As the calendar flipped to November, it looked like it was finally Utah’s time from laiyongcai92's blog

 Kyle Whittingham’s Utes Womens Brian Poole Jersey have maybe been the most consistently solid team in the Pac-12 South; they are also the only team not to have won it.After a brilliant October that featured blowouts of Stanford, Arizona, and UCLA and an arm’s-length win over USC, everything was aligned properly. The South stunk, and Utah was up to 12th in S&P+. This was the year.On November 3, starting quarterback Tyler Huntley broke his collarbone and was lost for the season, and the Utes got blown out at Arizona State.On November 7 or so, starting running back and 1,000-yard rusher (already) Zack Moss aggravated a knee injury climbing into bed. He, too, was lost for the season.On November 10, Utah surged to a 13-0 lead against Oregon with backup quarterback Jason Shelley and backup running back Armand Shyne but watched that slowly fritter away. Oregon took a 25-22 lead with eight minutes left, and another late-season malaise — Utah fans’ biggest complaint about Whittingham is mediocre Novembers — appeared underway.The Utes responded to Oregon’s lead with a five-play, 60-yard drive that culminated in a Shelley touchdown. They tacked on a late field goal and survived, 32-25. And after two weeks from hell, they somehow remain the statistical favorites in the division from hell.There have been some spectacularly strange division races this year, and while some have wrapped up (Northwestern won the Big Ten West), and others have a clear leader (Pitt is in control of the ACC Coastal), the Pac-12 South remains as messy as ever.Three teams still have a shot. At 4-3 and holding a tie-breaker advantage over Utah, Arizona State controls its own destiny, needing only to beat Oregon on Saturday and Arizona the Saturday after to reach its second conference title game.According to S&P+, though, the Sun Devils are projected underdogs against Oregon and are in a virtual tossup against UA. Controlling your destiny only means so much if you’re unlikely to win out.There are, for all intents and purposes, four games in this race. Let’s see what S&P+ has to say about each.November 17: Arizona State at Oregon (S&P+ win probability: Oregon 54%)November 17: Utah at Colorado (Utah 78%)November 17: Arizona at Washington State (Wazzu 80%)November 24: Arizona State at Arizona (50%)It should be noted that S&P+ is not designed to take injuries into account, at least not before the team’s play is affected by the injuries. So while it is extremely confident in Utah’s chances of winning at a collapsing Colorado, maybe it should be a hair less confident, even if the Utes offense looked fine last Saturday.Even if you tamp down that 78 percent win probability Womens Grady Jarrett Jersey , you only tamp it down so much (again, Colorado is lost in the woods at the moment), and win projections suggest Utah is still very much in the driver’s seat.Let’s look at the scenarios required for each team to win and the odds of each.Utah (65 percent)Beat Colorado and have ASU lose to either Arizona or Oregon (or both)Lose to Colorado but have ASU lose to both Arizona and Oregon and Arizona lose to WazzuArizona State (33 percent)Beat Oregon and ArizonaLose to Oregon, beat Arizona, have Colorado beat UtahBeat Oregon, lose to Arizona, have Colorado beat Utah and Wazzu beat ArizonaArizona (2 percent)Beat Washington State and Arizona State and have Utah lose to ColoradoHere are the odds of each potential combination:Pac-12 South ScenariosASU-UO winnerUU-CU winnerUA-WSU winnerASU-UA winnerS&P+ OddsSouth ChampASU-UO winnerUU-CU winnerUA-WSU winnerASU-UA winnerS&P+ OddsSouth ChampIf you believe that Utah’s win probability against Colorado is more like 70 percent because of the injuries, that changes the overall odds to Utah 60 percent, ASU 37 percent, Arizona three percent. And if you believe that Utah’s chances against Colorado are more like 60 percent (I do not), that tamps the Utes’ division odds down to about 55 percent. Regardless, if Utah handles its business in Boulder, the odds are good that ASU will lose one of the next two, and Whittingham will finally have his division title. It has long been the case that the biggest threat facing the Warriors was purely internal. Specifically, either one of two things: a Stephen Curry ankle injury or a personality implosion sparked by the blown-speaker-made-human that we call Draymond Green. Curry has stayed mostly healthy since the birth of the Golden State dynasty in 2013. Green has skated on the knife’s edge over the years, with a few spills, one of which helped cost the Warriors a championship in 2016. He flew off the edge again on Monday.As you know by now, the Warriors suspended Green without pay for their Tuesday game against the Hawks due to conduct detrimental to the team. That conduct reportedly included Green calling superstar teammate Kevin Durant a b---h a few too many times and screaming about KD being a free agency tease. The Athletic’s Marcus Thompson reports that the level of sanctions surprised Green