Pac-12 Tournament 2012: Why Conference Only Deserves 1 NCAA Tournament Bid

Since its inception, the Pac-12 has been one of the premier conferences in college basketball. This is the first season that it has been known as the Pac-12 rather than the Pac-10 thanks to the inclusion of Colorado and Utah, and while not much else has changed, the Pac-12 is on the decline.

While no dominant team stepped up in the conference during the regular season, it was a bit of a surprise to see most of the top teams get trounced early in the Pac-12 tournament, leaving No. 4-seeded Arizona to take on No. 6 Colorado in the final.

The conference boasts a ton of mediocre teams, most of whom would have had far worse records in better conferences. Some might argue that the teams were so evenly matched that it didn't allow for any dominant squads to step up, but the fact of the matter is that the Pac-12 is not currently an elite basketball conference.

Multiple teams from the Pac-12 make the NCAA tournament every single year, and oftentimes that means as many as five or six teams. While there are several teams that have 20-plus wins in the Pac-12 this season, the only bid to the Big Dance should go to the winner of the automatic bid between Arizona and Colorado.

That may seem harsh, but the reality is that if teams like Washington, California and Oregon can't even win big games against what are supposed to be inferior teams in a weak conference, then how can they be expected to beat the best teams in the nation in the NCAA tournament?

There is no question that receiving a single bid would be embarrassing for the Pac-12, which usually fields a conference that can compete with anyone, but it's the right thing to do at this point. The Pac-12 has been on the decline in terms of basketball for the past few years, and while the conference usually has a couple good contenders, that isn't the case this season.

The point of the NCAA tournament is for the 68 best teams in the nation to compete. While that obviously is altered a bit by representatives from smaller conferences, there aren't any Pac-12 teams that are better than bubble squads such as Drexel, Iona, West Virginia and many others.

I realize that it isn't the selection committee's job to send messages to certain conferences, but deciding not to hand out any at-large bids to Pac-12 teams would most definitely serve as a wake-up call. Perhaps it is just a down year for the Pac-12, but it hasn't measured up to the ACC, Big 12, SEC or Big East in quite some time.

One would think that the Pac-12 teams still have plenty of recruiting power, and they should be nabbing some great players out of California, but things have gone south. I'm confident that the Pac-12 can rebound in the coming years, but this season it should be treated like any mid-major or small conference and given only one NCAA tournament bid.