Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Goes Out with a Whimper

With Arizona’s loss, the Pac-12 disappears forever with no teams left in the NCAA tournament. The entire West Coast is humbled.

Pac-12 men’s basketball as we know it is now extinct, its tradition gone from the face of the earth like the dinosaurs. Oh, there is some speculation that the conference could re-emerge at some time in the future if the ACC collapses, but as we sit here on March 29, 2024, Pac-12 men’s basketball is no more.

And it ended with a loud thud as Arizona, the flag-bearer for Pac-12 and West Coast basketball relevance, lost to Clemson, a team that finished in a three-way tie for fifth place in the ACC, a team that lost three of its final four games before the NCAA tournament, a team that lost its opening conference tournament game to 11th-place Boston College by 21 points.

That defeat and Gaonzaga's loss to Purdue in Friday left no schools from the West in March Madness.

Arizona heads off to the Big 12, the best basketball conference in the country, having lost to a team seeded at least four slots below the Wildcats in each of their last six NCAA tournament appearances.  The last three years, Arizona lost as a No. 1 seed in the Sweet 16 to a No. 5 seed in 2022, lost as a No. 2 seed to a No. 15 seed in the first round in 2023, and as a No. 2 seed this year lost in the Sweet 16 to a No. 6 seed.

The Pac-12 is done, with the round of 16 only halfway completed.

Pac-12 women’s basketball is still representing the conference with distinction, as five Pac-12 schools are still alive in the Sweet 16 that begins play tonight (Friday). However, men’s basketball in the conference has slipped out of sight, its impressive run of 2021, when it got three teams to the Elite Eight and one to the Final Four, long since forgotten.

Technically, the Pac-12 name will survive, with Washington State and Oregon State being its only two members next year.  But those two schools will compete in the West Coast Conference in basketball and 11 other sports in 2024-25, so you won’t see the Pac-12 name when you view conference standings the next two seasons.

Here’s what Washington State’s situation meant to its coach, Kyle Smith, the Pac-12 coach of the year.  He left a school that finished second in the Pac-12 standings, beat Arizona twice and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament for a team (Stanford) that finished tied for ninth in the same conference and hasn’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2014 and only once since 2008.

Stanford and Cal are heading to the ACC, which has two teams (Clemson and North Carolina State) still alive in the NCAA tournament heading into Friday and carries a wealth of basketball tradition.

Things looked promising for the Pac-12 a few days ago.  A week before the NCAA tournament selections were announced, it appeared the Pac-12 would get only two teams into the tournament. But Colorado went on a hot streak, and Oregon won the Pac-12 tournament, putting four Pac-12 teams into March Madness, with all four playing good basketball.

When those Pac-12 teams started the NCAA tournament 6-0, it looked like the conference might crush the opinion that the Pac-12 was a weak basketball conference.

Then it all fell apart in the second round. Washington State lost to Iowa State, Colorado was beaten by Marquette, and Oregon lost to Creighton.  None was an upset, as all three lost to teams with much higher seeds, but the hope for one of the frequent NCAA tournament upsets went unfulfilled.

Arizona got to the second weekend, but then Thursday happened.

And it’s not just the Pac-12 whose basketball image was shattered on its farewell tour; it’s West basketball as a whole.  Sixteen teams from the West got into the NCAA tournament, and none got past the round of 16.

So we bid adieu to Pac-12 men’s basketball as Washington, Oregon, USC and UCLA head to the Big Ten, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and Arizona State join the Big Eight, and Cal and Stanford go across the country to a precarious situation in the ACC.

Here’s a semantics question for 2024-25:  Will Cal and Stanford be considered West Coast teams when they are members of the ACC? 

Don’t bother me with that trivia now; a funeral is in progress.

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