A Bay Area Beginning

The West Coast Conference season begins tonight, at 7:00 PST, when San Francisco descends from the hilltop and makes the 40-something mile drive south on US 101 to face Santa Clara. Before the season began nobody would have known what to expect in this match up. That can be said about any match up before you get a feeling for the teams, but this one was especially puzzling.

San Francisco had been steadily improving under head coach Rex Walters and was coming off their first 20 win season since the 1981-82 season. Despite the Dons' success and bright future six players decided to transfer out of the program this offseason. On the other end of the spectrum Santa Clara did not win a single game in WCC play and had only eight total (they're already at 11 this season) but nobody on Kerry Keating's squad bolted. The Dons certainly looked doomed to a fate similar of the 2011-12 Broncos than to continue their upward trajectory. The Broncos? Nobody knew. They brought back key players who missed most to all of last season but also a core that played the whole season without any success. Today though, with roughly half of the college basketball season behind us, there is an understanding of how these two teams have handled the past 365 tumultuous days.

San Francisco has rebounded quite well thanks to their two key returners Cody Doolin and Cole Dickerson and reloaded thanks to newcomers De'End Parker and Tim Derksen. They're 7-6 on the season, only two below last season at this time, and have suffered no bad losses.

Santa Clara has been the hottest team in the WCC not named Gonzaga. Other than their most recent loss, at #1 Duke during which they led the Blue Devils multiple times and never let the best team in the land run away to a blowout, the Broncos have only lost games in overtime. They're 17th in the nation in assists per game and 24th in points. Kevin Foster, Marc Trasolini and Evan Roquemore make Santa Clara the only team in Division-1 with three players who have amassed 1,000 points in their careers. Trasolini missed all of last season with a torn ACL and Foster missed most of WCC due to a DUI.

These two unknowns turned success stories will open WCC play tonight on ESPNU. It's a fitting first game for a conference that also was once an unknown but is now successful.

7:00 PM PST:
Santa Clara Broncos vs. San Francisco Dons
Leavey Center, Santa Clara, California.
Santa Clara is 11-3 on the season, 7-2 at home and currently on a one game winning streak.
San Francisco is 7-6 on the season, 1-2 on the road and currently on a two game winning streak.
TV: ESPNU.
Radio: KDOW 1220 AM in the Bay Area.
Online: Live video from ESPN3 (blacked out in all of the USA except Hawaii); live audio from KDOW.