and others. Green expected to walk away with a small fine and an unofficial suspension without being docked a game check or embarrassed in the media. Before we completely write off the Warriors, here are some episodes they’ve survived over the years:Draymond Green and Steve Kerr’s shouting match in Feb., 2016Draymond Green getting suspended during the 2016 FinalsStephen Curry’s untimely knee injury A previous KD-Draymond on-court war of words Steve Kerr’s health problemsKevin Durant’s burner accountsThe Rockets spurring an ISO-ball crisis in the 2018 West FinalsDavid West alluding to drama that hadn’t become public after winning another titleSome awkward KD jokes at the Warriors’ 2018 championship paradeGreen was piping mad at Durant before this punishment. How’s he going to feel now?Thompson, who knows the personalities inside the Warriors better than anyone in the media, is sounding the alarm bells about a breakup. He’s previously written that his “guess” is Durant will leave in free agency this summer, and reports now that the players and organization are reckoning with that as well. For Green, who played a huge role in recruiting Durant after the 2016 screw-up, this is particularly irksome. It must feel something like a betrayal. This could have all been calm and copacetic: a final bash with the super-duper-team before the Warriors retreat to being merely a super-team built around Curry, Green, and Klay Thompson. There are worse things, and Durant will have stayed for two or three titles in three years Authentic Takkarist McKinley Jersey , burgeoning everyone’s credentials and helping the crew make history along the way.But this is Draymond Green. Calm and copacetic aren’t really his thing. Durant chiding him for a late-game turnover — and worse, a waving-off of Durant in a crunch time moment when KD had been hot — blew the top off. Clearly, Green had been at a high simmer, and the lid popped off in this moment. If it hadn’t then, it would have at some point.Thompson’s alarm bells are focused on how Green and the Warriors move forward assuming Durant leaves. Will Green want to leave too, feeling betrayed by Steve Kerr, who approved the punishment and has had a difficult relationship with Draymond over the years? Green is a free agent in 2020, and the Warriors are too smart to give him a full maximum-value contract without being convinced he’ll get it somewhere else. There could absolutely be hard feelings and consternation as that free agency approaches, especially if Green wins another Defensive Player of the Year and becomes eligible for the supermax extension. Does that fear lead the Warriors to kick the tires on a Green trade before then, perhaps this summer should Durant flee? (Or heck, perhaps more so if Durant stays.) What exactly would the Warriors be looking for in return as a capped-out, star-laden squad? Does the mere hint of a potential trade lead to an immediate internal crisis as the betrayal of Green comes into full view?How does Curry feel about all of this? He wasn’t in Los Angeles when this blow-up went down — good ol’ Klay had to play peacemaker, which is hilarious to imagine — but he has a strange relationship with Durant and a long, fruitful history with Green. He has the personality to handle Green. Most notably, he’s not going to call Green out for a turnover. He’s not going to get mad about not getting the ball in that spot. He’s too chill to spark that cherry bomb over a regular season game against the freaking Clippers. Many NBA critics complain that the Warriors have ruined basketball by stacking the deck with top-level talent. So let’s take that point to its logical, absurd conclusion. If this gets worse, which it might, will Curry quietly side with Green in the internal debate? Or is he, as a chill human apparently uncomfortable with confrontation, secretly hoping Green’s bark could disappear from his life?How does DeMarcus Cousins figure into all of this? Boogie has famously struck up a great relationship with Green, and Kerr has flat-out said Cousins is simply a visiting scholar in Warriorsland and won’t be back next year. Is Cousins cool enough to stay out of this, or is he going to serve as a backroom accelerant for Green? We don’t know much about Cousins’ relationship with Durant, but he’s friendly with Curry and Klay as well as Green. Is this an X factor we all need to pay attention to as Cousins inches closer to an on-court presence?Is this how the Warriors fall apart?We won’t know until we know, and we should give the benefit of the doubt to a smart, cool Warriors front office who know what they are doing. We should give Kerr the benefit of the doubt: he’s been as close to perfect as you can get managing the strange brew of personalities this dynasty contains for years. We should give Durant and Green the benefit of the doubt that they can shrug this off as they’ve shrugged off past disagreements. We should give Curry the benefit of the doubt as a calming force.Perfect harmony can’t last forever, though, and we might be watching the dynasty buckle. We’ll know when we know.