Pacific Ten

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(Redirected from Pac-10)

The Pacific Ten Conference or Pac-10 is a college athletic conference which operates in the western United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I.

1 Member Schools
2 History
3 Rivalries
4 Men's Basketball
- 4.1 Conference Regular-Season Champions
  - 4.1.1 Pacific Coast Conference
  - 4.1.2 AAWU/Pac-8/Pac-10
5 Women's Basketball
- 5.1 Conference Regular-Season Champions

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Member Schools

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History

The roots of the Pac-10 Conference go back to December 15, 1915, when the Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) was founded at a meeting at the Oregon Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Charter members were the University of California (now University of California, Berkeley), the University of Washington, the University of Oregon, and Oregon State College (now Oregon State University). The conference began play in 1916.

One year later, Washington State College (now Washington State University) joined the league, followed by Stanford University in 1918.

In 1922, the PCC expanded to eight teams with the admission of the University of Southern California and the University of Idaho. The University of Montana joined the Conference in 1924, and in 1928, the PCC grew to 10 members with the addition of UCLA.

For many years, the conference split into two divisions for basketball--a Southern Division comprised of the four California schools and a Northern Division comprised of the six schools in the Pacific Northwest.

In 1950, Montana joined the Mountain States Conference. The PCC continued as a nine-team league through 1958.

Following a "pay-for-play" scandal at several PCC institutions, the PCC was dissolved and the Pac-10 was founded on July 1, 1959 as the Athletic Association of Western Universities, with Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Washington as charter members. Washington State joined in 1962; Oregon and Oregon State joined in 1964. In 1968, the conference renamed itself the Pacific-8 Conference, or Pac-8 for short. In 1978, Arizona and Arizona State joined, creating the Pac-10 in its current form. The conference expressed interest in admitting the University of Texas after the collapse of the Southwest Conference. Texas expressed an interest in joining a strong academic conference, but joined three fellow SWC schools in forming the Big 12 Conference. Thus of Division I conferences, only the Ivy League has maintained its current membership for a longer time.

The Pac-10 claims the PCC's history as its own, since the eight largest schools in the old PCC all eventually joined the new league. However, the older league had a separate charter.

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Rivalries

The Pac-10 is an anomaly in college sports, in that each school within the conference has its own in-state, conference rivalry. One is an intracity rivalry, and another is within the same metropolitan area. These rivalries (and the name given to the football forms) are:

Arizona-Arizona State
Washington-Washington State
Oregon-Oregon State
Cal-Stanford
UCLA-USC

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Men's Basketball

UCLA and Arizona have developed a rivalry between the two schools because both teams have historically dominated the conference. In the last few years, Stanford's success has also led to a rivalry with Arizona, which peaked in 2000 with both receiving #1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. In addition, certain non-conference rivalries have developed in other sports.

During the 1970s, UCLA and Notre Dame had an intense men's basketball rivalry. For several years, it was the only non-conference game in Division I basketball that was played twice a season (home-and-home). Unquestionably, the most famous game in the rivalry was on January 19, 1974, when Notre Dame scored the last 12 points of the game to nip UCLA and end the Bruins' record 88-game winning streak. This rivalry is now dormant, partly because Notre Dame is no longer independent in sports other than football.

In recent years, Gonzaga has developed an in-state rivalry in men's basketball with Washington and Washington State.

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