ShareThisBERKELEY, Calif. - For the first time since the Eisenhower administration, Cal claimed a share of a league title with a thumping of Arizona on Feb. 27.
Afterward, Bears coach Mike Montgomery was asked if he paid any mind to the critics who say the Pacific-10 Conference is so bad it takes some shine off Cal's first championship since 1960. Back then, Cal was part of a five-school consortium called the Athletic Association of Western Universities.
"I wish I didn't," Montgomery said with a sigh. "There are so many people that have to have an opinion. You just shake your head. Guys are making things up."
Maybe, but in a sporting world where perception is reality when it comes to filling out the NCAA Tournament bracket, the Pac-10 has fallen from grace. Quickly.
After three years of shipping six schools to the tournament, several "bracketologists" say the Pac-10 could send just one -- Cal, which won the conference outright Saturday with a victory at Stanford and is ranked 19th in the ratings percentage index.
"Disappointing," was how CBS analyst Greg Anthony described the conference.
"As bad as I've ever seen it," added Pac-10 announcer Barry Tompkins, who has covered the conference since its AAWU days.
"Statistically, you can't blame people for saying what they're saying," mused Cal senior forward Jamal Boykin, who also played in the Atlantic Coast Conference with Duke.
Consider: Since Feb. 24, 1987, the Pac-10 had a team ranked in every Associated Press poll -- a streak of 431 weeks -- until this past Jan. 11. No Pac-10 team has been ranked since. They've just been, well, rank.
The Pac-10 has only the No. 8 conference RPI ranking, behind the Mountain West, which could send as many as four schools ---New Mexico, BYU, UNLV and San Diego State. Even the West Coast Conference should have two -- Gonzaga and Saint Mary's.
Not even conference standard bearer UCLA is immune to this strain of March Madness, as the Bruins are headed to just their third losing season since 1948.
And for all of its confetti and cutting down nets, Cal had to win seven of its last eight conference games, including its last four, to match the worst record by a Pac-10 champ, the 13-5 mark of USC and Washington in 1985.
What happened to the Pac-10, and how did it happen so fast?
Imagine a Pac-10 tournament this week where Jerryd Bayless, Chase Budinger and Jordan Hill lead Arizona against Jrue Holiday, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love and UCLA. Where the Kings' Spencer Hawes wears a Washington uniform and bangs down low against Stanford's Lopez twins in a semifinal. Where Ryan Anderson and Cal don't have to sweat Selection Sunday.
There are 14 former Pac-10 players drafted into the NBA who could be suiting up in a star-studded conference tourney had they not left school early. Beyond that, six of the past seven Pac-10 Players of the Year were underclassmen that summarily bolted for the NBA's riches after being feted.
And when the conference's three best players are seniors -- Cal's Jerome Randle, Stanford's Landry Fields and Washington's Quincy Pondexter -- that speaks ill of the conference's health.
It all has former UCLA star Ed O'Bannon scratching his head.
"If you're any good -- you don't even have to be great -- a lot of players are going early because the opportunity to make a lot of money presents itself a lot earlier, as opposed to when I was in school," he said.
O'Bannon was a fifth-year senior and future NBA lottery pick in 1995 when he led the Bruins to their 11th national title -- the last of a dying breed.
"It hurts, quite honestly," he said of the growing anti-Pac-10 sentiment. "There's some jealousy; the Pac-10 was one of the top two conferences in the country. Now that it's not as strong as it normally is, everyone is jumping on that bandwagon. It's like an East Coast bias."
No one expects a Pac-10 team to cut down the nets after the national title game April 5 in Indianapolis. Fewer expect the one-time king of the West, which has never sent just one team to the NCAAs (it has sent only two seven times), to send the same number of schools as the Big West or the Western Athletic Conference.
Not when UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero is the selection committee chair.
Not when the number of non-BCS schools getting at-large bids has shrunk the past six years from 12 to nine to eight to six to six to four.
Not when, according to Tompkins, no conference rated eighth has received fewer than three bids.
"They may still get three with Cal, Washington and ASU playing their best ball down the stretch," Anthony said.
Yet depending upon what goes down in other conference tournaments, and the growing lack of national exposure, the potential semifinal between the Huskies (No. 49 RPI) and Sun Devils (No. 52) could be an elimination game for the field of 65.
"(ESPN's) Joe Lunardi said one team out of the Pac-10," Tompkins said. "I find that hard to believe."
That would be an even bigger upset than Rocky Balboa over Ivan Drago, which Tompkins also, ahem, covered in "Rocky IV.''
"And I'd still take Drago," Tompkins said with a laugh.
Sadly, fewer are taking the Pac-10.
(Contact Paul Gutierrez at pgutierrez(at)sacbee.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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