Based solely on this year:

1. Big East (4 teams in the top 8 and the next 8 teams in the conference are decent as well)
2. Big Ten (4 teams in the top 15 which excludes a very good Illinois team. After that though, the other 6 teams aren't very good)
3. Big Twelve (Kansas and Kansas State are the cream of the conference in the top 10. Texas has fallen off a bit recently but Baylor and Texas A&M have shown some good stuff and are both rated in the 20's. Many sites are projecting them to get 7 teams in the tourney showing that they are fairly strong top to bottom)
4. SEC (3 teams in the top 25 with Ole Miss receiving votes, that's it)
5. ACC (You have Duke and Georgia Tech in top 25 with Maryland and Wake Forest receiving votes)

It really was a toss up for me between SEC and ACC. Rip away and provide opinions.

Gotta agree with your rankings. Big East is definately the strongest followed by the Big 10.

It was also tough deciding between big 12 and big 10 for second and 3rd.

What do you think about the A-10? When I was listening to the Dayton-St. Louis game today, the annoucers predicted that the conference might put as many as six teams in the NCAA's.

I would probably put them 6th. Not sure they could compete top to bottom with SEC or ACC

If the A10 had actually 10 teams in it and we could tell the bottom feeders to get the hell out of here we would probably be competing for a top 5 conference spot. It's really difficult to do that with teams like Fordham (327), St. Joes (215), St. Bonaventure (212), and this year UMass (209).

Completely agree with the list.

And, A-10 is 6th on mine.

Poor, poor PAC-10 haha.

1. Big East
2. Big Ten
3. Big XII
4. SEC
5. ACC

nice job,slingshot--you did your homework...and I agree with your list

^^^^

Thanks.

slingshot4ever wrote: Based solely on this year:

1. Big East (4 teams in the top 8 and the next 8 teams in the conference are decent as well)
2. Big Ten (4 teams in the top 15 which excludes a very good Illinois team. After that though, the other 6 teams aren't very good)
3. Big Twelve (Kansas and Kansas State are the cream of the conference in the top 10. Texas has fallen off a bit recently but Baylor and Texas A&M have shown some good stuff and are both rated in the 20's. Many sites are projecting them to get 7 teams in the tourney showing that they are fairly strong top to bottom)
4. SEC (3 teams in the top 25 with Ole Miss receiving votes, that's it)
5. ACC (You have Duke and Georgia Tech in top 25 with Maryland and Wake Forest receiving votes)

It really was a toss up for me between SEC and ACC. Rip away and provide opinions.

Some non-conference records:
B12 137-31 .815
ACC 133-31 .811
BEC 157-38 .805
SEC 123-47 .724
B10 95-39 .709
MVC 78-35 .690
MWC 80-38 .678
Pac-10 76-44 .633
A10 118-71 .624

If we were ranking them based on the winning pct the conference would have if each team played against an average :team on a neutral court:

B12 .665
ACC .663
BEC .654
B10 .624
SEC .584
Pac-10 .527
MWC .517
A10 .491
MVC .469

The ACC doesn't have many good teams at the top, but it has much more depth than many other conferences. If you want to rank conferences solely on the number of ranked teams, then the ACC isn't going to do well. But if you're looking at the entire body of work from the top to the bottom, the ACC looks much better.

fan_from_texas wrote:

slingshot4ever wrote: Based solely on this year:

1. Big East (4 teams in the top 8 and the next 8 teams in the conference are decent as well)
2. Big Ten (4 teams in the top 15 which excludes a very good Illinois team. After that though, the other 6 teams aren't very good)
3. Big Twelve (Kansas and Kansas State are the cream of the conference in the top 10. Texas has fallen off a bit recently but Baylor and Texas A&M have shown some good stuff and are both rated in the 20's. Many sites are projecting them to get 7 teams in the tourney showing that they are fairly strong top to bottom)
4. SEC (3 teams in the top 25 with Ole Miss receiving votes, that's it)
5. ACC (You have Duke and Georgia Tech in top 25 with Maryland and Wake Forest receiving votes)

It really was a toss up for me between SEC and ACC. Rip away and provide opinions.

Some non-conference records:
B12 137-31 .815
ACC 133-31 .811
BEC 157-38 .805
SEC 123-47 .724
B10 95-39 .709
MVC 78-35 .690
MWC 80-38 .678
Pac-10 76-44 .633
A10 118-71 .624

If we were ranking them based on the winning pct the conference would have if each team played against an average :team on a neutral court:

B12 .665
ACC .663
BEC .654
B10 .624
SEC .584
Pac-10 .527
MWC .517
A10 .491
MVC .469

The ACC doesn't have many good teams at the top, but it has much more depth than many other conferences. If you want to rank conferences solely on the number of ranked teams, then the ACC isn't going to do well. But if you're looking at the entire body of work from the top to the bottom, the ACC looks much better.

Non-conference records can be very misleading without looking at the teams the schools played non-conference
.

Al Bundy wrote: Non-conference records can be very misleading without looking at the teams the schools played non-conference

No doubt.

Here's how Sagarin ranks the conferences:
CONFERENCE CENTRAL MEAN SIMPLE AVERAGE TEAMS WIN50%

1 BIG 12 = 84.06 84.21 ( 1) 12 84.13 ( 1)
2 ATLANTIC COAST = 83.90 83.89 ( 2) 12 83.86 ( 2)
3 BIG EAST = 83.35 83.25 ( 3) 16 83.30 ( 3)
4 BIG TEN = 81.12 80.89 ( 5) 11 80.95 ( 5)
5 SOUTHEASTERN = 81.02 80.99 ( 4) 12 81.01 ( 4)
6 PACIFIC-10 = 78.24 78.43 ( 6) 10 78.41 ( 6)
7 ATLANTIC 10 = 77.45 77.12 ( 8) 14 77.36 ( 7)
8 MOUNTAIN WEST = 77.21 77.33 ( 7) 9 77.30 ( 8)
9 MISSOURI VALLEY = 76.13 76.09 ( 9) 10 76.14 ( 9)

I tend to agree with his general approach. The real question, I think, is what people mean by "best conference." Are we looking at top-to-bottom? Top-heavy? Strength of the middle? Number in the tourney? Number ranked? Best chances of winning it all? E.g., the Big Ten has four teams worse than the ACC's worst, and the Big East has three teams worse. How does that figure in? Does the Big East get the benefit of having a strong top of the league without looking at the bottom, too?