March 4, 2026
By Chris Murray, Nevada Sports Net: Oregon State and Washington State plus five defecting Mountain West schools ripped up one of the nation’s top basketball conferences in an attempt to build a football-first conference that would create more media-rights money for those seven schools. While the television contract landed by the new Pac-12 didn’t seem to move the needle all that much, it did create what should be a strong men’s basketball conference, although the MW already held that distinction with an average of 4.5 NCAA Tournament bids per season since 2021-22. The odds of the new Pac-12 beating that average over the next four years doesn’t seem all that high. It could match it.
While basketball was not the main reason the MW was broken up, let’s imagine the best West Coast mid-major hoops conference that could have been built during the latest wave of realignment. Below is that conference, with each school’s average KenPom score over the last five seasons (from 2021-26).
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