Cal Basketball: Yes, Things Can Get Worse - The Pac-12 Record For Losses Within Reach
If the Cal basketball team doesn’t win any of its four remaining regular-season games — and the Bears haven’t emerged victorious since Jan. 6 — it faces the ignominious prospect of setting the all-time Pac-12 Conference record for most defeats in a season.
The Bears are 3-24 overall (2-14 in Pac-12) headed into their Thursday home game against Washington (15-13, 7-10). Cal played one of its best games of the season against the Huskies in Seattle last month before losing 81-78 in overtime.
Next up on Saturday in the home schedule finale is Washington State (13-15, 8-9), which takes a three-game win streak into it game at Stanford on Thursday night.
Then a pair of games in Oregon a week from now before the Pac-12 tournament, which begins March 8 in Las Vegas. Those could be problematic based on the fact that Cal is 0-12 in games outside of Haas Pavilion.
An 0-4 finish in the league and the inevitable year-end defeat in the postseason would give Cal 29 losses.
No conference school dating back the league’s inception in 1915-16 as lost as many.
The record for most losses actually is only one year old — Oregon State went 3-28 in 2021-22, losing its final 18 games. It was a stunning collapse one season after the sixth-place Beavers made a remarkable run through the Pac-12 tournament into the NCAAs and reached the Elite 8 round before their 20-win season ended.
OSU’s three-win season a year also represents the fewest victories ever by a Pac-12 team. Cal must win once more to avoid taking partial ownership of that record.
OSU’s troubles in 2021-22 exceeded their 27-loss campaign in 2016-17, which tied the conference record for futility set by Washington State in 1952-53.
Cal has two entries among 11 conference programs with at least 24 defeats in a season, having gone 8-24 in 2017-18.
Oregon State appears on the list three times, while Utah, USC, Arizona and Idaho also have lost at least 24 games in a single season.
Idaho, which was 4-24 and won just once in 16 Pacific Coast Conference games in the post-war season of 1946-47, remained part of the league through 1958-59, after which Cal, Stanford, UCLA, USC and Washington banded together to form the AAWU.
Oregon is the oldest entry on the list, with a 7-24 record 101 seasons ago in 1921-22, a year in which USC played only 12 games. Cal beat the Ducks twice that season, including by the score of 25-12.
Arizona was 4-24 in 1982-83, the year before hiring Lute Olson as coach. He went on to win 587 games and a national championship in Tucson, which goes to show, Cal fans, that almost anything is possible.
Cover photo of Haas Pavilion shortly before a game earlier this season.
Follow Jeff Faraudo of Cal Sports Report on Twitter: @jefffaraudo
