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UCLA Women's Basketball: Bruins, Pac-12 Putting Growth Of The Game First

Experts are predicting nine Pac-12 teams will make the NCAA Tournament.

Maren Angus-Coombs

UCLA Women's Basketball: Bruins, Pac-12 Putting Growth Of The Game First
UCLA Women's Basketball: Bruins, Pac-12 Putting Growth Of The Game First /
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Roughly ten years ago, the Pac-12 women's basketball coaches got together and made a promise to each other. They wanted to do whatever it took to be the best Power 5 conference in their sport.

At a meeting in May of that year, the coaches got together to discuss how they could work together to build up the conference as a whole. How could they go from last to first?

"It's a really unique piece," Close said. "We made a commitment that we were going to do two really important things. We had some strategic scheduling but we were not going to bad mouth each other in recruiting and we were going to look for opportunities to build each other up. You know that never happens but I think it is the absolute key.

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Fast forward to today and they have delivered on that promise. There are six teams ranked in the Top 25, another receiving votes and nine teams are predicted to make the NCAA Tournament.

When it comes to women's basketball, the powerhouse teams on the East Coast like UCONN and South Carolina tend to receive the majority of the spotlight and it is well deserved. However, the West Coast has been competing at a high level and not being seen because the rest of the country is sleeping while they play.

"We knew that the East Coat bias of having half of them asleep while we play that we had to pound our chest for the sake of each other," Close said. "If we didn't have a good game, it's my responsibility to say, 'What a credit to them. She's a really great player. She's a really good coach.' That has been an absolute core pillar of how we've built this conference."

Attendance is through the roof for the conference this season and it hasn't gone unnoticed. There were record-breaking crowds on hand for UCLA's games at USC and Colorado. 

Not to mention, Stanford head coach Tara Vanderveer became the winningest coach in all of college basketball on Sunday with 1,203rd victory. She passed former Duke men's coach Mike Krzyzewski for the crown.

While it is sad to see the conference dissolve at the end of the school year, going out on top just feels right. These coaches are delivering on their promise to each other.

Close herself perhaps put it best.

"You have to take off your institutional hat and you have to put the growth of the game first and I will really miss that," she said.

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Maren Angus-Coombs
MAREN ANGUS-COOMBS

Maren Angus-Coombs was born in Los Angeles and raised in Nashville, Tenn. She is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and has been a sports writer since 2008. Despite being raised in the South, her sports obsession has always been in Los Angeles. She is currently a staff writer for the LA Sports Report Network.