Who's the favorite in each major college basketball conference? And which teams are trending in the right (and wrong) directions? Over the next two weeks, we'll take a look across the nation to see how college hoops' most notable conferences are shaping up for next season. Today, the Pac-12.
The Pac-12 has come a long way in four seasons.
The 2011-12 campaign was the Pac-12's official post-realignment debut, and it remains the league's modern nadir. Ben Howland's UCLA was still desperately trying to recover its late-aughts form. Sean Miller's Arizona was in a rare, brief downturn. Utah and USC, two of the worst Power 5 conference teams in the country, weighed the league down from the bottom.
Things have vastly improved since. Four teams made the tournament in 2014-15. UCLA wandered giddily into the Sweet 16. Utah emerged as a top-10 team. And Arizona was dominant once more.
And yet, Arizona's (and Utah's) brilliance arguably obscured what was, for the rest of the league, a clear step back from the improvement of a season before. In 2013-14, the Pac-12 rated fourth in average efficiency, ahead of the SEC and Big East. In 2014-15? Sixth. Had the league not benefitted from the year's most controversial Selection Sunday pick (UCLA), 2014-15 would have been a three-bid affair. The bottom two-thirds of the league was mostly just blah.
It's only July, but the season to come already looks more fun. The 2015 class of recruits (and transfers) is bringing more talented players to Pac-12 programs than at any time in recent memory. And, in a stunning departure, not all of them are attending Arizona. The result may be a trade-off: No surefire national title contenders in exchange for the deepest, strongest, most varied and most watchable Pac-12 in years.
Favorite
Which is not to say that Arizona is going anywhere.
Lately, Miller has earned a simultaneously complementary and unfortunate distinction: He is the best coach yet to make a Final Four. The past two seasons in particular -- which featured 77 wins, nine losses and the bad-beat luck of seeing Frank Kaminsky and Sam Dekker in back-to-back Elite Eights -- have felt like brutally missed opportunities. Now just one of Arizona's starters (center Kaleb Tarczewski) remains.
If you want to say Arizona isn't as obvious a favorite, fine. But they are a favorite. The rest of the league is just now importing talent; Miller has been recruiting so well for so long that he might be able to replace an NBA-poached starting lineup by merely elevating role guys (Gabe York, Parker Jackson-Cartwright, Elliott Pitts, Dusan Ristic) alongside his latest batch of talented newcomers.
Deference seems the best policy here. Is it hard to imagine Arizona matching its recent heights this season? Sure. It's not hard to imagine them being the best team in the Pac-12 though.
Trending up
Oregon State seemed to be gaining momentum almost as soon as coach Wayne Tinkle arrived last spring, in large part because his son, Tres Tinkle, the No. 14 small forward in the ESPN 100, was sure to follow. That was before Gary Payton Jr. -- son of legend Gary Payton -- emerged from junior college as a fully formed Baby Glove. Payton Jr. was the most prolific steals-generator in college basketball (5.5 per 100 possessions) last season, and with an influx of offensive talent arriving, many are predicting an already-improved Beavers team to get back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1990 -- when Glove the Elder was still in Corvallis.
Even greater things are expected of Cal, where Cuonzo Martin, in his first real offseason, landed the best two-player punch of the 2015 class. Both are top-10 prospects. The first to commit, Oakland power forward Ivan Rabb, always had nearby Berkeley on his radar. The second, Jaylen Brown, was a genuine shock. Landing the No. 4-ranked player in the class this spring required Martin to outsell every major program in the country, including a Kentucky machine that almost always gets who it wants. Slotting two elite NBA prospects into a roster of improving returners (Jabari Bird, Jordan Matthews, Tyrone Wallace) has some folks thinking Cal -- which went just 18-15 a year ago -- is a league title contender.
Oh, and Utah! Are the Utes trending up? Not necessarily. Losing Delon Wright is a big deal. But with every other starter returning -- especially center Jakob Poetl -- they're unlikely to fall off. And since there's no category for "likely to be as good as last year," we might as well mention them here.
Trending down
Stanford was one of the biggest bummers of the 2014-15 season. The Cardinal, starring the immensely likable Chasson Randle, looked like a tourney team early, before a 3-6 Pac-12 finish (including a few heartbreakers) doomed them to the NIT. (They won the NIT, which is cool, but still.) Randle and the rest of Johnny Dawkins' core is gone, and 2015-16 could be a different kind of bummer.
Notable newcomers
New faces will define the Pac-12 in 2015-16. Arizona's Ryan Anderson (Boston College) and Alonzo Trier (freshman) will be key to the Wildcats' title defense. Cal's emergence is predicated on the arrival of its top freshmen, as is, to a large degree, Oregon State's. UCLA's five-star 2014 prospect, Jonah Bolden, should finally be eligible. Washington has replaced its entire team with new talent. Even USC has two top-100 prospects incoming, a much-needed boost for third-year coach Andy Enfield.
And then there's Oregon. Dana Altman proved his on-court bonafides time and again in 2014-15, turning a dismantled Ducks roster into an NCAA tournament team that got better with almost every outing. Now Villanova graduate transfer Dylan Ennis and top-100 freshman Tyler Dorsey will join six returners on a team that might be, even in this newly deep Pac-12, the likeliest usurper to Arizona's throne. We'll see.