Pac-12 able to flex in closing girls’s March Insanity run

STANFORD, Calif. — The Maples Pavilion crowd was more and more stressed. The No. 4 Stanford Cardinal had been dealing with the Fifteenth-ranked USC Trojans of their sole regular-season assembly, and USC freshman JuJu Watkins was on a heater.

The phenom got here out of the locker room with 25 factors, however murmurs emerged from the stands as Watkins sank basket after basket to begin the second half.

A pull-up 3-pointer in transition. Free throws. A midrange baseline jumper. A step-back on the free throw line.

After Watkins swished her subsequent shot — a transition 3 from the identical spot as the primary — Stanford followers may solely oooh and aaaah.

USC downed Stanford 67-58, and Watkins completed with a school-record 51 factors, probably the most by any males’s or girls’s Division I participant this season. In opposition to the Pac-12 perennial energy. On the Cardinal’s dwelling flooring, no much less.

Watkins’ 50-piece stands alone, however fierce matchups between top-15 groups and highlight-reel performances had been nightly occurrences within the Pac-12 this season. Convention play was a digital gauntlet of heavyweight clashes, the place groups both additional strengthened their résumés or took one on the chin late Friday night time in #Pac12AfterDark, even when a lot of the nation was sleeping.

No single convention influenced the higher echelon of the 2024 girls’s NCAA event bracket greater than the Pac-12. USC — which beat Stanford once more final week to win its first Pac-12 event title since 2014 — earned its first No. 1 seed in practically 4 many years. Pac-12 groups made up 1 / 4 of the highest 16, with USC, No. 2 seeds Stanford and UCLA, and third-seeded Oregon State incomes the suitable to host early-round video games when the event opens Friday. Seven Pac-12 groups are within the bracket, tying the league report.

The convention as soon as pejoratively known as “Stanford and the 11 Dwarfs” has this 12 months staked its declare because the nation’s finest league.

The one downside? The Pac-12 as we all know it can quickly stop to exist.

The disintegration of the convention — first set in movement when UCLA and USC declared in June 2022 they’d be departing for the Huge Ten — has loomed over faculty athletics for the previous eight months. Upon the convention’s failure to safe a profitable tv deal, eight extra faculties bolted for the Huge Ten, Huge 12 or ACC, leaving the Pac-12 with simply Oregon State and Washington State.

And no income sport would possibly mourn the Pac-12’s finish as deeply as girls’s basketball.

“It is simply unlucky as a result of we have constructed one thing actually nice,” Teresa Gould, newly appointed Pac-12 commissioner, informed ESPN, “and for plenty of different causes and different circumstances and penalties, one thing that’s actually, actually particular is now going to be pulled aside.”

For the groups that can bear the Pac-12 banner one closing time this postseason, there’d be no higher ending than for the league to have a thunderous March, for the “Convention of Champions” to deliver dwelling yet one more. And this 12 months greater than most, that may be doable.

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USC Trojans’ NCAA girls’s event preview

Charlie Creme breaks down his forecast for USC’s NCAA event prospects.

COACH JR PAYNE, in one among her first years at Colorado, watched as Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer was interviewed on the court docket at Seattle’s KeyArena after successful the Pac-12 event. VanDerveer spoke to the league’s power, mentioned the Pac-12 helped put together the Cardinal for the postseason and talked about every program by identify.

“It blew my thoughts,” Payne informed ESPN. “I bear in mind going, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s really going to speak about us.'”

For as good of a gesture because it was — Payne mentioned her Buffs on the time weren’t excellent — the league wasn’t but the top-to-bottom juggernaut it’s right this moment. Exterior of three-time nationwide champion Stanford, Pac-12 faculties did not constantly make noise nationally. Earlier than Cal’s 2013 run, solely the Cardinal had superior to a Closing 4 underneath the Pac-10/12 banner (the league expanded to 12 groups in 2011). Geography and time zones additionally labored in opposition to the league.

“I know that individuals did not take our convention very critically,” former Stanford star and two-time Pac-12 Participant of the Yr Nneka Ogwumike informed ESPN. “I simply really feel as if we had been uncared for in lots of alternative ways.”

