Yes, the conference has seen a lot of defections to the NBA over the years, but the lack of coaching success is more concerning. That’s an overlooked factor in the Pac-12’s collapse. Consider for a moment a few of the league’s successful coaches earlier in the decade. Trent Johnson (Stanford) and Tony Bennett (Washington State) both left for new jobs, and they left winning programs for Johnny Dawkins and Ken Bone. But Dawkins could not recover from the loss of the Lopez twins (among others), and Bone was never able to win with star Klay Thompson. Tim Floyd also lost his job at USC after the O.J. Mayo scandal, and that program has never recovered. Ben Howland’s program has slipped at UCLA, Craig Robinson hasn’t fully rebuilt Oregon State and Ernie Kent got fired at Oregon. It’s almost as if everything went wrong for every team in the Pac-12—all at one time.