January’s finished, the Pac-10 basketball season is half over, and where do our Bears find themselves?  12-9, 4-5 in the conference, currently in 7th place.  ‘Middling’ sounds pretty accurate.  Not that being in the middle of the Pac-10 is any shame.  7 of the conference’s 10 teams have been ranked this season, including 5 currently.  The conference RPI is the best in the land, with 5 teams in the top 35 and 8 in the top 70 (Cal checks in with an RPI of 60).  And when Stanford visits this Saturday, the Bears will face their fourth consecutive Top 25 team, and sixth in their last seven.  This is a tough league just to stay afloat in.  Just ask Arizona State.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the Bears were on the NCAA tournament bubble, on the outside looking in but definitely right there.  Not so much any more.  True, it’s hard to say their bubble has burst, as there are so many tough games ahead of them on the conference slate that a healthy winning streak would put them right back in the mix, but realistically, it’s hard to see where those wins would come from.  I would say that no less than 6-3 in the remaining conference games would be required, plus a win or two in the conference tournament.  That would put them at 19-13 or 20-13, right on the bubble.  Looking at the remaining schedule, do you see 6 wins?

Team (RPI)
Stanford (30)
@ Washington (69)
@ Washington State (34)
Oregon (15)
Oregon State (184)
@ UCLA (1)
@ USC (53)
Arizona (6)
Arizona State (233)

Cal should be able to beat OSU and ASU at home, but I don’t like their chances in the other 7 games.  Sure, they beat Stanford and Washington the first time around, but both teams are playing better now than they were a month ago.  If Cal plays Oregon as well as they did 2 weeks ago, they might win the game at Haas.  Maybe they can finish off USC in LA, as close as they came last Saturday.  Any of these things could happen.  But all of them?  I sincerely doubt it.

No, what I’ve been thinking for a few weeks now, but haven’t wanted to admit out loud, is that this year’s edition of Cal basketball has ‘NIT’ written all over it.  It’s a talented but flawed team, a winning team (but just barely), a middling team from a major conference with no pretensions towards a conference championship whatsoever.  In short, exactly the sort of team that ends up in the NIT.  This is not a schizophrenic team that will suddenly put it all together, like Syracuse in last year’s Big East tournament, or Arizona in the 1997 NCAA tourney.  No, we’ve seen how good this team is, and, deprived of both height and depth by injury, it’s not quite good enough.

Even the NIT is not a sure thing.  The Bears still need to win 4 more games this year (including in the Pac-10 tournament) just to finish with a winning record and be eligible for the NIT.  I think this team can win 4 more, especially if 3 of those games are against ASU and OSU (potential opponents in the first round of the tourney), and I don’t see this team going into the tank down the stretch the way the ‘04-’05 team did.

The good news is that, should Cal be relegated to the NIT, I like their chances in that tournament.  For starters, they should hopefully be getting healthy as March rolls around; if the Bears get DeVon Hardin back, they become a lot more formidable.  Also, with the notable exception of the 2nd half of the DePaul game, Cal has played pretty well on the road, or at least not appreciably worse than at home, something that’s important in a tournament played mostly on campus sites.  Finally, they shoot very well from the line; when a game comes down to the wire, I’ll put my money on the team that can sink their foul shots (see the Washington game as a prime example).

Of course, there’s still half a conference season left, and stranger things have happened than Cal making an NCAA run; I just don’t see it happening.  Prove me wrong, Bears.  Prove me wrong.