PAC-12 Basketball Tournament Recap

Observations from Las Vegas as the PAC-12 wraps up league play for good

Photo courtesy PAC-12 Conference

From a basketball perspective, I am very excited about Cal moving to the ACC. Seeing Cal battle North Carolina, Duke, Virginia and other schools will be thrilling. Coach Madsen has indicated that joining the ACC opens up the entire Eastern Time Zone to recruiting. I fully expect to have as much basketball fun at next year’s ACC Tournament in Charlotte as I had at this year’s PAC-12 event. What I won’t have is the same sense of community.

Las Vegas has hosted the PAC-12 Basketball Tournament since 2013. The WCC, WAC, and Mountain West tournaments run concurrently at various sporting venues around town. Fans engaged with peers from all around the west at the casino tables, sportsbooks, and restaurants.. This whole week is very much a celebration of Western United States Basketball. I heard several stories about high school friends who dispersed throughout the west coast as they got older. They gather every year at the PAC-12 Tournament to reconnect as they root on their teams.

Sure, we’ll have some level of connections next year. Cal alumni groups on the East Coast will be engaged. As the year goes on, I expect W4C to engage with ACC school fan affinity sites similar to us. We’ll have some friends, frenemies, and pure enemies. We’ll always have Stanford. In subsequent years, I expect those relationship to deepen (or fester, in FSU’s case). But we won’t have the same West Coast experience that happens in Las Vegas. I am mildly jealous of the WCC and other schools who will return here annually.

Below are observations after interacting with various fan bases over my five days in Las Vegas. Though some of these may come across as snarky or bitter, I am trying to present them as neutrally as possible and how it was conveyed to me.

• Arizona fans are thrilled to be moving to the Big 12. More than a few said that the PAC-12 has become boring for them, always fighting UCLA for the top spot and no other real competitors.

• Arizona State fans were neutral. As long as they still get Arizona each year, that’s all that mattered.

• WSU fans are still grumpy and depressed. They also think Kyle Smith will be hired away by a bigger school.

• UW fans were more concerned with who will be replacing coach Mike Hopkins. They talked about the travel headaches more than any other fan base.

• Utah fans were excited about moving, saying they felt better about incoming Texas rivalries than what they had with the West Coast schools.

• Colorado fans were saddened. They indicated they just started feeling at home in the PAC-12, and now they’re moving. Several of them remembered how Texas Longhorns bullied the old Big-12 and drove away Nebraska and Colorado. They’re worried the same dynamic may happen with the Texas schools in the new version of the conference.

• UCLA fans were very happy with the move and made football references more than the other fan bases. A few groups thought that moving to the Big10 is somehow going to suddenly improve their football team.

• Oregon State fans were the most frustrated of anyone. They do not approve of Coach Tinkle, but know that the school cannot afford a buyout with their future in limbo. They, like us, are most mad at USC.

Cal, Stanford, and USC fan groups were not present throughout the week. Oregon fans only showed up on the last day en masse, and were focused on the championship game.

When asked about the end of the conference, Jerod Haase had the most appropriate quote amongst the coaches;

“To answer your question, it's sad and disappointing. But the reality is it's part of the carnage that's going on all across the landscape right now. And at the end of the day everybody's going to need to move forward and reinvent themselves a little bit.

But right now, as this tournament winds down over the next few days, I would say my single word to describe it is simply, sad.”

The games themselves were excellent (besides Cal’s loss). Las Vegas is referred to as “Tuscon North”. Every game was an Arizona home game. When Arizona was eliminated in the semifinals, that opened up the ticket brokers to sell championship tickets to the upstart Oregon Ducks. Colorado fans were here all week, and outnumbered the Buffs by about two-to-one. Take a look at seats in the photo at the top. You can see the place is about 70% capacity. When Arizona was playing, it was sold out.

The most impressive players in person were Oregon’s N’Faly Dante and Colorado’s KJ Simpson, the two players pictured. I expect both of them to make their names known in the NCAA Tournament starting later this week.

My least favorite fan interactions;

• On Tuesday night, St. Mary’s beat Gonzaga in the WCC Finals. A very drunk and happy St. Mary’s mom was at a table I was playing at, along with a couple other PAC-12 and Gonzaga fans. She asked me in my Cal hat about how I vote and if was “Ready For a Change.” She went from happy drunk to angry drunk very quickly, and stormed off to go talk to her husband. Here is an artist’s rendition;

• At a blackjack table, the table went very cold after a nice hot streak. An Arizona fan blamed me for wearing a Cal hat.

And favorite interactions;

• Wednesday night, I was at a table with 2 people each from Colorado and UCLA. When I asked UCLA for their thoughts, the Colorado duo immediately started chanting “CAL-I-MON-Y.” The UCLA fans were not pleased.

• An Oregon State fan was in town on business, and was not aware until he got here that the basketball tournament was happening. He was a huge baseball supporter, and we talked for quite a bit on the Beaver’s plans for baseball going independent versus joining a conference like the WCC or Big West. OSU is a baseball powerhouse, and they should be able to sustain a decent enough schedule to make it work. The interesting aspect is he indicated the baseball team was initially reluctant to do this and appear separate from the rest of the athletic department. But it became clear that it was the best plan for long-term sustainability for the program. It’s an interesting glimpse into how some schools’ athletic departments may divide even further as realignment and other factors continue to impact college sports.

Two notable postgame press conferences;

• UW Coach Mike Hopkins, after their opening round loss to USC. Hopkins was fired a week ago. Jennifer Cohen was AD at Washington since 2016, and hired Hopkins in 2017. She became USC’s Athletic Director last summer. In the press conference, Hopkins gets emotional, and references Cohen who was in the audience. The whole 9 minutes is an all-too-human introspection of a good person who failed to live up to expectations.

• Cal’s Mark Madsen, Jaylon Tyson, and Jalen Cone, after their loss. Just watch the body language of all of them. They were in pain. Tyson and Cone had some very nice things to say about Madsen. I could not read into Tyson’s comments anything about his thoughts on next year.

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When asked about the end of the conference, Coach Madsen said;

“So it's a shame that the Pac-12 is coming to an end, but every university is going to go their own way and blaze a new path.”

As devoted fans, we’ll also have our own new paths to blaze. It’ll be exciting, nerve-wracking, and sad….all at the same time.