In what comes as no surprise, UCLA takes the top spot in the preseason coaches poll with ten first places votes. The reigning national champions bring back five starters and will probably challenge for another championship this season. Sporting the nation's top recruiting class, Stanford sits behind UCLA in second while 2011 conference champion and national semi-finalist USC rounds out the top three.
As far as WSU goes, the rebuilding process under second year head coach Jen Greeny continues to be an uphill battle with the Cougs coming in second to last in the poll, sandwiched between Colorado at the bottom and Utah. What makes the rebuilding process even harder is, ironically, what makes the Pac-12 so good. When six of your teams spend the entire season in the national top-25 and five of them rarely ever leave the top-5, the NCAA Tournament is almost child's play compared to your conference schedule. It's a grind and playing the best teams in the country every weekend makes rebuilding no easy task.
Here's a look at the full poll (first place votes in parentheses):
1. UCLA (10) 120
2. Stanford (2) 109
3. USC 96
4. Oregon 91
5. Washington 83
6. California 77
7. Arizona 56
8. Arizona State 43
9. Oregon State 41
10. Utah 39
11. Washington State 22
12. Colorado 15