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Pac-12 Basketball: Power rankings before 2017-18 league play

KANSAS CITY, MO - NOVEMBER 21: Aaron Holiday
KANSAS CITY, MO - NOVEMBER 21: Aaron Holiday /
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The Pac-12 has consistently produced high-level talent and this year is no different. There are multiple potential NBA Draft picks in the league, led by Arizona’s DeAndre Ayton. Players like Troy Brown, Aaron Holiday, Chimezie Metu, Rawle Alkins, and Allonzo Trier can also be found on draft boards.

Even though there is clearly a high talent level across the league, the Pac-12 will struggle to get NCAA Tournament bids. At this point, it looks like the league will only get 4 teams in the field, which is less than the other power leagues.

Five of the 12 teams in the Pac-12 have already damaged their resumes to the point where they can be eliminated from tournament discussion. This means that almost half of the league can give you a bad loss which drastically reduces the margin of error.

The teams at the top, Arizona and Arizona State, are the only surefire NCAA Tournament teams, but they may be too good for bubble teams to knock off. This means that there are fewer opportunities for quality wins and more opportunities for harmful losses, which is not a good combination for maximizing tournament bids.

This article will provide an in-depth ranking of the Pac-12 conference. Each team is ranked based on a mixture of resume and talent level. So, this is not a ranking of solely resumes, a team ranked 9th could have a better resume than the team ranked 8th. Nor is it a ranking of talent alone as the team ranked 8th could have more talent than the team ranked 6th.