This is the final season of the Pac-10 tournament before the conference expands to twelve teams, so here's one last primer on how the current format works.
- The top six teams get first-round byes.
- The bottom four teams play each other (7th place vs 10th place, 8th place vs 9th place) the first night of the tournament.
- The winners of the games in (2) will play the top two seeds (1st place vs 8/9 winner, 2nd place vs 7/10 winner).
- The other second round matchups will be the 3rd place team vs. the 6th place team, and the 4th place team vs the 5th place team.
- Semifinal matchups will be the winner of the 1 vs. 8/9 game against the winner of the 4/5 game, and the winner of the 2 vs. 7/10 game against the winner of the 3/6 game. Finals should be self-explanatory from there.
- All Pac-10 basketball games will be played at Staples Center until the end of time, because FSN is too lazy and cheap to take their crew on the road to any of the other great rotating venues around the conference.
That being said, here's the schedule for this week. All games until the Pac-10 tournament championship game (which will be on CBS) will be televised on your Fox Sports Net HD affiliate, which in the Bay Area and Northern California should be Comcast Sports Net Bay Area.
Wednesday, March 9
6 PM PT/9 PM ET -- No. 8 Stanford Cardinal (15-15, 7-11) vs. No. 9 Oregon St. Beavers (10-19, 5-13)
8:30 PM PT/11:30 PM ET -- No. 7. Oregon Ducks (14-16, 7-11) vs. No. 10 Arizona St. Sun Devils (12-18, 4-14)
Thursday, March 10
12 PM PT/3 PM ET -- No. 4 USC Trojans (18-13, 10-8) vs. No. 5 California Golden Bears (17-13, 10-8)
2:30 PM PT/5:30 PM ET -- No. 1 Arizona Wildcats (25-6, 14-4) vs. Stanford/Oregon St. winner
6 PM PT/9 PM ET -- No. 2 UCLA Bruins (22-9, 13-5) vs. Oregon/Arizona St. winner
8:30 PM PT/11:30 PM ET -- No. 3 Washington Huskies (20-10, 11-7) vs. No. 6 Washington St. Cougars (19-11, 9-9)
Friday, March 11
6 PM PT/9 PM ET -- Cal-USC winner vs. Arizona-Stanford/Oregon St. winner
8:30 PM PT/11:30 PM ET -- UCLA-Oregon/Arizona St. winner vs. Washington-Washington St. winner
Saturday, March 12
3:10 PM PT/6:10 PM ET -- Pac-10 Tournament Final (on CBS)