UW is finally living up to their potential, which makes them a very dangerous #11 seed. I feel bad for Marquette. Look at some of the other 11 seeds. UW is one of the hottest teams in the nation and gets to stay close to home (San Jose). If they can get past Marquette, I'm sure they can beat New Mexico as well.
Isaiah Thomas and Quincy Pondexter form one of the most potent 1-2 punches in the nation, but if they don't get help from someone else it will be hard to advance.

theleftcoastbias.com breaks down UW's chances and the other teams from the west.

http://theleftcoastbias.com/?p=1751

It's a down year for the Pac-10 but the West still has many teams dancing, can't wait for it all to unfold. Who do you guy think has the best chance to make it to the final four? New Mexico? BYU? or the Dawgs?

Masoli suspended for the year by Chip Kelly.

Am I the only one who feels like Sark would absolutely not put up with this kind of stuff and would nip it in the bud before UW has a multitude of issues in a short period of time?  

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In case you're interested, I wanted to pass this along to you guys. I've written the SB Nation Pac-10 Tournament preview for the SBNation.com mothership, and I'm hoping many of your will take a few moments to check it out -- for a couple of reasons.

First off, you might learn something. But since I'm aware that you might not, since a lot of you are pretty darn smart and knowledgeable, you should go over there anyway just to see the cool stuff we're doing as a network.

The preview is actually the lead story for what's called a "StoryStream." I'll be continuously updating the stream with posts as the tournament advances, meaning it'll be your one-stop shop for everything related to the conference tournament, including tidbits, game recaps, video, etc.

Updates are shown chronologically, with the most recent ones at the top. (You can also toggle it to show the oldest posts first, because hey, we're like Burger King -- have it your way.) Additionally, you can help me out by clicking the "submit your post" button on the stream to pass tips my way if you find things that you think could be included on the stream.

The best feature, I think, is this: If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe to the stream here. The feed will deliver each update I post directly to your reader over the next four days. Pretty cool.

And if you dig it, take a look around the SBNation.com site -- I think you'll especially appreciate the college basketball page.

Last year, we CougCenter.com authors put together our inaugural Pac-10 all-conference awards. As we were working on this year's edition, a thought hit us.

What if we did a fan vote across all the SB Nation Pac-10 sites?

Here's your chance to get your voice heard. After the text is a link to a form you can fill out to submit your votes. It's pretty lengthy, but you have to fill the whole thing out  for your vote to be counted.

Just a few points of clarification.

1. We're asking for your home blog because it might be interesting to see how certain fan bases vote.
2. We're asking for your SB Nation user name because it will hopefully help keep us from getting spammed. Don't worry, we won't share how you voted, unless ...
3. If you leave a comment and we use it on the results post, we'll attribute it to your user name. If you don't want that to happen, don't leave any comments.
4. Base your selections on performance in conference, not the whole year.
5. This is an all-conference team, therefore, you are asked to select players who would actually comprise a basketball team. None of this wishy-washy, best five or 10 players regardless of position crap the actual conference does.

That's about it. We'll post the results on our site next week.

VOTE HERE NOW.

Theleftcoastbias.com came out with their weekly best in the west rankings today.

http://theleftcoastbias.com/?p=1312

It's hard to argue with New Mexico at the top spot especially after they beat BYU on the road. That BYU loss allowed for both Gonzaga and Cal to move up. Many of the west teams are still on the bubble, but hopefully the left coast comes to play in their post season conference tournaments. UW also made the rankings after being absent for the last two weeks.

You think that the lifting program at Washington is lacking discipline?  Donald Butler got 35 reps at 225 which was the most of any LB.  Not to take anything away from Donald because that is a show of his dedication to the weight room but a good portion is also the mindset that he gained at UW.  Very interesting to see where he was before Ivan compared to now.  Congrats D Butler, and knock'em dead March 10th!!!

Today, Deadspin.com said Oregon is "turning into an outlaw program right before our eyes."

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I'm a little surprised that nobody has reported on today's news from Oregon. There is only a small tidbit from an article on Yahoo sports, the article is dated today (2/20) and was updated this evening:

6:35 p.m. ET: Add another name to the list: Redshirt freshman linebacker Kiko Alonso, who was charged with driving drunk early this morning.)

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Just watched, and tried to listen, to ESPN Gameday live from HecEd. I say try to listen because Harry and the UW band had a huge crowd, expecially considering the UCLA game is not this afternoon, it is tonight, in prime form the whole hour. Deafening all morning long!

All conference rivalries aside, in a year the Pac-10 hasn't gotten a lot of love nationally, this Beaver congratulates the Huskies for a great job this morning.

Bob Condotta is reporting that walk-on QB Taylor Bean is leaving the team.  While not a disaster, it does put more pressure on the limited depth at the position.  Going into Spring Ball, there will only be 3 QB's (assuming Montana is able to enroll early).  Not ideal from a practice standpoint, and if Montana needs some time to become college ready I think the coaches might have preferred to use Bean in an emergency and keep Montana's redshirt if disaster were to strike.

Sark will be looking for a new walk-on QB or two, and Condotta is also reporting that there may be a guy targeted as a replacement walk-on - Josh Yoder of Canby H.S. in Oregon.