The previous decade flipped the narrative. The 2012 launch of the Pac-12 Community extensively expanded distribution of Pac-12 girls’s basketball video games and helped in recruiting. Extra West Coast stars stayed nearer to dwelling — equivalent to Californians Kelsey Plum (Washington) and Sabrina Ionescu (Oregon), who each led their packages to the Closing 4. The development expanded previous family names, too. Eleven of the 24 2022 McDonald’s All People, from all around the nation, had been Pac-12 signees.

The uptick in tv publicity created a way of accountability. “Swiftly,” Oregon State coach Scott Rueck informed ESPN, “you wanted to be good at girls’s basketball as a result of it was on TV, and other people had been paying consideration.” And the extra new packages did effectively, the extra others felt they may be part of the celebration — or wanted to maintain up. When teaching jobs opened, faculties tended to search for confirmed winners with expertise constructing successful cultures. Athletic departments deepened their funding in girls’s basketball, together with bigger salaries.

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Stanford Cardinal’s NCAA girls’s event preview

Charlie Creme breaks down his forecast for Stanford’s NCAA event prospects.

Faculties started to schedule extra deliberately too. Former Washington coach Mike Neighbors introduced a plan a couple of decade in the past recommending the convention’s higher groups schedule extra high quality nonconference opponents with NCAA event seeding in thoughts, whereas the others ought to schedule to win as many video games as doable.

Via all of it, one collective mentality shaped: “Again the Pac.”

Coaches realized for the league to develop, they needed to stand “uniquely unified behind girls’s basketball,” USC’s Lindsay Gottlieb, who additionally beforehand coached at Cal for 11 years, informed ESPN. To assist themselves, in addition they had to assist one another.

“We’re all totally different, and coaches are bizarre individuals, opponents and quirky,” Utah’s Lynne Roberts informed ESPN. “However there’s such a degree of respect and understanding that, ‘If she’s good and he is good, and I am good, it’ll make us all higher,’ versus ‘I need you to fail. I need you to fail, and I need to win.'”

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UCLA Bruins’ NCAA girls’s event preview

Charlie Creme breaks down his forecast for UCLA’s NCAA event prospects.

The tone was set by VanDerveer, who condemned unfavorable recruiting throughout the league, and in coaches conferences at all times made it about what was finest for the convention. Coaches agreed on the significance of publicly uplifting opposing Pac-12 groups.

“It was noticeable from the get-go that it was very totally different than the opposite leagues I would been in the place it was simply fear about your self,” Neighbors, now the pinnacle coach at Arkansas, informed ESPN. “The league actually cared concerning the league.”

The outcomes confirmed. Since 2013, eight totally different groups have received a Pac-12 regular-season or event title. Over the previous 10 seasons, the Pac-12’s 78.2% nonconference successful proportion is the most effective of any league. In that span, each Pac-12 faculty has appeared within the NCAA event — solely the SEC may also declare that — and its 65% successful proportion within the Huge Dance ranks finest amongst Energy 5 conferences. After managing two or three bids annually from 2008 to ’12, the convention has despatched at the least six groups to every of the previous seven tournaments.

“They don’t seem to be the underdog anymore … they’re there,” Neighbors mentioned. “They’ve earned the respect of all people I’ve are available in contact with in girls’s basketball.”

SEMINAL MOMENTS IN the Pac-12’s closing season occurred in a non-Pac-12 metropolis: Las Vegas. On the opening day of the season at T-Cellular Enviornment, USC and Colorado upset then-No. 7 Ohio State and top-ranked LSU, respectively, within the Corridor of Fame Collection. 4 months later, throughout the Strip at MGM Grand Backyard Enviornment, the convention held its closing event.

The quarterfinals had been so stacked that Gottlieb posited the double-overtime Oregon State-Colorado matchup was virtually an Elite Eight sport. Their semifinal the following day in opposition to UCLA? Mainly a Closing 4 assembly, Gottlieb mentioned — at the least, “I hope we’re not dealing with a staff pretty much as good as UCLA previous to that.”

