 44, USC 41: San Jose’s Drew Gordon had 13 points and 13 rebounds and the Lobos (7-2) held off the Trojans (4-6) in Los Angeles. Maurice Jones scored 19 points and his teammates combined for 22.

— Arizona State 60, North Dakota State 57: Carrick Felix hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer, lifting the Sun Devils (4-5) to a home victory. Felix finished with 15 points and Kyle Cain added 14 points and 13 rebounds.

— BYU 61, Utah 42: Mountain West Conference rivals until last year when both left for new conferences, the Cougars (8-2) beat the Utes (1-8) for the 10th time in their past 11 meetings, Utah guard Josh Watkins, coming off a one-game suspension, scored 14 points to lead the host Utes, who are averaging just 48 points over their past three games.

SteveNTEXAS

IU 73- #1 KY 72 best game of the year. I caught hell on here when I said Cal needs better recruiting or it will decline over the next few years. IU has that recruiting with a top 5 class coming in.
bigdruid

steve, I think you have missed the point. Everyone here agrees that we need to recruit better players. The only thing people object to is the fact that you keep complaining about our recruiting without making any suggestions about how we can improve it.

The fact that *any* basketball team would perform better with better players is so banal that it is not worth bringing up constantly as you do, unless you actually have a suggestion on how to improve the situation.
jim crow

Despite the fact the IU has been down pretty much since Knight was booted, IU retains a huge recruiting advantage over Cal. It has a sterling basketball tradition, is located in a basketball hotbed. Probably even when down their large arena has been near capacity. I am guessing on this, as I have not really followed IU basketball for a long time.
The point, however, is that IU has a huge and impressive basketball tradition and following, neither of which has Cal. This makes a difference in recruiting.
Rollonubears

I’ll take out basketball and football combo over indiana’s, any day.
Sean

Just read recap of USC game. NM went without a field goal, but made 11 free throws, in the final 14:16 to hold on for the win. Now THAT’s bad…
SteveNTEXAS

Big druid – this thread is a few days old but yes I have made suggestions on how Cal can improve its recruiting. If each of us spend 5 minutes a day posting good things about our school and its program – both recruits and media would give us some attention.

Kids who can play basketball and read (At Cal the latter is important, as it is at IU) scour basketball news yet we aren’t even on the radar. Today is Sunday and you can bet – I will be reminding sports fans on many sites where Aaron Rodgers and Tony Gonzalez went to college.
bigdruid

Yeah, I’m not convinced that posting positive things on the internet about Cal (especially mentioning NFL stars like Gonzalez and Rodgers) is going to particularly increase Cal’s attractiveness to basketball recruits. It can’t hurt, I guess.

What *will* work is for us to win games, plain and simple. I guarantee you a couple of years of Sweet Sixteen appearances would do wonders for our recruiting. I love this team but we’ve gotta win games like SDSU if we want the type of tournament seeds that let you stay beyond the opening weekend. Recruiting begins with winning with the guys we already have.

Jeff Faraudo