No Doubt About It: This is the best Pac-12 regular season we've ever seen

Whether alive or dead, this Pac-12 season is keeping west coast basketball interesting.

I wondered towards the end of the USC vs. UCLA game if I was being a prisoner of the moment. Of succumbing to the hype. The answer could still be yes but I’m not here for the measured take. Over the last couple of months we’ve seen plenty of articles saying something along these lines…

“The final season of the Pac-12 is shaping up to be one of its’ best ever.”

After watching this weekend’s slate of games, I’m convinced. It is *the* best Pac-12 season we’ve ever seen.

The Naismith Race Runs Through the West

Fans of Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers will have something to say about this, I’m sure. South Carolina has arguably the deepest team of high-end talent in the nation. But there is no conference that has as much talent evenly dispersed as the Pac-12 does. Just off hand, Alissa Pili (Utah), Cameron Brink (Stanford) and Juju Watkins (USC) have a claim to being the top player in the country. That’s before you get into more niche picks like a Raegan Beers (Oregon State) or Kiki Iriafen (Stanford).

The statistics back a case for nearly all of them. Brink leads the country in Player Efficiency Rating (53.0) while Pili is 2nd, Beers is 4th and Lauren Betts (UCLA) is 7th. Brink and Pili are also top 10 in Win Shares, Offensive Win Shares and Win Shares per 40 minutes. Watkins is 6th in the country and Box Plus/Minus and while the usage is borderline ridiculous (40.9% to lead the nation), the amount of ‘Wow’ moments we get out of her are too many to ignore for a freshman.

It would be one thing if we had two or three of these players concentrated to one roster but having the top half of the Pac-12 have at least one player with a reasonable conference player of the year case makes nearly every matchup box office. And that brings us to the next point…

A Story Every Game

Player of the Year shortlist or not, every team has at least one player *worth* watching or a storyline worth following. 10 of the 12 teams in the conference are ranked Top 50 in the NCAA NET. At no point in the history of the Pac-12 (2012 to now) has the league ever gotten more than seven NCAA Tournament bids. As of this writing, ESPN’s Charlie Creme is projecting nine teams to go dancing this March with Washington on the bubble as the second team out.

Colorado just beat Stanford in the CU Events Center in front of 9,111 people, the biggest crowd in Boulder since 1995. USC just sold out the Galen Center for a Top 10 matchup against UCLA.

Oregon State seems to have rediscovered a secret sauce through consistent roster building and minimal portal losses. Cal and Washington are looking for a return to the NCAA Tournament.

On the flip side, the situation around Oregon and head coach Kelly Graves is worth monitoring. What is the magic number before the most difficult question is asked? How long of a runway does Natasha Adair have to bring Arizona State up to speed? Will Arizona have a top-end win that’s eluded them all year?

There is not a single team in the conference that is a bad watch nor is there a game with truly no stakes to them.

Championship Contenders (But actually this time!)

Every year, I delude myself into thinking the following: there is a national champion in the Pac-12 this year. And then we get to March and I see overmatched guards and teams that can’t match up with physical defenses.

In 2021, we saw two teams that had elite guards and defenses. And what happened? It was an All-Pac national title game. This year it feels like there’s multiple teams with that makeup.

USC feels similar to 2021 Arizona with Juju Watkins playing an Aari McDonald type role with a supporting cast of scorers and defenders. Stanford’s ceiling keeps rising if Talana Lepolo’s development keeps trending up. Colorado has Jaylyn Sherrod (who has her own Naismith case so far) and is as balanced a team as you’ll find. And we have gone pretty much this whole article without mentioning Lauren Betts and UCLA to the degree that we should.

There’s been three March runs that have buoyed the conference’s reputation as one of the best in the country. In 2016, five teams combined for a 14-5 record with two Final Four runs. In 2017, five of the Pac’s seven tourney teams made it to the Sweet 16. And then, of course, the 2021 run in which the west coast monopolized the National Championship.

With no clear “title or bust” team like a 2022 South Carolina out there, it feels like this Tournament may be as open as any we’ve seen in awhile. With so many top-end teams in the Pac-12 this year, we may be in line for a legendary run. Or at the very least, one of the most interesting conference title races we’ve seen in some time.