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Oregon State Beavers’ NCAA girls’s event preview

Charlie Creme breaks down his forecast for Oregon State’s NCAA event prospects.

These moments bookend a season that has signaled the Pac-12 is probably the most formidable league within the nation. Following USC’s and Colorado’s wins, 5 Pac-12 groups had been ranked within the prime 10, and 6 had been within the ballot general. The league’s 32-0 begin to nonconference motion was the longest such streak over the previous 25 years. Getting into the NCAA event, the Pac-12 is the highest NET league, with UCLA (8), USC (8) and Stanford (7) boasting probably the most top-25 NET wins. South Carolina has six.

After Stanford’s semifinal win over Oregon State, VanDerveer proclaimed, “Would not it’s enjoyable to have 4 [Pac-12] groups within the Closing 4?” That is not doubtless, however the league may ship a number of groups to Cleveland.

“Whoever will get into the postseason is as prepared as anybody wherever as a result of we have already been by means of what appears like a postseason by the point we get there.”

Oregon State coach Scott Rueck on the rigorous Pac-12 season

Stanford captured its twenty seventh regular-season title in February, a becoming conclusion for the Pac-12’s swan track, and VanDerveer turned faculty basketball’s all-time wins chief in January. Senior Cameron Brink, whom Ogwumike calls the “quintessential Stanford girls’s basketball participant,” earned Pac-12 Participant of the Yr, and he or she’s the projected No. 2 choose in April’s WNBA draft.

Led by level guard Jaylyn Sherrod, Colorado — a No. 5 seed within the NCAA event — asserted itself into the contender dialog by turning into the primary staff to defeat a defending champion in its season opener since 1995. Picked tenth within the preseason ballot, Oregon State’s Rueck might need his finest staff in years behind a younger roster that includes budding sophomore Raegan Beers and no seniors.

Accidents have impacted No. 5 seed Utah, the convention’s preseason favourite, however the Utes turned heads in December as 2023 Pac-12 Participant of the Yr Alissa Pili scored 37 factors on South Carolina in a good loss — prompting Gamecocks coach Daybreak Staley to declare afterward, “It is not possible to cease her.” Iowa’s Caitlin Clark is the one different participant to attain extra in opposition to the Gamecocks over the previous two years.

After going undefeated in nonconference play, together with wins over UConn and Ohio State, the Bruins captured their finest rating in program historical past (No. 2), anchored by a program-shifting, intraconference switch in sophomore Lauren Betts. Their crosstown showdowns with USC broke every program’s attendance data with a mixed 24,000-plus followers.

But it surely was the Trojans who had been the final staff standing in Las Vegas earlier this month, Watkins putting her championship hat atop her trademark bun, McKenzie Forbes breaking into tears when introduced the trophy for many excellent participant, and Clarice Akunwafo slapping the USC sticker on the ultimate line of the event bracket, with crimson and yellow confetti littering the ground.

Watkins’ impression is undisputed. She’s the nation’s second-leading scorer and presumptive nationwide freshman of the 12 months. On the time of her dedication, when 2023’s prime recruit determined to remain dwelling in Los Angeles, the once-iconic Trojans hadn’t made the event since 2014. They have not made it previous the primary weekend of the event since 1994, with Lisa Leslie.

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Colorado Buffaloes’ NCAA girls’s event preview

Charlie Creme breaks down his forecast for Colorado’s NCAA event prospects.

Now the Trojans have captured their first No. 1 seed since 1986 — Cheryl Miller’s senior 12 months — propelled by Watkins, who’s shaping as much as be the following star of a technology.

“I am unsure if I’ve met younger athletes and younger girls which might be constructed like her,” Ogwumike mentioned. “I actually was impressed by not simply her character and stature, however I used to be additionally very impressed by it.”

Coaches insist the league has by no means been stronger from prime to backside, they usually have been “simply attempting to outlive” the final two months of league competitors, Arizona coach Adia Barnes mentioned. Regardless of having solely seven scholarship gamers, the Eleventh-seeded Wildcats acquired an at-large invitation after successful 5 of their final eight convention video games. Washington State (whose star Charlisse Leger-Walker was misplaced midseason because of damage), Washington and Cal had been amongst bubble groups.

