The NCAA tournament is five weeks away. With that comes the selection of 68 teams in the nation earning the right to continue their respective seasons on college basketball’s biggest stage.
Bracketologist’s are out in full force, already posting their selections for which teams make the tournament and which teams don’t. Some of the main criteria looked at in order to make the tournament doesn’t come from a national ranking. It comes from a strength of schedule, big wins and bad losses and most importantly, the RPI ranking.
With that being the criteria, there’s no doubt that the Pac-12 conference is college basketball’s deepest and most talented conference. Although only three of the conference’s 12 teams are ranked in the AP Poll, 11 Pac-12 teams are ranked in the top-73 of ESPN’s RPI ranking, a feat that no other conference can match.
The ACC, the only conference to challenge the Pac-12’s supremacy, has 10 of its 15 teams ranked within the top 78 but also has four teams ranked in the AP top-25. What that means is that on a game-to-game basis, the Pac-12 has a greater chance of an “upset” on a nightly basis compared to having “easy” games on its conference slate.
Last year in the NCAA tournament, the Pac-12 had four teams make the tournament yet three of them made the Sweet-16. The fourth team, Oregon, lost in the second round to a Wisconsin team that played for a national championship.
This year, ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi predicts the Pac-12 will have seven teams in the NCAA tournament yet has two more teams, UCLA and Oregon State, very close to getting in. Lunardi believes that 58.3 percent of the Pac-12’s teams will get into the tournament, highest in the nation and above the ACC’s 53.3 percent entrance rate. CBS bracketologist Jerry Palm predicts the Pac-12 will have eight teams in the tournament, tied for most with the ACC.
This begs the question, why is the Pac-12 still not getting the respect it deserves in national perception and NCAA rankings.
When it comes to national perception, one of the main knocks against the Pac-12 is because of its game times. Most of the Pac-12 conference game times start after 5 p.m., making it a very late night for someone to watch the game on the east coast. Because of the late game times, Pac-12 games are rarely watched outside of the west coast so it leaves the rest of the nation in a dark state when it comes to seeing how good the conference is.
The reason why the Pac-12 has few teams in the national rankings is because the teams beat up on each other every week.
Oregon State owns wins over No. 11 Oregon and No. 23 USC, the top two teams in the Pac-12, yet sits in eighth place because they struggle to beat other teams. Likewise, Washington was in first place before losing three of its past five games to Utah, No. 17 Arizona and USC. It now sits in a tie for third place. UCLA is the most confusing team in the conference because after it defeated Arizona on national television, the Bruins then lost 3 of their next five games.
Oregon is the clear front runner in the conference rankings. It sits in first place at 9-2 with a 1.5 game lead over USC. But, it’s not as if winning a Pac-12 championship will be easy.
No night can be an off night in the Pac-12 and it’s about time the rest of the nation took notice.
Follow Ryan Kostecka on Twitter @Ryan_Kostecka