Pac-12 Basketball Power Rankings: USC, Arizona hold on to top two spots

This conference is chaos

The Pac-12 is going to have bizarre things happen all season. It's just time we accept that and move on.

With that in mind, our top two teams were both impressive last weekend, so they keep their stranglehold on the top of the conference. And then Washington State was very unimpressive, so they were almost a unanimous selection among our 11 voters in last (one person had them 11th). USC was one vote away from being the unanimous top team.

With that said, here's a look at how we as a group collectively ranked the Pac-12 after three weeks of conference play. One point is awarded for 1st place votes, two points for 2nd and so on:

Rank (Change from last week's rankings)	Team (Conference record)	Points
1 (0)	USC Trojans (4-1)	12
2 (0)	Arizona Wildcats (3-2)	21
3 (0)	Oregon Ducks (3-2)	45
4 (+5)	Colorado Buffaloes (3-2)	49
5 (-2)	Washington Huskies (4-1)	60
6 (0)	UCLA Bruins (2-3)	74
7 (+1)	Utah Utes (2-3)	79
8 (-1)	California Golden Bears (2-3)	81
9 (+2)	Stanford Cardinal (3-2)	95
10 (-5)	Oregon State Beavers (2-3)	99
11 (-1)	Arizona State Sun Devils (1-4)	112
12 (0)	Washington State Cougars (1-4)	131

Colorado made the biggest jump of the week thanks to a home sweep of the Oregon schools. Oregon State falls mostly because of a late-game collapse against Utah, although getting dominated by Colorado probably didn't help their case much either.

Other than that, there was not a ton of movement. It's interesting that Cal and Stanford are next to each other at 8th and 9th. You could argue that ASU has had a pretty disappointing start to the conference season, and it's kind of surprising to see them so far down the rankings.

I would like to point out that no single voter had this exact order. It's ridiculously difficult to try and figure out the middle of the Pac-12 right now.

This week, the Arizona schools go to the Bay Area, the mountain schools go to Washington, and the L.A. schools go to Oregon. So what strange things will happen this week? We'll just have to wait and see.

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