“It is this lovely degree of competitors that calls for all the things you will have each night time,” Rueck mentioned. “Whoever will get into the postseason is as prepared as anybody wherever as a result of we have already been by means of what appears like a postseason by the point we get there.”

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Utah Utes’ NCAA girls’s event preview

Charlie Creme breaks down his forecast for Utah’s NCAA event prospects.

AS NORTHERN CALIFORNIA children, Roberts had a Stanford girls’s basketball poster on her wall rising up, and as a sophomore in highschool Shut went to VanDerveer’s first basketball camp. A youthful Barnes could not watch for her dad and mom to return to her video games at Arizona, a drivable distance from San Diego; in 1997-98, she received Pac-10 Participant of the Yr.

Neighbors nonetheless has an indication in his bar at dwelling from a “School GameDay” at Washington that claims, “The Pac-12, at the least we are able to rely.” It’s going to be a pleasant collector’s merchandise now.

Nearly each emotion has hit the coaches over the previous eight months. At first, the shock and dismay of the league’s dismantlement — “A kind of belongings you assume won’t ever go away,” Payne mentioned.

“I am extraordinarily pleased with the place we’re and what we have finished, and I am extraordinarily pained about what is going on to occur sooner or later.”

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer

“It has been the mannequin convention,” Barnes added, citing Pac-12 faculties’ sturdy teachers, athletics (together with Olympic sports activities traditions) and look after student-athletes.

Ogwumike felt virtually confused by the information of convention realignment. “What provides a bit bit to my obfuscation,” she mentioned, “is we now have so many sturdy groups within the Pac proper now, and it isn’t going to be there anymore.”

Coaches are wanting ahead to recent opponents in new leagues, new types of play to scheme in opposition to, new cities to discover. However actuality set in because the lasts got here round. The weekend Watkins scored 51 marked Gottlieb’s closing journey to the Bay Space. USC affiliate head coach Beth Burns, who briefly labored at Stanford within the 2000s, went for a run on the Palo Alto campus solely to wonder if she’d ever return.

A few of these matchups might be maintained with Arizona, Arizona State, Utah and Colorado becoming a member of the Huge 12; UCLA, USC, Washington and Oregon the Huge Ten; and Stanford and Cal the ACC. The hope is others ultimately will be restored in nonconference play.

However long-standing regional pairings and rivalries are actually gone, as is a distinguished West Coast convention to encapsulate all of them.

“I am extraordinarily pleased with the place we’re and what we have finished,” VanDerveer informed ESPN, “and I am extraordinarily pained about what is going on to occur sooner or later.”

Nobody doubtless feels the load of change greater than VanDerveer, who whereas not hiding her unhappiness has continued to champion the Pac-12 all through the season and specific pleasure over Stanford’s transfer to the ACC.

“In some methods she’s taught us how one can find it irresistible and have fun it and embrace the legacy, but additionally not impede progress,” Gould mentioned. “We’ve to show the web page and transfer ahead and simply hope that ladies’s basketball on all 12 of those campuses continues to be a precedence the way in which it has been.”

However in an ever-changing panorama of school sports activities, a sliver of optimism stays. Perhaps this is not the final chapter.

“There’s something deep down inside that appears to assume one way or the other they are going to determine this factor out,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves informed ESPN, “and we’ll all be again collectively in some unspecified time in the future, in some kind.”

There is no telling what number of extra twists and turns would want to occur for that to probably transpire, though instability is the established order today in faculty athletics.

Regardless, the gamers and packages who originated from the Pac-12 will characterize the West Coast, and what as soon as was an amazing convention, shifting ahead. That begins now, with a nationwide championship up for the taking.

“I believe the league’s going to point out out,” Roberts mentioned. “Everybody has lots of delight.”

“The Pac 12 as we all know it can by no means be the identical,” Burns mentioned. “So why do not you be the final man on that line to win it?”