STOCKTON, Calif. – The Pacific men's basketball program will host one of its longest rivals when the San Francisco Dons visit the Alex G. Spanos Center on Monday, Feb. 21 for the 111th meeting in program history. The two teams first met in the 1911-12 season when the San Francisco school was still known as St. Ignatius, and Pacific was still located in the Bay Area.
 
Pacific and San Francisco were two of the five programs that formed the California Basketball Association in 1952, which started play in the 1952-53 season and became the West Coast Athletic Conference in 1956 after Loyola Marymount and Pepperdine were added. San Jose State, Saint Mary's, and Santa Clara were the other three in the original five.
 
The Tigers held an upper hand over the Dons to start the rivalry, earning the first three wins by a combined slim margin of 77-67. However, the Dons soon took over, winning 48 of the next 64 contests, including winning a record 19 straight when the teams were conference members.
 
"San Francisco was always a good basketball team," former Pacific head coach Bob Thomason stated regarding his time playing against the Dons while at Pacific. "It was after their time with [Bill] Russell and those great teams and then before the time with [Bill] Cartwright, so my time was in between those times,"
 
Despite the Dons dominating the competition throughout the years, one of the significant moments for the Tigers in the series was the West Coast Athletic Conference championship game in 1967, which Pacific won, to advance to the NCAA Tournament. The Tigers fell one game short of the NCAA Final Four in that same season, losing to eventual champions UCLA in the regional final.
 
The Dons held a firm grasp on the conference in the mid-60s and were at the top of their game. The Dons won the West Coast Athletic Conference title in 1963, 1964, and 1965. The Tigers, however, Pacific broke through and swept three games from San Francisco during the 1966-67 season, outscoring the Dons 192-179.
 
After the Tigers left for the Big West in 1971, the teams continued the rivalry, facing off multiple times before the Tigers returned to the West Coast Conference in 2013.
 
"It was great competition," Thomason said regarding continuing the rivalry between San Francisco and other West Coast Conference institutions while playing in the Big West. "They were similar teams compared to how we were, and bringing San Francisco in here, people could relate because we used to play them when I was a player here."
 
The Dons have not been precisely welcoming upon the return, winning six-straight matchups in the series after the Tigers returned.
 
The Tigers, however, had won two of the last three games against the Dons, most recently earning a 76-59 at the Alex G. Spanos Center on February 27, 2021. The two teams faced off once during the 2020-21 season. The second game scheduled for February 4 was canceled due to COVID-19.