What Are The Best Conferences In College Basketball This Season
We’re officially starting college basketball season. Practices started, Midnight Madness happened for a majority of schools. So with the season here, it’s officially preview season and we’ll be looking at a bunch of different things heading into the season. There will be the traditional top-25, best players list, conference previews and all that jazz, but we’ll also go more in depth, looking at different offensive and defensive sets and what makes teams so consistently good. We’ve been breaking down a team per day and we’ll keep doing that, but we’ll also branch out to some other ideas.
Today we move on to conferences as a whole. Now, it won’t be surprising who is at the top, but we are going to rank the conferences. It’s the only fair way to do that since everyone knows the top-7 or so without putting them in order. The way I like to look at conference power is do you have top teams that can win a title, how strong is the middle and how bad is the bottom. If you have all teams ranked in the top-100 but perhaps not a top-8 team that’s better to me than one top-8 team, a decent middle and then teams outside of the top-200. It’s just my personal preference as I like to see more balance and depth to the conference. Either way, here are the best conferences in college basketball this year:
10. Conference USA
This is a conference that is changing the schedule this year. With a few weeks left in the regular season, they are grouping the conference into three groups. The top-4 will play each other, 5-8, etc. They’ll play a round robin and for the conference tournament, you can’t finish lower than your group. The reason for this? Helping the conference get more quality wins. We’ll be guaranteed to see Western Kentucky play Marshall twice. That’s the thing, these are two possible NCAA Tournament teams. Marshall got a win over Wichita State last year in the NCAA Tournament. They return the starting backcourt, led by Jon Elmore, who is a potential All-American. Then there’s Western Kentucky and Rick Stansbury. He’s bringing in Charles Bassey, a top-10 recruit who reclassified to join this year. North Texas, Old Dominion and UTSA are all quality teams as well.
9. A-10
It’s jumbled at the top of the A-10 with a handful of teams who can win this thing. You look at teams like Davidson, St. Joe’s, St. Louis, George Mason and even URI and UMass and you can make an argument for 6 teams to win the thing. That helps a conference that was down last year. More importantly we should see an improved Dayton team, which has been one of the more consistent teams in the conference under Archie Miller. The bottom of the conference is still hurting this league with the likes of Fordham and George Washington being sub-200 teams.
8. Mountain West Conference
We finally saw the MWC get an at-large bid last year for the first time since 2015. That team was Nevada, who is now a top-10 team this season. We should see another year with an at-large bid for a conference that has always been one of my favorites. Nevada and San Diego State are two teams that should be NCAA Tournament teams. The MWC could crack the top-7 at some point, but not until the bottom 3 teams of San Jose State, Air Force and Colorado State improve. All three teams were sub-225 last year. No matter what happens at the top of the conference, in a mid-major league, you need a stronger bottom half of the league.
7. American
I talked about the American earlier this week. They are in a weird spot. They want to be a power conference, but most don’t see them like that. It won’t happen until UConn and Memphis/Temple become consistent on a national level. It also doesn’t help that there are sub-300 teams in the conference with ECU and South Florida flirting with it. If the AAC can get a consistent group of Wichita State, Cincinnati, UConn, Houston and Memphis/Temple they’ll be viewed in the major 6 of college hoops. But, right now they are just stuck in no mans land.
6. Pac-12
The Pac-12 needs some help. It’s taken a few steps back over the last couple of years and this year with Arizona expecting to take a step back the conference is more open than normal. They still have Oregon, USC and UCLA in the top-5 with Arizona and Washington. That’s awesome and what they need to keep those five consistently there. But, there needs to be a step up from Oregon State, Washington State and Cal. Out of those it’s tough to win at except for Cal. I also don’t know just how strong the top of this conference is. It doesn’t feel like there’s a national title contender or even a Final Four contender to a degree.
5. Big 10
What used to always be a top-3 conference in America is in the need of some help. We’ve talked about the Big 10 before. There was a stretch where major recruits simply weren’t going there except for a couple to Michigan State. This year we’re seeing Michigan, who has been an awesome program, bringing in its best recruited class under Beilein. We’re seeing Indiana keep guys like Romeo Langford at home. Maryland continues to recruit well, but we’ll see if they can win. Illinois is bringing in some guys. There is hope for the conference. That said, this year I think we’re going to see an improved bottom half of the league, but the top is a bit weaker than some. There’s not a top-10 team in the league heading into the season.
4. Big East
I know, I know. It’s not the Big East of old. But, it’s still been a pretty amazing conference despite the realignment. Outside of the first year, the Big East was a top-3 conference every year according to KenPom. This year there’s still Villanova at the top and DePaul likely at the bottom – though an improved DePaul team. But, the 2-9 group is a bit different. It’s wide open and there’s not a clear 2nd best team in the conference. The question for this conference will be how many teams actually feel like 2nd weekend teams. Until we see that happen, they’re sitting in the No. 4 spot.
3. Big 12
Yes, Kansas continues to dominate the league. That’s not going to change. It’s just so impressive how many times, no matter what, Kansas finds a way to win the league. Now, they’ll be challenged this year. Kansas State is a legit team. We saw them make a run to the Elite Eight last year and bring back pretty much everyone. Teams like Iowa State will be wildly improved. Sure, Oklahoma will take a step back, but these are 10 teams likely to finish in the top-10. There simply aren’t throwaway games in the Big 12, which means something.
2. SEC
This will probably surprise some people, but believe it. The SEC is loaded this year. We saw the big improvement in the league last year and now you have three top-11 teams in Kentucky, Tennessee and Auburn. Throw in teams like Mississippi State, LSU and Florida, you have 6 teams in the top-25/30ish. The SEC as a whole has moved to upgrading facilities, they went and hired coaches that are basketball coaches. I mean look at the names that are in the league now with Calipari, Pearl, Crean, Drew, Howland, Wade, White. It’s loaded. And more importantly more teams thatn Kentucky are bringing in top-talent.
1. ACC
Don’t even think this can be a debate. The ACC is absolutely loaded. I mean you have 8 top-25 teams. You have 11 teams with a realistic chance of making the NCAA Tournament. You even have talent at the likes of Wake Forest with Jaylen Hoard. Pitt is going to be improved this year. Georgia Tech, well they had Chris Bosh and Kenny Anderson. But, you have three top-10 teams heading into the preseason and five or so top-15 teams. It’s always been the best conference in college basketball and that’s not changing this year.