Months of recruiting and transfer portal developments have unfolded since the end of the previous college basketball season on April 3. There are still several hundred players in the transfer portal, but most of the really big targets have made their decisions, giving all of us a much clearer idea of the sport’s balance of power for the 2023-2024 season.
This is usually a time of year when Pac-12 basketball analysts talk up UCLA and Arizona as the favorites in the conference. Not that long ago, Oregon was a regular centerpiece of conversation.
This offseason, as the summer arrives, USC is front and center in the Pac-12 hoops universe.
Yes, Arizona is right there with the Trojans at the top of the conference — that remains unchanged — but USC has, in the eyes of many, greatly exceeded UCLA in roster development. That is new, as is the emerging story in Boulder, where Colorado has what many think is a top-20-quality team.
One of the big plot points in Pac-12 basketball is how Caleb Love performs at Arizona. We covered that subject recently.
Did that transfer lift Arizona above USC in the eyes of Pac-12 analyst Jon Wilner at the Wilner Hotline? Let’s see how Wilner ranked the Pac-12 after the past two months of portal plot twists: