Many observers, including the great team at Athlon Sports, project Arizona as the best team in the country, while Value Add projects them slightly lower at 5th, two spots behind the Trojans and a few spots ahead of the greatest historic team - UCLA. USC appears to be the only conference team with elite programs in both sports, while Washington could win the football title but their basketball projects 103rd, while Arizona's football team ranks 74th.
Here is where Value Add ranks each Pac-12 team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools. Updates will be provided here.
| Pac-12 / 2017 Bid | Hoops | Football |
|---|---|---|
| USC 11 | 3 | 5 |
| Arizona 2 | 5 | 74 |
| UCLA 3 | 18 | 55 |
| Stanford | 40 | 29 |
| Utah | 50 | 22 |
| Oregon 3 | 57 | 32 |
| Oregon St. | 76 | 96 |
| Washington | 103 | 8 |
| Colorado | 130 | 25 |
| Arizona St. | 170 | 75 |
| California | 178 | 30 |
| Washington St. | 327 | 27 |
Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order. As colorful and entertaining as Bill Walton is while calling all of the "Conference of Champions" games, his contention last year that Arizona was a better team while Allonzo Trier was out injured was truly comical. He leads a trio of Arizona players ranked in the top 82 in the country, a very formidable team and only exceeded by USC's best five players all being in the top 5% (top 200) of all players.
While the Ball family will continue to score at UCLA for years, with Lonzo Ball gone to the pros and LeMelo Ball, who scored 92 points in one game, not there yet, and the middle brother LiAngelo is considered just a three-star recruit.
| Top 15 Pac-12 Players | Value Add | School | Ht |
|---|---|---|---|
| Allonzo Trier 35 | 9.00 | Arizona | `6-05 |
| DeAndre Ayton | 8.83 | Arizona | `7-00 |
| Chimezie Metu 4 | 7.93 | Southern California | `6-11 |
| Reid Travis 22 | 7.24 | Stanford | `6-08 |
| Rawle Alkins 1 | 7.07 | Arizona | `6-05 |
| Troy Brown | 6.97 | Oregon | `6-06 |
| Justin Bibbins 21 | 6.86 | Utah | `5-08 |
| Elijah Stewart 30 | 6.64 | Southern California | `6-05 |
| Thomas Welsh 40 | 6.60 | UCLA | `7-00 |
| De'Anthony Melton 22 | 6.57 | Southern California | `6-04 |
| Jordan McLaughlin 11 | 6.48 | Southern California | `6-01 |
| Aaron Holiday | 6.20 | UCLA | `6-01 |
| Dorian Pickens 11 | 5.93 | Stanford | `6-05 |
| Bennie Boatwright | 5.90 | Southern California | `6-10 |
| Kris Wilkes | 5.84 | UCLA | `0-00 |
Ken Pomeroy ranked the Pac-12 sixth of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed here with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.
Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.
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