Oct. 13, 2005
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SAN BRUNO, Calif. -- Commissioner Michael Gilleran announced today that the West Coast Conference, in conjunction with FSN, will televise 15 regular-season WCC men's and women's basketball games during the 2005-2006 season. The FSN TV schedule combined with the conference's ESPN and CSTV television packages completes a 26-game regular season television schedule, making it the largest television package in WCC history.
The West Coast Conference, now entering its 54th year of competition, will be featured on a combination of FSN Northwest, FSN Bay Area, FSN West and FSN West2 broadcasts. In addition, Fox College Sports (FCS) will air select WCC games on its three super-regional cable networks (Atlantic, Central or Pacific), which provide the best out-of-market games from 22 regional sports networks across the country.
For the fourth consecutive season, all eight WCC men's and women's basketball teams will be featured in the conference's FSN package. The WCC will tip-off its women's basketball telecasts with FSN on Friday, January 6, 2006 when Santa Clara travels to Spokane to take on Gonzaga in a rematch of last season's WCC Women's Basketball Tournament final. The men's portion of the schedule tips off on January 7th with Southern California rivals San Diego and Loyola Marymount going head-to-head in Gersten Pavilion on the LMU campus.
The WCC is coming off of a banner 2004-05 season in which the conference established itself as one of the best men's basketball conferences in the country. Last season, the WCC reached an all-time high Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) of No. 7 among the 31 Division I conferences. The WCC finished the season ranked ahead of other highly regarded conferences such as Conference USA, the Missouri Valley Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Atlantic-10 Conference, and the Western Athletic Conference. The only conferences listed ahead of the WCC were the six "BCS" conferences.
The WCC was rewarded with three teams advancing to postseason for the fifth time in conference history, including sending two teams to the NCAA Tournament for the third time in the last four seasons. Gonzaga University and Saint Mary's College earned bids to the Big Dance, while the University of San Francisco accepted an invitation to participate in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT).
