I misspoke earlier in the week when I mistakenly called a tournament the “last of the Vegas tourneys”. I had forgotten just how many leagues traverse to sin city to find their auto-bid. At the risk of doing it again, I will say I’m pretty sure the PAC-12 tournament is the final one to start out here, and just like me most of the time, a fair amount of squads will leave Las Vegas with nothing.

When is the PAC-12 Tournament?

Wednesday, March 8th through Saturday the 11th.

Where is the PAC-12 Tournament played?

T-Mobile Arena (where the Knights play) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

How to watch

Pac-12 Network for the early rounds with ESPN picking up the late night games in the quarter and semi finals as well as showing the final on Saturday night.

Who won the regular season title?

Second ranked UCLA finshed 18-2 in league play and 27-4 overall to snag the crown.

Defending Champ

Arizona beat UCLA in the finals last year.

Who will participate

All 12 member schools will play in the tournament.

How Many teams will the PAC-12 send to the tournament?

Most likely three. UCLA and Arizona are locked in, USC is pretty much in and Arizona State needs some help. Oregon also has an outside shot if they made a run and got some help.

PAC-12 Tournament Bracket

First round byes to the top four teams, with play in games for the bottom eight. No extra days off or reseeding in Vegas.

PAC-12 Tournament Odds

Two top dogs, but plenty of squads in the mix here.

PAC-12 Tournament Preview

Very hard to find any knocks on UCLA. Not only did the finish atop the league, the closed the season out by beating the other top-10 team in the conference with a convincing win over Arizona Saturday. If a guy had to nitpick, they don’t get a ton of production from deep and when needed they are closer to average at three point percentage, compared to most of their other metrics. In fact it’s a team that’s mostly been defensive minded, to a certain point. The offense isn’t bad, per se, it’s just not on the same level as Arizona and close enough to Oregon, USC and Stanford to not call it an “elite offense”, relatively speaking.

Arizona, as mentioned, did drop the season finale to the Bruins, but was able to beat them at home back in January. Also mentioned, this is the best offense in the league. They run an up tempo, high efficiency offense that gets to the line a lot, moves the ball well and has a couple of all PAC-12 players in their front court.

Everyone Else

The Trojans take care of the ball, make their free throws at the highest clip in the conference, have a ton of size in the front court and just have a pretty big number for a team that ripped off a pretty nice stretch of games to finish the season off. Not to mention the fact that they handed UCLA their largest defeat of the year back in January. They haven’t solved Arizona yet and will need to get past them here, but did keep it pretty respectable in the midst of a tough final few weeks.

The rest of the pack are all double digit odds or worse and it’s tough to see any of them beating two ranked teams in rapid succession, even on a neutral. That said, there is not a big gap in talent from three through ten here and we are likely in for some very good opening round games. I couldn’t even blame a person for grabbing a on Oregon or Wazzu.

PAC-12 Tournament Prediction

Taking a shot with the Trojans in a team that can probably do the most for their seeding with a couple wins here.

My Bet: USC +700