Expectations Rise for Pac-10 Women

Women’s basketball this season in the Pacific 10 Conference will not be for the kids.

After two years of watching their freshmen and sophomores mature, conference coaches are expecting their juniors and seniors to raise their programs to levels the Pac-10 hasn’t been to recently.

“I’m really excited about our conference because I believe we’ll see the resurgence this year we’ve been predicting,” said Arizona State Coach Charli Turner Thorne. “We have veteran teams and they are healthy. We have the [nonconference] schedules, and if we can take care of business, we can have five or six teams in the NCAA tournament.”

That is a bold expectation -- the Pac-10 hasn’t sent more than four teams to the tournament since the 1997-98 season -- but other coaches at Pac-10 media day said there was a genuine opportunity for the conference to raise its profile.

“This is a year a statement needs to be made during the nonconference season,” California Coach Caren Horstmeyer said. “This is something to be said about the number of young kids we had in the conference the past two years. Now there are veterans. So I believe you will see more [Pac-10] teams do well in the nonconference season.”

Said UCLA Coach Kathy Olivier: “Just hearing everyone talk, you can tell people feel good about their teams.... Last year, we could have been a great conference. We were good but lost some close games to Tennessee, Connecticut, Texas Tech and others ... so I think everyone here feels the same -- let’s prove to people we are better.”

As for the conference race itself, Stanford and Arizona are expected to battle again for the regular-season title they shared last season, and UCLA, Arizona State, Oregon and Washington are expected to keep things interesting. But even if the conference race is its usual grind-it-out affair, Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer said she wanted the entire conference to put a strong emphasis on looking good early.

“I think all the coaches know the importance of setting tone early and getting people to talk about the great players we do have,” she said. “We need our great teams to motor through the season early, and play well in Pac-10 too. You can’t drop a game to a team that has a low RPI or isn’t ready to play that night.

“It hurts us when we don’t begin strong, beat each other up in conference, then get a bad seeding [in the NCAA]. I know teams in the Pac-10 want to beat us. But let’s also beat everyone else.”

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Coaches’ Poll

The Pacific 10 Conference women’s basketball preseason poll, as voted on by the league’s coaches (first-place votes in parentheses):

*--* School Points 1. Stanford (8) 79 2. Arizona (1) 72 3. UCLA (1) 68 4. Arizona State 50 5. Oregon 46 6. Washington 42 7. USC 38 8. California 24 9. Oregon State 22 10. Washington State 9

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