NCAA Sports Blog

The West Coast Conference is a NCAA collegiate athletic conference consisting of eight member schools in California, Oregon, and Washington. It was founded in 1952 as the California Basketball Association by a group of five schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, became the West Coast Athletic Conference in 1956, and adopted its current name in 1989. All of the current members are private, religiously-affiliated institutions; four of the eight are Jesuit, and only Pepperdine is not Catholic. It is also a remarkably stable union in the constantly changing world of college athletics. The WCC has not had a school join or leave the conference for nearly 30 years (Gonzaga and Nevada traded conferences (Big Sky) in 1979). Only two conferences, the Ivy League and the Pac-10, have remained unchanged for a longer period of time.

The league was chartered by five northern California institutions, four from the Bay Area (San Francisco, Saint Mary’s, Santa Clara, San Jose State) and Pacific from Stockton. It began as the California Basketball Association, playing its first game on January 2, 1953. After two seasons under that name, the conference expanded to include Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine in 1955, and became the “West Coast Athletic Conference” in 1956. The name was shortened in 1989, dropping the the word “Athletic.”

The WCC participates in NCAA Division I and is considered to be one of the better mid-major conferences in the country. The conference sponsors 13 sports but does not include football as one of them. In fact, San Diego is the only conference member that still plays football at any level; the rest have all dropped the sport, some as early as the 1940s, before the conference existed (Gonzaga and Portland), and one as late as 2003 (Saint Mary’s). The WCC’s strongest sports historically have been soccer (nine national champions, including back-to-back women’s soccer titles in 2001 and 2002) and tennis (five individual champions and one team champion). The conference has also made its presence felt nationally in men’s basketball, with San Francisco winning two consecutive national titles in the 1950s with all-time great Bill Russell, Loyola Marymount’s inspired NCAA tournament run in 1990 following the tragic death of Hank Gathers during that season’s WCC championship tournament, and most recently Gonzaga’s rise to national prominence since 1999’s Cinderella run to the Elite 8. Gonzaga has made it to the NCAA tournament each year since then.

Current members

Former members

    * University of the Pacific (1952-1971)

    * San Jose State University (1952-1969)

    * California State University, Fresno (Fresno State) (1955-1957)

    * University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) (1964-1969)

    * University of Nevada, Reno (1969-1979)

    * University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) (1969-1975)

    * Seattle University (1971-1980) eventually joined the NCAA Division II ranks but is conducting an athletics study to determine if moving back to Division I and re-joining the WCC would be possible. Recently, the WCC decided not to expand conference membership now or in the foreseeable future.

Sports

The WCC sponsors intercollegiate competition in men’s baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s cross country, men’s and women’s golf, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s tennis, women’s rowing, and women’s volleyball.

    * West Coast Conference men’s basketball tournament history

Famous sports figures

Some of the famous athletes who played collegiately in the WCC, and coaches and executives that attended WCC schools, include:

    * Basketball:

          o Rick Adelman, NBA head coach (Loyola Marymount)

          o Bernie Bickerstaff, NBA head coach (San Diego)

          o Mike Brown, NBA head coach (San Diego)

          o Bill Cartwright, former NBA player and head coach, current NBA assistant (San Francisco)

          o Dan Dickau, current Portland Trail Blazers player (Gonzaga)

          o Maggie Dixon, head women’s coach at Army at the time of her unexpected death in 2006 (San Diego)

          o Hank Gathers, legendary college sports star (Loyola Marymount)

          o Dennis Johnson, former NBA star (Pepperdine)

          o K. C. Jones, Basketball Hall of Famer (San Francisco)

          o Bo Kimble, former NBA player (Loyola Marymount)

          o Adam Morrison, drafted third overall in the 2006 NBA Draft by the Charlotte Bobcats (Gonzaga)

          o Eric Musselman, NBA head coach (San Diego)

          o Steve Nash, current NBA superstar and 2005 and 2006 NBA MVP (Santa Clara)

          o Kurt Rambis, former NBA player and coach (Santa Clara)

          o Bill Russell, former NBA superstar & Basketball Hall of Famer (San Francisco)

          o John Stockton, former NBA superstar (Gonzaga)

          o Ronny Turiaf, current Los Angeles Lakers player (Gonzaga)

    * Soccer:

          o Brandi Chastain, member of the USA national team that won the 1999 Women’s World Cup (Santa Clara)

          o Steve Cherundolo, USA men’s national team player (Portland)

          o Brian Ching, USA men’s national team player (Gonzaga)

          o Kasey Keller, USA men’s goalkeeper (Portland)

          o Shannon MacMillan, also a member of the 1999 Women’s World Cup winners (Portland)

          o Tiffeny Milbrett, also a member of the 1999 Women’s World Cup winners (Portland)

          o Christine Sinclair, all-time leading goal scorer for the Canadian women’s national team (Portland)

    * Baseball:

          o Jason Bay, current Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder and 2004 National League Rookie of the Year (Gonzaga)

          o Tom Candiotti, former major-league pitcher (Saint Mary’s)

          o Mike Scott, former major-league pitcher (Pepperdine)

          o Theo Epstein, MLB general manager (San Diego - School of Law only; earned bachelor’s degree at Yale)

Conference arenas