As well as UCLA is playing, they’d be crushing most other teams. If the second round is the Big 10 vs. The Washingtons, those games figure to be as well-played as the championship games in lesser conferences. All four of those teams are impressive.
In the very big picture, the strength of the Pac-12 is Coach VanDerveer’s doing. Stanford forced the other 11 programs to improve enough to compete with them. During Cal’s Final Four season — hard to believe it’s been 10 years since — Coach Gottlieb said no one’s happier than Coach VanDerveer that other teams in the league are achieving the elite level.
Two years ago, it was Arizona reaching the national championship game with Stanford. Why not Utah this year?
See? I was right when I said about Coach Roberts’ program 16 years back: “Something’s happening here”. I was wrong about the ‘something’ and wrong about the ‘here’, but I was right in a general sense.