NCAA Basketball: Predicting all 32 regular-season conference champions for 2018-19

Pacific-12 Conference

2017-18 regular season champ: Arizona

2018-19 favorite: Oregon – Biggest threats: UCLA and Washington

The PAC-12 will look a little different without Arizona contending at the top, as the Wildcats have to replace their entire starting lineup from last year’s team. The saving grace for them and the rest of the league is that there aren’t legit Final Four contenders among them.

That doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good teams in the conference. Oregon has a high upside, with top-5 recruit Bol Bol along with fellow five-star freshman Louis King joining the team. Junior guard Payton Pritchard, who led the team with 14.5 ppg and 4.8 apg will be paired in the backcourt with grad transfer Ehab Amin, who led the country in steals a couple of years ago while scoring nearly 17 ppg.

UCLA has some veteran talent as well, with sophomores Kris Wilkes and Jaylen Hands coming back to lead an extremely young Bruins team. There seven different four or five-star freshmen on the roster, including Cody Riley and Jalen Hill, who were suspended from the shoplifting incident in China. Moses Brown, a five-star center big man could be the best player among the group.

A true darkhorse in the Pac-12 is Washington, who returns nearly their entire rotation from last season’s 21-13 (10-8). Jaylen Nowell was a sparkplug as a freshman, leading the team with 16.0 ppg. Noah Dickerson, David Crisp, and Matisse Thybulle excelled as veteran role players and the team overall looked completely different under former Syracuse assistant Mike Hopkins. Without any dominant teams, the Huskies have a shot to contend for a regular-season title in the winding weeks.