PAC-12 Preview: UCLA picked first by coaches

[mudcat]

Coaches Tab UCLA to Win Pac-12 Women’s Basketball Title

Pac-12 should be really competitive this year - a lot of talented first year players and how they develop could affect the results (i.e. How quickly do Oregon's talented frosh acclimate to D-1 play?). It's really hard to disagree with these coaches given who's coming back where, but I really like the coaches at ASU and OSU and think one of the two will sneak into the top three. The conference did pretty well in the NCAA last year and should be even stronger this year.

 

[wallman]

Not going to be celebrating yet, still have that half time score vision from last year where we were losing 17 to 44 to Oregon State.

 

[EricLA]

I think it's cool that other schools are stepping up in the league. Both Stanford and Washington got votes to finish first. Oregon, Oregon State, Cal, and ASU have been improving as well (altho Cal and ASU have been at or near the top in the past). It's nice to see a legit group of at least 7 teams who are solid to potentially very good in their league. I'd love to see that in our league...

 

[MilfordHusky]

Some real parity out west. For now, at least.

 

[JordyG]

If not the best certainly in my mind top two conferences in WCBB. Also with a slew of fine coaches.

I love WCBB!

 

[BIGMAC]

Some real parity out west. For now, at least.

Well said 'Muffet'

 

[Nuyoika]

I had plenty of conversations with SEC fans that thought the PAC 12 was overrated last year. They were sure when tourney time came they would fall off as pretenders. Ultimately they were the conference with 2 teams in the FF... strange how that works. Now they have more trips to the FF than the SEC. I ony get a few chances a year to watch them though. Not many games on TV. Love Jordin Canada, Kelsey Plum, like to watch how Tara operates as well. There are a lot of similarities when watching the SEC & PAC 12 the one big difference is speed of play.

 

[donalddoowop]

If not the best certainly in my mind top two conferences in WCBB. Also with a slew of fine coaches.

I love WCBB!

I think the conference is better than the SEC and more balanced. The SEC's low scores make many people think it is a good defensive conference. It is weak on offense. The PAC 12 has more good teams than the SEC, imo. Fortunately, I have a cable system that allows me to watch both conferences.

 

[wallman]

The one area I would give our conference a thumbs up on is that we have several coaches that play really good scout defense. I notice that when some teams from other conferences play our teams they don't seem to have watched much game video as they allow those teams to do things that are obvious to us. Maybe it is familiarity but I also think that there are a number of coaches out there who obviously don't do it or should I say do it well.

Uconn, obviously duh, plays really good scout D but also has a balanced team. I watched them do some of the things to Oregon State that had worked well against them, which btw, some others didn't seem to follow in their earlier games

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Never forget that the PAC has a different crew of refs than most other conferences. Only a few that I would characterize as "national level" and actually work nationally. Michael Price is the obvious name (Big Ten, SEC), but there are others. But most of the rest work the PAC and the various western conferences - a few the Big 12, but most the Big West, West Coast, Big Sky, WAC, Mountain West and such in some combination. Some work very, very few D1 games, I assume they do other divisions.

The point is, as I have often said, they have a somewhat different style which leads to some of the differences in playing style. In the PAC, scrums are rarely fouls (that said, I'm not saying they always should be, but in some conferences they always are, in the PAC they rarely are) and you can do a lot in the paint to the shooter, provided you don't appear to tap their arm.

 

[wallman]

One of those west coast officials did your game against Oregon State and shall I say made a few wtf calls against you.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

One of those west coast officials did your game against Oregon State and shall I say made a few what calls against you.

Not mine. I'm a Rutgers fan (from NJ) and an Arizona fan (because I live in Tucson, now).

Attending innumerable live RU games for 15 years (a few years, every game home and away, often most games both home and away and rarely sitting far from the court) and now attending Arizona games (not so often, both for health and product reasons) one can absolutely see the difference in how games are ref'd. When we first started going to the Arizona games we were saying "What the???" but gradually we began to see the pattern. It isn't necessarily "worse" than the eastern referees, just different. They all miss an inordinate number of calls, I think.