Last season, the race for the Pacific-10 Conference championship seemed to be a three-way race between Oregon, UCLA and Stanford.
Arizona ended up in the mix too, and as Pac-10 teams continued to knock each other off, the question of who would be champion became more and more muddled. Oregon didn’t win the title outright until beating Oregon State in the last game of the season.
But already, the makeup of this season’s race is different.
Stanford lost key players such as Milena Flores, who graduated, and Jamie Carey, who quit the team at the start of the season for medical reasons. Now, point guard Susan King is out for the season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
UCLA also lost important starters, including forward Maylana Martin, who now plays in the WNBA. Arizona, also in the Pac-10 title race last season, lost its emotional spark with guard Felecity Willis.
Finally, there is Oregon’s loss of point guard Shaquala Williams, last season’s Pac-10 Player of the Year.
So is there a clear-cut favorite to win the Pac-10 title this season? Oregon head coach Jody Runge wouldn’t bet on it.
“People ask me all the time about the conference and I think it’s wide open,” Runge said. “I think there are a lot of very scrappy good teams in this conference, and I think every night we’ve got the bullseye on our back. That’s just the way it’s going to be, and it’s the way it was last year.”
One of those scrappy teams Runge refers to is Southern California. Last season, USC was the only team that swept Oregon. The Trojans were able to out-run and out-hustle the Ducks with their more athletic players.
The women of USC are 0-2 in the conference so far, after losing to the Washington schools on the road. The first setback was a one-point loss to the Cougars, and the second was a triple-overtime battle against Washington.
Bottom line, many teams in the Pac-10 are dangerous. Oregon witnessed this firsthand last Friday against Oregon State in a game that went down to the final minute.
“Everyone’s going to put their best basketball game together against you,” Runge said. “And you’ve got to be mentally prepared for that.”
Stanford was picked to win the Pac-10 title at the start of the season, followed by Oregon.
However, the current ESPN/USA Today coaches poll ranked the Ducks at No. 20, followed by No. 24 Arizona and No. 25 Stanford. The Associated Press poll wasn’t released by press time.