From Pullman -- Many of my fondest memories of growing up in Olympia include the basketball gym at the Evergreen State College. My AAU team had practices and occasionally tournaments there and you could always find a pickup game on weekdays in the late afternoon. Geoducks games were always a lot of fun, and occasionally they'd get a real stud, someone who could be playing D-I ball like Quincy Wilder or Nate Menefee. For just a few bucks you could watch the game until you were bored, and then head into the back gym to play against other kids with the same idea. When water damage made the Capital High School gym unusable my senior season, we practiced and played at TESC until everything was fixed up.

None of that is relevant, except to provide context for just how bemused I was to find out that Utah, a Pac-12 school, played a regular season game against the Geoducks today. The result was pretty much what one one would expect against a team that battles community colleges for recruits. It's especially curious considering that the Utes played their exhibition game against St. Martin's University, an NCAA Division-II team and the local rival of TESC, which plays in the second division of the NAIA.

The men's basketball team at Washington State University had its home opener today, narrowly beating Cal State Bakersfield.

Links from around the conference after the jump.

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• Arizona isn't taking any chances with UCLA's dangerous quarterback.
• The Buffaloes need to learn to keep up with the Joneses.
• Had you heard that Oregon lost to Stanford? If not, how do you heat your rock residence during winter?
• The Cardinal are embracing their inner nerd.
• The desert has been unkind to the Bruins.
• USC will be without D.J. Morgan who underwent knee surgery.
• The Utes are eager to face the Sun Devils.
• Bonus Link: These boys were unstoppable ... until they ran into Bellevue.

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