Packed Saturday presents opportunity for Pac-12 Men's Basketball

COMPLETE RELEASE

#PAC12HOOPS STARTING FIVE:

7-1 - For the second straight season, third time in four years and fifth time in the past seven campaigns, COLORADO has started the season 7-1. The Buffaloes reached the postseason in four of those five seasons, with three NCAA Tournament berths and an NIT bid.

• CU’s current five-game win streak is the longest in the Pac-12 and tied for 15th-longest in NCAA Division I.

11-10-11 - UCLA’s Jaylen Hands, the Conference’s assists leader at 6.8 per game, has recorded double-figure assists in three consecutive games (11 vs. Hawai’i, 10 vs. LMU, 11 vs. Notre Dame), the first player in Bruins’ program history to accomplish the feat.

• According to STATS, Inc., Hands is the first Conference player to accomplish the feat since USC’s Brandon Granville in March 2000.

12 - UCLA extended its home-court win streak to 12 consecutive games with Kris Wilkes’ game-winning three pointer with less than a second remaining in Saturday’s 65-62 victory over Notre Dame.

• The Bruins will put that streak - tied as the nation’s 13th longest - on the line on Saturday against Ohio Valley Conference preseason favorite Belmont.

16 - This week’s 16-game Pac-12 schedule features 10 Saturday contests, seven power league opponents, six road/neutral venues, three preseason league favorites, and two ranked opponents with UTAH visiting No. 19 Kentucky and WASHINGTON facing No. 13 Virginia Tech in the Boardwalk Classic in Atlantic City.

232 - NCAA Division I’s career steals leaders both hail from the Pac-12 as WASHINGTON’s Matisse Thybulle (232) and OREGON’s Ehab Amin (228) are first and second, respectively

• Thybulle currently ranks ninth in Conference history with his 232 thefts, 90 shy of Gary Payton’s league record. Thybulle totaled 101 thefts in 2017-18.
• 218 of Amin’s career steals came in three seasons at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, including an NCAA-leading 105 in 2016-17.

PAC-12 TIPOFF:

STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE: Based on opponents’ win percentage through Dec. 10 games, WASHINGTON has faced the third-most difficult schedule so far this season as its foes have a cumulative .730 (73-27) win percentage, trailing only No. 1 Kansas (.812) and No. 3 Tennessee (.737). ARIZONA ranks 11th in the nation in the same category at .710 (66-27).

• 11 of 12 Conference programs boast an opponents’ win percentage over .570 as of Dec. 10, second only to the Big Ten’s 14.

ROOKIE RANKS: Two of the six freshmen in the country averaging at least 20.0 points play in the Pac-12 in ARIZONA STATE’s Luguentz Dort (22.0 ppg) and OREGON’s Bol Bol (21.1). The ACC is the only other league with multiple rookies in the category.

• The Pac-12 also has three of the nation’s top 10 rookie rebounders in UCLA’s Moses Brown (9.8 rpg, 2nd among freshmen), Bol (9.6 rpg, 3rd) and WASHINGTON STATE’s CJ Elleby (7.9, 10th).