July 18, 2022
Locked on Women’s Basketball: Go West, Big Ten, How USC, UCLA and realignment impact Women’s Basketball
By The Next
Missy Heidrick and Michelle Smith discuss about conference realignment and the USC/UCLA move to the Big Ten
It’s time for another episode of the Locked on Women’s Basketball podcast. This episode features host Missy Heidrick and Michelle Smith talking about conference realignment and the USC/UCLA move to the Big Ten.
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Michelle Smith talks about what potentially happened with USC/UCLA moving out of the Pac-12 and into the Big Ten:
“Well, it was another bombshell. Right? So it wasn’t, I don’t know, there were so many people in the Pac-12 who seem really genuinely surprised about this news. So it’s interesting to me that USC and UCLA are having these conversations and are clearly talking with one another.
And they’re clearly doing a good job of keeping it under wraps because so many people were so surprised that it happened. But this is all the PAC-12 has struggled from, this is about TV networks. This is about TV money. This is about the inability of the PAC-12 to get a media deal that rivals its partner. It’s the other Power Fives.”
Michelle Smith breaks down what makes the Pac-12 a great conference:
“Pac-12 network has been a huge boom for PAC-12 Women’s Basketball, it really has the coaches will credit it, the elevation of the PAC-12, the number of teams that they’ve put in the Final Four in the last eight to 10 years, the number of teams in the Sweet 16 and the Elite Eight, the years that the conference has been the best in the country, not every year, but there have been a few years of late where this is the best conference in the country. All of the coaches will credit the PAC-12 network for elevating the entire conference.”
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