Pac-12 Basketball: 10 potential candidates for expansion after losing USC and UCLA

Boise State

Adding a blue football field to the Pac-12 sounds like a no brainer! In all seriousness, the Broncos are an athletics program that would actually fit well into the Pac-12. We’ll be focusing mostly on men’s basketball and football, and both of those programs have had some solid seasons in recent memory. This football program was actually better than most of the Pac-12, especially during that run of success in the late 2000’s.

On the basketball side of things, head coach Leon Rice has actually had this program in solid shape since they joined the Mountain West back in 2011. The Broncos have been in three NCAA Tournaments and had their best year by far this past season, finishing the season ranked in the AP poll for the first time in program history. In all honesty, a Pac-12 missing UCLA and USC wouldn’t exactly be worlds better than the current state of the MWC, though clearly Boise State would have to ramp up things in general for some of their other athletics.

Geographically, it’s one of those additions that would work pretty perfectly, putting them right into the Pac-12 footprint and in a brand new state and city market. They wouldn’t be too far from Washington State or Utah and are already as good in basketball as both programs. Boise State has always been one of the sensible teams to add to the conference long before they lost UCLA and USC, and it’s certainly one of the strongest and most likely from this list today.