ESPN.com · Feb 24, 2017
Is this the year the Pac-12 ends its Final Four drought?
The Pac-12 has come a long way since 2011-12.
It feels crazy now, but five years ago, the conference got just two NCAA tournament bids -- which, if our math checks out, is just one more than the bare minimum NCAA tournament rules allow. Washington, which went 14-4 en route to a regular-season Pac-12 title that season, became the first power-conference team ever to win a league title and fail to get an at-large tourney bid. This was a crazy aberration, sure, and things were better the following March -- yet even that five-bid league's regular-season champ (UCLA) fired its coach (Ben Howland) a few days after the season ended.