This is the last Pac-12 women’s basketball season. It is shaping up to be a very special ride for the league, with five teams in the top 11 of both the USA TODAY Sports Women’s Basketball Poll and the Associated Press Poll. The Pac-12 has five Sweet 16-caliber teams, and UCLA — currently No. 2 in the country — looks like a Final Four favorite. USC is definitely in position to get a high NCAA Tournament seed and make a run in March Madness under head coach Lindsay Gottlieb.
As the Pac-12 heads toward conference play on December 30 — and USC prepares for a huge game against that aforementioned UCLA juggernaut — it is worth reflecting on the history of Pac-12 women’s basketball.
Gottlieb was interviewed by P.J. Brown of Tucson.com. Gottlieb offered a lengthy set of recollections on her own memories of Pac-12 women’s basketball. You should read the whole article, but here’s a small snippet which underscores one simple point: Gottlieb has spent a lot of time coaching in the Pac-12. Her history in the league goes back almost 20 years:
“I could go on for hours (on why Pac-12 women’s basketball is special). I’ll start with me coming in as an assistant at Cal in gosh, I think it was 2005. I really was an outsider. I had spent my life on the East Coast and my college career, my coaching career on the East Coast. My boss, Joanne Boyle takes the Cal job and at the time, Cal had 13 losing seasons in a row. We were picked eighth in what was then the Pac-10 and three years later we were eighth in the country. That group, we inherited an incredible freshman class.”
This is the coach USC has at the helm of the program. The Trojans couldn’t have a better, more aware coach on their bench.
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