2021 Pac-12 Basketball Conference Winner Odds & Betting Futures

October 29th, 2020 By: ATS Picks

Current Pac-12 Conference Win Odds: Updated 02/25/21

Team	Open	Current
USC Trojans	+1000	+150
UCLA Bruins	+260	+300
Colorado Buffaloes	+1500	+300
Oregon Ducks	+435	+350
Stanford Cardinal	+600	+1600
Arizona State Sun Devils	+265	+2500
Utah Utes	+3000	+3300
Washington State Cougars	+30000	+8000
Oregon State Beavers	+8000	+10000
Washington Huskies	+3000	+20000
California Golden Bears	+10000	+20000
Arizona Wildcats	+700	NA

The Pac-12 Conference Tournament in Las Vegas will have a lot of intrigue this season. There are some pretty good teams with good records in the league, but also some good teams that have underperformed and underachieved. In other words, teams that could be extremely dangerous if they find a way to put it all together in March.

Who is the best team in the Pac-12? In the early part of the season, it would have been Colorado. Maybe the win over USC on February 25 is enough to put the Buffaloes back at the top of the conversation, but there were some ugly performances over a three-week stretch in late January that ran into mid-February.

USC was swept by Colorado in the regular season and also has a rather disheartening loss on the road at Oregon State, but there are a lot of really good performances over the course of the season otherwise. Andy Enfield’s team has a ton of talent and has the best interior presence of any team in the Pac-12.

We’ll have to see if fatigue is a factor for those big men with the condensed conference tournament schedule, as teams typically play three or four games in consecutive days. That could make life a little bit tough on the Mobley brothers.

It almost doesn’t matter what the body of work looks like for Dana Altman’s Oregon Ducks because they make conference tournament runs. Oregon won it in 2019 as a #6 seed, including a 20-point win over top-seeded Washington in the title game. The Ducks also made the finals in 2017, 2016, and 2015. Altman is one of the best in March.

With Arizona out due to postseason sanctions, there will only be 11 teams. There aren’t a lot of reasons to buy stock in any of the long shots. Stanford takes a lot of high-percentage shots at the rim, but the Cardinals aren’t as talented as the three teams we mentioned already and would also fall behind a UCLA team that is lined as the second co-favorite.

All four teams at the top are legit and the Pac-12 should have four teams in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017. If Stanford gets in, the Pac-12 would have five for the first time since seven teams made it in 2016.

Stanford would probably need to win a couple of games in Vegas. As we know by experience, it’s harder to win in Vegas than you would think.

Pac-12 Conference History:

The modern Pac-12 Men’s Basketball Tournament has run annually since 2002. All 12 teams are seeded according to their regular season schedules. The top four teams get byes into the quarterfinals while the remaining 8 teams are whittled down to four in the first round.

Of course, the Pac-12 tournament winner advances to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Even though the modern Pac-12 is relatively new, the conference was actually established in 1915. Since then, the conference is tied with the ACC for the most NCAA tournament championships with 15. UCLA boasts the most NCAA tournament wins of any team with 11.

It’s been a tough millennium for the Pac-12 as no team from the conference has won an NCAA championship since Arizona edged Kentucky in 1997’s championship game. UCLA is the last Pac-12 team to appear in a championship game. They were soundly defeated by Florida in 2006.

The bookmakers have UCLA and Arizona State as the favorites to win the 2021 Pac-12 tournament. However, both squads are long shots to win the NCAA tournament. As a point of interest, Washington State is the only Pac-12 school to never play in a Pac-12 championship game.

Looking at their current odds, it would seem safe to assume that the Cougars won’t make it there in 2021. Arizona has appeared in and won three of the last five Pac-12 tournaments. Oregon has played in four Pac-12 championship games since 2015. They lost to Arizona in 2015, beat Utah in 2016, lost to Arizona again in 2017, and then defeated Washington in 2019.