For the first time since the middle of the 2000s, when Ben Howland and Lute Olson were in command, the Pac-12’s premier basketball programs can claim first-rate leadership at the same time.
Jon Wilner The San Jose Mercury News Despite a wobbly winter and mediocre March, Pac-12 basketball emerged from the 2021-22 season stronger internally and more relevant nationally than it has been in years.“Tommy Lloyd and Mick Cronin will be in the national conversation until they go somewhere else,” Pac-12 Networks analyst Don MacLean said. “And the Pac-12 has a lot more street cred when the bellwether schools are good.
Success in Tucson and Westwood impacts the conference in ways that are both nuanced and obvious, and there is a clear compounding effect when both are ascendant. “There’s an East Coast bias, but everybody knows Arizona and UCLA have been good for a long time,’’ said MacLean, the former UCLA forward and the Pac-12’s career scoring leader.
They are the only Pac-12 schools to win NCAA titles in the past 60 years and earn multiple Final Four berths in the past 50.
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