How good of a women’s basketball conference will the new Pac-12 be?

Marquee brands like Oregon State and Gonzaga should raise the league’s profile and help it earn multiple bids to the NCAA Tournament.

Killed by greed and mismanagement in the summer of 2023, the Pac-12 has risen and rebuilt itself.

Set to launch on July 1, 2026, the new Pac-12 will feature just two teams from its last version, the left-behinds in Oregon State and Washington State. Joining the Beavers and Cougars to bolster this conference are soon-to-be-former Mountain West members Boise State, Fresno State, Colorado State, San Diego State and Utah State. Gonzaga brings its storied history in basketball, coming over from the West Coast Conference as the lone non-football member, while Texas State rounds out the nine-team league as its easternmost member.

Around the same time the Pac-12 announced the addition of Texas State from the Sun Belt, it unveiled that CBS will be its anchor partner of a new TV deal through 2031. College sports fans will be seeing these nine schools a whole lot on CBS, CBS Sports Network and Paramount+.

Since launching, the Pac-12’s social media arm has been busy touting its successes in men’s basketball and football. And indeed, they now have signature brands in both. Boise State is coming off a College Football Playoff appearance and Gonzaga has been to a pair of Final Fours and two Elite Eights in the past decade. Seven of the new Pac-12’s nine teams have made at least one men’s NCAA Tournament since 2021.

But what about women’s basketball? How good of a league can the new Pac-12 be in that sport?

It depends on how one views the new Pac-12. If you’re expecting this league to return to its old form where it was competing for national championships and putting more than half its membership in the NCAA Tournament every year, you’ll likely be disappointed. This new version of the Pac-12 simply doesn’t have the same depth of talented teams that the old one did.

However, if you’re a bit more clear-eyed but also optimistic, carrying the belief that this could be among the best mid-major conferences in the sport and be a multi-bid conference most seasons, I think your expectations will be met.

Among the nine teams in this conference, there’s a clear top, middle and bottom in women’s basketball.

Let’s start at the bottom with Fresno State, Texas State and Utah State. These are the only three teams in the new Pac-12 that haven’t appeared in an NCAA Tournament in the past decade.

If there’s a team to be optimistic about, it’s probably Fresno State, the program that gave us the Cavinder Twins and has produced two seasons of 20 wins or more in the past decade. The Bulldogs, following the retirement of Jaime White, just hired a new head coach in Ryan McCarthy. He comes to Fresno after 13 seasons at Division II Alaska Anchorage, where he had an 82.2 win percentage, produced six All-Americans and took his team to the national championship game. If he can turn things around at Fresno, it will raise the floor of this league.

Utah State has endured six consecutive losing seasons and has never been to the NCAA Tournament. Wesley Brooks — who has worked under Kevin McGuff, Kim Barnes Arico and Lynne Roberts — is about to enter his second season there. Of the nine teams in the new Pac-12, Utah State is the only one to never finish a season in the past 10 years with a HerHoopStats rating better than 10.0. For reference, 91 teams had HHS ratings of 10 or better this season, including Gonzaga which has had a rating north of that for 10 consecutive seasons.

Texas State is in somewhat of a similar boat, as it hasn’t been dancing in March Madness since 2002. Zenarae Antoine is entering her 15th season at the helm of the Bobcats with a win percentage of 50.1. If she makes it to her 16th season, it’ll be the fourth different conference she’s coached Texas State in. The Bobcats have won two division titles under her watch and were regular season champs of the Sun Belt in 2023.

Now to the middle, which brings us to Boise State, Colorado State and San Diego State. Each of these schools have had some form of varying degrees of consistent success over the past decade.

Colorado State, for example, has one NCAA Tournament appearance, four WNIT trips, and seven seasons of 20 wins or more — including the last four — since the 2015-16 season under Ryun Williams. They’ve been a consistent decent-to-good mid-major team.

The same could be said for Boise State, though the Broncos have leveled out a bit since winning four straight Mountain West titles from 2017 through 2020. They have enjoyed three consecutive winning seasons though and returned to the WNIT this past year. In the last decade, Boise State also has five wins over Power 4 opponents — the most of the middle and lower class teams in the new Pac-12.

San Diego State is trending upward under Stacie Terry-Hutson, who just coached the Aztecs to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2012. They’ve enjoyed three consecutive seasons of 20 or more wins and just added three players in the transfer portal who should help them this season.

Here’s the upper class of the league, which features three teams who have enjoyed national success in women’s basketball in the last decade: Oregon State, Washington State and Gonzaga.

The Beavers are the lone team in this league with a Final Four appearance under their belt, going there in 2016. Since then under Scott Rueck, they’ve gone to two more Elite Eights. Even while playing in the West Coast Conference this past year — after being decimated with transfer portal departures — the Beavers still went to the NCAA Tournament, marking their seventh trip to March Madness in the past decade.

“Those who have been paying attention know the story and know how significant it is,” Rueck said in Chapel Hill in March after the Beavers lost to North Carolina in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. “I couldn’t be happier for what we’ve accomplished, more proud, and it’s just been an absolute joy... Oregon State is going to be Oregon State. We’re going to be a team that takes care of you and is competitive every night and makes pros. That won’t change. So I think everybody just has evidence now if they were wondering previously.”

In the offseason, the Beavers lost zero players to the portal while gaining two.

Of the nine teams in the new Pac-12, Oregon State has the most wins over AP-ranked opponents in the past 10 years with 43. Having produced stars of the sport like Sydney Weise, Mikayla Pivec and Raegen Beers, Oregon State enters the new Pac-12 as its marquee brand in women’s basketball.

But Gonzaga is right there with the Beavers with seven NCAA Tournament trips in the past 10 years, 20 wins over Power 4 teams and eight wins over ranked opponents. The Zags have won 20 or more games in nine of the past 10 seasons and went to the Sweet 16 in 2024. With Lisa Fortier at the helm, they’ve dominated the West Coast Conference — winning eight of the last nine regular season conference championships — and established themselves as a true mid-major power.

The other team to mention here is Washington State, which went to three straight NCAA Tournaments between 2021 and 2023 and won a Pac-12 title. Kamie Ethridge’s squads have won more than 20 games in each of the past two seasons, but missed March Madness. Still, over the past 10 years, Washington State has 14 wins over ranked opponents. Ethridge, a former Wade Trophy winner and national champion at Texas, will keep Wazzu competitive no matter what conference they’re in.

When the new Pac-12 begins play in the 2026-27 season, it’s not inconceivable to see it as a three-bid league for the NCAA Tournament. The Ivy League just pulled that off this season, and the A-10 got two teams in. It will require signature brands like Oregon State, Washington State and Gonzaga playing at their very best and winning some tough out-of-conference games to boost their NET ratings. And if the other six teams in the league can raise their play and beat some good teams in the non-conference portion of the season, that will only help.