WCC Basketball: Breakout candidates from each team for 2020-21 season

WCC Basketball is more than just Gonzaga, BYU and Saint Mary’s. Who are some of the players in the conference that could break out this season?

When the season ended in WCC Basketball last season it sure looked like it would be a three-bid league by the time Selection Sunday came around. They were one of the conferences that were lucky enough to finish their postseason. Top-seeded Gonzaga took home the title, defeating No. 3 Saint Mary’s in the final, the Gaels knocked off second-seeded and 18th ranked BYU by one point in their semifinal and all three teams had won at least 24 games while they waited to hear their names on Sunday.

Outside of the usual NBA decisions that every team and conference face, the summer has been a pretty quiet one news-wise for the WCC. The defending champion Bulldogs could and probably should be seen as the preseason No. 1 team in the country and the only change on the bench came at Loyola Marymount where Stan Johnson replaced Mike Dunlap after six seasons.

Outside of the top three teams in the conference, the rest of the teams knocked each other around a bit with Pacific finishing 4th at 11-5 and then everyone else way 9-7 or worse, and the whole conference finished the regular season 3-39 against Gonzaga, Saint Mary’s and BYU.

What this means to me is that teams need to find that special player in order to try and close the gap on those three teams, who will be seen again as the consensus top three in the conference. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the breakout candidates in the West Coast Conference.