Boy, the Pac-10 is going through a transitional stage.
Pete Carroll is gone. Arizona’s 24-year NCAA tournament run in men’s basketball will most likely come to an end this year. Oregon’s uniforms are actually somewhat consistent.
Home to the dominant UCLA basketball program, which has one of the most impressive r?sum?s of any collegiate program in history, the Pac-10 is used to being in the national spotlight and competing at the highest level.
UCLA has 11 men’s college basketball national championships, an unprecedented 18 Final Four appearances, three conference titles and consecutive Final Four teams from 2005-2008.
The Bruins’ penchant for winning is well-known among even casual college basketball fans, yet somehow the mighty Bruins have only managed seven wins in the first two and a half months of the 2009-2010 season.
UCLA’s irrelevance in men’s basketball this year headlines a very disappointing season for the Pac-10 Conference as a whole.
After a less than stellar end to the football season, the outlook for basketball looks even bleaker.
The Pac-10, whose motto is ironically, “Conference of Champions,” has been a disaster this year and has quickly become the nation’s punching bag for basketball ineptness.
UCLA is not alone in greatly falling short of preseason expectations for the Pac-10 this season. This is a power conference that theoretically could send zero, that’s right zero, teams to the NCAA Tournament this year.
One of the contenders is somehow the talent-stricken USC Trojans, where rookie head coach Kevin O’Neill lost several prized recruits last year to Arizona after accepting the head job in Los Angeles.
The collection of walk-ons and three-time transfers are nice little success stories, but the Trojans self-imposed sanctions announced last week include a postseason ban this season.
If USC pulls out the conference crown, and the monumental disappointment that has been the other nine Pac-10 basketball teams this year continues, we could see the prestigious conference send no teams to the tournament this year.
Not only is that painfully bad, but also that’s unheard of.
Can you imagine the Ivy-League or the Southwestern Conference having more NCAA Tournament teams that the Pac-10? Yes, that’s the same Ivy-League and Southwestern Conference currently led by Cornell and 6-10 Prairie View A&M, respectively.
Every conference is assured one bid so all the North Dakotas and Bucknells of the world can share the same excitement the rest of us do regarding the NCAA Tournament come March.
This is why I have become a Trojan basketball fan.
I want to see the Trojans win the Pac-10 and leave the west coast to be represented by the West Coast Conference and the Mountain West. Plus, the Trojans really need something to go right for them after the fiasco of a month they have had.
The Pac-10 really is that bad this year and no amount of tradition and past glory can save them.
Preseason expectations weren’t as high as in previous seasons; the league actually did only start with two teams in the preseason rankings, California at No. 13 and Washington at No. 14.
However, I don’t think anyone thought the league would be this bad.
Early season losses for Cal and Washington have left the Pac-10 with no ranked teams and not even one vote in the AP Top 25 Poll.
Wow.
Sixteen conferences accomplished what the Pac-10 couldn’t last week — a frightening statistic for Pac-10 commissioner Larry Scott to accept.
Sure the league is competitive this year — every team has at least two conference victories and no one has more than four. But competitiveness in this case is not a good thing. In fact, it’s a terrible thing.
Even projected last place finisher Stanford is currently only two and a half games out of first place.
Teams have had breakout wins, such as Oregon’s win at Washington or UCLA’s miracle overtime victory in Berkeley last week. But then Oregon loses to Oregon State at home and UCLA is no longer allowed to be taken seriously this year after losing earlier in the season to Cal State Fullerton and Portland by 27 points.
The race is wide open and with the conference beating up on one another, the title could be won with ten victories or less.
At that rate, the Pac-10 will send the conference tournament champion to the Big Dance by way of automatic bid and that team well may be alone in representing the “Conference of Champions.”
What if that conference champion loses in the first round? What if the Pac-10 fails to accumulate a postseason victory?
Are we allowed to remove their automatic bid to the NCAA tournament?
Certainly, the answer is no, but if the Pac-10 continues to disappoint this greatly, they may lose their status as an elite athletic conference.
The Mountain West may become the premier conference on the west coast, with all kinds of recent football success, and since it consistently sends two to three schools to the tournament every year.
Having grown up in California, I find the Pac-10’s basketball success this season, or lack thereof, a complete and total embarrassment.
It is hard to believe one of the “Big Six” conferences can collectively be this bad at any sport. Even the SEC in basketball and the Big East in football have had some marginal success.
What I can’t wait to see is how intense the Pac-10 Tournament will be in March when the conference’s only guaranteed tournament bid rides on a few games.
Sam is a sophomore hoping to major in journalism.Quickly losing respect for the Pac-10 as well?Email him at [email protected]
