by Michelle Richardson

This is the first time that the Arizona Wild Cats (15-0) in the post Lute Olsen (the former head coach) era that the Wild Cats have their feet up there strong. Now that the team knows he’s not there now their going to give him his respect and there’s a new regime in charge as the Cats head coach Sean Miller are responding to that stability.

We’re still early in the season it’s January and the conference season is underway and expect Arizona to challenge a lot more as they hold the top rankings in the AP and USA Today polls. With UCLA Steve Holford he’s in his first year as head coach and he’s got something to prove the Pac 12 has always been a top basketball conference.

I’m not sure where the dark forces are coming from Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, but there might be a team that might pop up and you have to ask “hey where did you come from?” Maybe USC is going to be back in their game just wait and see. You can be assured UCLA, Washington, Oregon, they’ll all be in the mix.

Syracuse has always had a solid basketball program and its a shame that the Big East has woken up. The Big East’s loss is the ACC’s gain making the fact that the addition of Syracuse and Pittsburgh to the ACC conference more stronger. They get to go up against teams like the Duke, Florida State, North Carolina State, this is going to be a really good basketball program.

Its surprising that Syracuse(12-0) is ranked above North Carolina (9-3) but once you get into that conference schedule things can change. ACC basketball is going to be back and you can expect three to four teams out of the ACC to get to the tournament.

Syracuse is always a powerhouse when you go back to Xavier McDaniel, Derrick Coleman, and Shawn Douglas going back to those days its going to be very interesting to see how they play. The ACC plays very different basketball than what they do in the Big East.

This is going to be great television some of the fans will be getting their Direct TV packages and watch all the ACC basketball and its going to be fun and watching the conference breakdowns. The football bowl games effected basketball TV so were about ready to see how these conference realignments work out and its going to be very good for the ACC and its going to be very good for teams like the Big 12.

Michelle Richardson does commentary on the NCAA each week