Pac-12 Dominating 2012 Recruiting Class

Shabazz Muhammad will become the new face of the Pac-12

I’m a big-time Chicago Bulls fan, being that I’m about hour south of the Windy City, but college basketball has always outweighed the NBA for me. With that being said, I have paid attention more to the post-season NCAA coaching and player moves than I have to the NBA playoff races. One of the things that have caught my eye about the upcoming college basketball season is the successful recruiting done by the Pac 12. There is a possibility that seventeen of the top 100 recruits will be making their way west this coming fall in hopes that they can help restore a conference that is currently in shambles.

This past season for the Pac 12 was, to say the least, unentertaining. Colorado won the conference tournament which should send up a red flag right away. Colorado? Come on, the team finished 11-7 in conference play. Teams with 11-7 records in other conferences finished, at the highest, third or fourth. Not to say that other teams such as Washington, Arizona, and Oregon didn’t have decent years, but the Pac 12 was once a feared conference. So what happened?

Maybe it was the lack of recruiting to that whole region of the country. Maybe it was the falling out of programs that were once the most respected in the nation. Yes, that must be it. Teams like UCLA and Arizona were dysfunctional to say the least. Arizona made a great run in the tournament in 2011, yes, but this year they did not even make the field. Instead, they were paired with Bucknell in the first round of the NIT and lost to the eighth seeded Bison by nine points. UCLA on the other was suffering from locker room issues as well as player/coach relationships for about the second or third year straight. The situation got so bad to the point that ESPN talked about it about four days a week and Coach Ben Howland’s job security was in jeopardy. The season finished on the lowest note it has in awhile for the member of the Power Six conferences.

Now, let us fast forward to 2012. You can’t change the past, Timon and Pumbaa even said so. But with the recruiting that has been done by the Pac 12 this past winter and spring will surely change the future on the west coast. According to the ESPNU Top 100, seventeen rising stars could attend and play for a Pac 12 school this coming fall/winter. Ten of those recruits will potentially make their way to either UCLA or Arizona (Anthony Bennett, Christopher Obekpa, Torian Graham, and Savon Goodman are have not yet committed). Ten percent of the top recruits will do their best to aid the resurgence of the Pac 12.

It’s already exciting to see guys turn down currently successful schools like Kentucky, Duke, and Ohio State and instead choose schools that are rebuilding. That to me shows character in young athletes. I thought that Shabazz Muhammad’s quote saying that he wants to help rebuild UCLA was extremely mature because, nowadays, so many athletes want to team up and play together to win. Muhammad could’ve gone straight to Lexington with Nerlens Noel and tried to make it to Atlanta. It’s refreshing to see that some athletes still have the confidence that they don’t have to team up with anyone to win. However, in no way am I saying that top recruits that attend the same universities are trying to take the easy way out because you see athletes recruit each other all the time. What I’m saying is it takes a special player to go to a school that’s struggling and try to bring the program back to the top. That’s what’s so admirable.

This next season brings in a lot of fresh, young talent and with the anti-climactic finish of this past year’s tournament, I’m ready to go. With the new additions to the Pac 12, there’s no argument as to why they can’t be represented in the tournament by three or four teams. Last year was rough on the west coast, but this year will surely present much more talent and competition.