Cal Basketball: Yes, Things Can Get Worse - The Pac-12 Record For Losses Within Reach

If the Bears cannot win any of their remaining games, they would total 29 defeats.

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