Pac-10 Men's Basketball

The Pacific-10 Conference is one of the oldest collegiate athletic leagues in the United States, dating back to 1916, when it was created as the Pacific Coast Conference for basketball. In 1959, the new Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) was formed. The charter members were California, Stanford, UCLA, Southern California, and Washington. In 1962, Washington State joined in. Oregon and Oregon State were added in 1964, when the league became the Pacific-8 Conference. Its latest expansion came in 1978, when Arizona and Arizona State became members. The Pac-8 changed its name again, this time to Pac-10. The league has indicated that it is not interested in any additional expansion.http://www.pac-10.org/school-bio/pac-10-history.html

The Pac-10 is known as the "Conference of Champions" because it has won more national championships than any other conference in the country. In the history of college basketball, no team was more dominant than the John Wooden-led UCLA squads in the 1960s and 1970s. Under the legendary Wooden, who turned 99 on October 14, 2009. The Bruins won 10 national championships in a 12-year span starting in 1964http://www.coachwooden.com/(The Bruins won an 11th championship in 1995, 20 years after Wooden retired. From 1971 to 1974, UCLA won a record 88 straight games, a mark that still stands today. No other Division I men's basketball team has won more than five national championships. The Bruins produced such legendary college players as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton, who went to have successful professional careers. Oregon (1939), Stanford (1942), California (1959) and Arizona (1997) also have won men's basketball national championships.

California clinched the regular-season title and top seed for the Pac-10 tournament. It marks the first time the Golden Bears have won a title - shared or outright - since 1960, when they captured the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) crown. Cal went into its final regular-season game with a 20-9 overall record and a 12-5 mark in league play. Only one other time in the 31-year history of the Pac-10 did a conference champion finish with as many as five conference losses. It also happened in 1985, when Washington and Southern California shared the regular-season title. This season, Arizona State and Washington were the only other teams to win 20 games in a down year for the Pac-10, which could be limited to a single bid to the NCAA Tournament.