Oct. 22, 2009

The UCLA women's basketball team was picked to finish fourth in the Pac-10 Conference in a pre-season vote of league head coaches. The Bruins posted a 19-12 record a year ago in coach Nikki Caldwell's first season and ended up in a tie for fourth place in the conference standings.

UCLA returns its top four scorers from last season, including leading returning scorer, junior guard Doreena Campbell who averaged 12.9 ppg to rank 11th in the Conference. The Bruins, who welcome back 10 letterwinners in all and four starters, will play an exhibition contest on Nov. 9 against The Master's College in Pauley Pavilon before opening up the regular season on Nov. 14 against Illinois State in the Iowa Hawkeye Challenge tournament.

Stanford, which returns four starters and 13 letterwinners, was voted the clear favorite to win the 2009-10 Pac-10 women's basketball title and garnered nine first-place votes and 81 points.The number two through four spots in the poll were very close, with only four points separating the teams. California was picked second in the voting with 67 points, Arizona State received one first-place vote and 64 points for third and UCLA was fourth in the poll with 64 points.

The following are the results of the preseason coaches' poll; coaches are not allowed to vote for their own teams (points 9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1, first-place votes are in parentheses).

2009-10 PAC-10 WOMEN'S BASKETBALL COACHES' POLL Team (First Place) Points 1.Stanford (9) 81 2.California 67 3.Arizona State (1) 64 4.UCLA 63 5.USC 48 6.Washington State 33 7.Oregon State 29 8.Oregon 23 9.Arizona 22 10.Washington 20