The college basketball offseason is here, and we decided to have some fun over the next few months, ranking ALL 364 teams in D1. Number 180 is Pacific basketball.
Before you say we’re crazy – or that all of this is up for debate, let’s go over the very intricate process of how we came to this conclusion. We took a very statistical approach – with the help of Chat GPT – taking into consideration everything from March Madness wins and finishes, to AP Poll appearances, to conference players of the year. And then, a good friend of ours, Scott Blanchard, took our approach to the MAX.
Click here to visit the FIRST article, which explains how the formula works!
Here’s the breakdown of Pacific basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 0
- Elite Eights: 1
- Sweet 16s: 3
- NCAA wins: 4
- Bids: 9
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 13.9
- Bids per season: 0
- AP Polls: 6
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 0
- NBA players drafted & played: 0
- Conference Players of the Year: 10
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 10
- Conference tournament titles: 5
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 0
Overall scoop on Pacific basketball
Lately, Pacific basketball has been near the bottom of the West Coast Conference. Since 2015-16, the Tigers have had five seasons where they’ve finished with fewer than 10 wins. But it wasn’t always this way.
From 1963 to 1972, Dick Edwards brought the program to national relevance. Edwards compiled a 168-72 record before taking a job at Cal. He won three regular season conference titles, each time resulting in an NCAA Tournament bid. The 1966 and 1967 squads were led by big man Keith Swaggerty. In ’67, the Tigers took down UTEP, before falling to eventual champion UCLA, but it resulted in an Elite 8.
Pacific made it back to March Madness in 1979 under Stan Morrison, but they would become a nationally relevant program for years under Bob Thomason. He stayed at Pacific for 25 seasons and won 436 games. 6 of Pacific’s 10 regular season conference crowns came under Thomason, and he took them dancing in 1997, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2013, his last season in town. In 2004, Pacific even won a game, upsetting 5-seed Providence in the round of 64.
But the 2005 Pacific team went down in history. They would go 27-4, taking down 9-seed Pitt as the higher-ranked 8-seed, before falling to Washington. The Tigers even finished 22nd overall in the final AP Poll of the season. It was a very well-balanced team, whose only losses were to the Huskies, Kansas, San Francisco, and Utah State.
Obviously, Pacific has fallen very far from where it used to be. At their peak, they were a top-notch West Coast team. Unfortunately, that is a distant memory as the program likely hopes to be just half as good as it once was.