PAC-12 with 33 Years of WCBB-Team Ranking

[DefenseBB]

While doing the Big10 I realized I calculated the % dominance wrong (denominator was too large). That said, Stanford jumped up in the dominance category as they have finished 1st 36 times (51 opportunities) and second 7 times for 43 times or 84.3%!

Number 2 on my list of conferences is the now Mighty PAC-12. For those who haven’t read the SEC 40 years WCBB, I did an assessment of what defines a “good basketball history”? I decided that success in their league was pre-eminent so I decided to look at 5 variables:

• How many Conference Tournament Finals did a team make (win or runner up)?
• How many Regular season titles did they win or come in 2nd?
• What is the Conf. Tourn winning percentage?
• What is the Conf. Regular season winning percentage?
• What is the combined Tournament and Regular season winning percentage?

These 5 variables are a good tool to assess relative strength to your direct peers, which leads to your satisfaction as a fan and a feeling your team has a good WCBB History.

This league has 33 years of regular season play and only 18 years of the PAC-12 Tournament. A combined 51 years of combined opportunities for 100+ chances to come in the top 2 spots. The dominant team is Stanford who is even more dominant that UT with 38.7% (43 total times) of all 111 Top 2 spots of Tournament and Regular Season standings (some seasons had reg season ties). With 23 Season Titles and 13 Tournament titles are unbelievable. They also have an 87% Reg season and a 90% Tournament winning percentage-WOW!!!!. Dominant, unbelievably dominant program that raised the level of play (eventually ) for all the teams to finally be the top league in WCBB. We already knew all this so who was second? In this case, it’s Washington! They have 10 top 2 finishes, UCLA’s 9 and almost the same winning % at 57.3 to 57.7. However, the big surprise to me was Arizona State who has 11 top 2 finishes, with 2 Regular season titles, 1 Tournament title and 8 second place finishes. Who knew? Congrats to Charlie Turner Thorne (a former Stanford player to boot). ASU only has a 49% winning percentage (49/48.5) so the early years must have been brutal.

For futility, this league also goes lower in the gutter with Washington State winning only 25.7% of all their PAC-12 games and 0 (zero!) top 2 finishes. Eeeke, that’s bad. While Colorado and Utah show poor winning of 35% and 33.3%, they have been in the league for only 8 years. Arizona shows a poor history of 37% winning and only 6 combined top2 finishes for 5.4%

This league also only shows 5 teams of 12 with winning history in league play. Stanford has been so dominant it has forced the other teams to feed upon themselves. While the current trend is up for the PAC-12 can they maintain multiple teams being strong….time will tell.

Here’s the data, so congrats to all my left coast colleagues, I thoroughly enjoyed reviewing this conferences history.

 

[TheFarmFan]

Nice data, summary, and tables!

Re: ASU, I'm not too surprised - CTT has done more with less than just about any WCBB coach I can think of. She has a unique system, but she maximizes the talent she has with it, and it's a savvy approach if you're not likely to regularly be hauling in top 10 recruiting classes.

Re: The rise of the PAC-12, Tara definitely deserves credit, but I think the primary reason the PAC-12 has soared lately is because wholly 6 of its 12 coaches are super legit - Tara, Rueck, Graves, CTT, Barnes, and Close. At the start of this decade, the only ones coaching at their current schools were Tara and CTT.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Stanford has really almost never not been dominant in the conference.

As I mentioned in the SEC thread, I don't know of any great accomplishments by any other team except USC's run in the Cheryl Miller years under Coach Linda K. Sharp, who was inducted into the WBB Hall of Fame with CVS.

UCLA and to a lesser extent Washington were good for a number of years some years ago and have had respectable recent history as well.

Colorado and Utah both actually have decent history, it just wasn't in the PAC. Not perhaps the "highest" levels, but both were successful programs, under Ceal Barry and Elaine Elliott respectively.

For the rest, one of the best things I can say is that they have tried, but sometimes things just didn't work out. For example, I think Arizona's history would have been better if things hadn't gone off the rails with the death of Polk, and Oregon was potentially building when Runge got into the fight over Title IX with the Oregon administration.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Interesting. Thanks for compiling this @DefenseBB . I'm a little bit surprised to see Washington finish second. I knew they've been competitive with Stanford at the top of the league off and on, but they've been mediocre for stretches or truly bad at times too.

This just highlights to me how strange it is that they've had such a hard time attracting and/or keeping a quality coach. You can win there. Numerous coaches have done it over the years.

 

[DefenseBB]

Stanford has really almost never not been dominant in the conference..

Colorado and Utah both actually have decent history, it just wasn't in the PAC. Not perhaps the "highest" levels, but both were successful programs, under Ceal Barry and Elaine Elliott respectively..

I agree 100% with both the above statements you gave with some added color that:
The early 80’s , Stanford was not dominant but since 1986 always dominant and shocking that Tara hasn’t won another title since 1992 especially considering how dominant she has been-fate and luck are fickle ladies...

As I am doing the other conferences as well (not published yet) I did see Colorado’s record in the Big 12 after Ceal and it was NOT good. However Ceal was awesome in the Big8 and Big12. So the 23 year run was mighty impressive. The coach right before, not so much but two coaches before did have a nice run. Can they start to compete in the PAC-12 is the question...unknown for now.
Utah is a program that has always been good and shows signs on upping its profile to compete with the Oregon, OSU, Stanford, UCLA and ASU programs. I was impressed with their history-thank you for that insight!

 

[DefenseBB]

I redid the numbers as noted above and truly Stanford IS THE PAC12. Finally I would say others have risen to the excellence Tara has brought forth.

Go Ducks, Beavers, Sun Devils, Wildcats and Bruins!