Washington Tops Cal To Win Pac-10 Championship, 79-75

For more, check out our Washington blog, UW Dawg Pound, and our Cal blog, California Golden Blogs.

Los Angeles, CA (Sports Network) - Quincy Pondexter had 18 points to lead Washington to a 79-75 win over California, as the Huskies won their second Pac-10 Conference Tournament title.

For all the talk of how crazy the conference has been this year, the Pac-10 Tournament has provided a decidedly un-crazy showdown for its championship today, as the top two teams in the conference’s preseason poll -- California and Washington -- will meet for the right to lock up an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The Bears and Huskies have left little doubt who the two best teams in the conference are. Cal used a 22-7 second half run to put away a pesky UCLA team, 85-72, while Washington led from tip to finish in dispatching Stanford, 79-64.

Seth Kolloen and I got together late Thursday night/early Friday morning to record a special conference tournament episode of our Pac-10 hoops podcast, 18 And Life. We give our thoughts on the Pac-10’s quarterfinal round of the conference tournament as well as preview the semifinals, which tip off tonight at 6 p.m. PST with UCLA and Cal.

You can listen to it via the embedded player below, and if you like what you hear, there are subscription options available at our main site. We’ll have more tomorrow morning, as well.

Last night’s upset by Stanford over Arizona State has already reverberated throughout the Bracketology world, where our own Chris Dobbertean has replaced ASU with Washington as one of the last four in the NCAA Tournament field after the Huskies came back to beat Oregon State last night. Here’s how he assesses UW’s resume:

Bracketology 101, another great bracket projection site, also has the Huskies as one of their last four in. While an encouraging sign for Husky fans, UW’s standing is still tenuous at best. Beating Stanford and reaching the championship of the conference tournament would seem to be the safest outcome for the Huskies, short of winning the whole thing.

The first full day of the Pac-10 Tournament is in the books with mostly predictable results, but it’s the one that didn’t go according to plan that could have the conference hurting come Sunday.

Arizona State was thought to be on the verge of playing its way into the NCAA Tournament with a win or two in the conference tournament, and it seemed to be a foregone conclusion that the Sun Devils were on a crash course with Washington in the semifinals.

If you’re looking to kill a couple of hours leading up to the noon PST tipoff of the quarterfinals of the Pacific Life Pac-10 Tournament brought to you by Pacific Life (only those who watched WSU/Oregon last night will get that joke), why not take a spin around SB Nation’s Pac-10 sites for the best conference tournament previews, news and notes?

California Golden Blogs offers up its own nice comprehensive preview of the tournament, identifying long shots, dark horses, contenders and the favorite. Not surprisingly, they think it’s Cal:

After watching a season that started with so much promise slide into a last place finish in a mediocre Pac-10, Washington State fans had to suffer one final indignity -- losing yet another overtime game to Oregon, 82-80, to be the only Pac-10 team eligible for the postseason to not be invited to the eight-team party on Thursday.

It was a typical Oregon/WSU affair, with the Ducks being led by Tajuan Porter, who, despite only averaging about 12 points per game in the regular season, somehow managed to go off for 32 points -- which he always seems to do against WSU.

If the written preview below just wasn’t enough for you, here’s your chance to learn even more.

18 And Life, the Pac-10 hoops podcast (co-hosted, not so coincidentally, by yours truly and Seth Kolloen of StomingTheFloor.net), breaks it down with a little help from Vince Grippi, Pac-10 reporter from The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash. Don’t let the comparatively small-town paper fool you -- his basketball strategy acumen is second to none among his peers. Lots of good insight.

To say it’s been a crazy year in the much-maligned Pac-10 would be an understatement.

The oddity didn’t stop there. Only four teams in the conference finished .500 or better (that hasn’t happened in five years), two games separated last place from fifth place, and the 10th place Washington State Cougars finished with the most wins of any last place finisher in the conference’s history (which, I’m pretty sure, doesn’t make them feel any better).