Our Answer to Yesterday's Hoop Question

A couple good comments on the blog yesterday, a decisive answer from Paulo, and an "I'm in second year law school answer" from Mene Gene. The question is a tough one to answer, hence I asked it.

On one side of the coin you have the ACC, with perennial powerhouses in Duke and UNC, and a strong supporting cast this year with Wake Forest and Clemson. We'll say these four teams are locks in the tourney. After these four you do fall off a cliff a bit. Virginia Tech, FSU, BC and Miami are all teams that have showed signs this year, but are not consistent enough to be locks and two if not three of these teams might see themselves playing in the NIT instead of the big dance. Keep in mind, every team has that one night where they don't perform and lose to a lesser opponenet but these four teams do that too often. Lets break it down...
V-tech- Big wins- @ Wake, @ Miami, BC. Bad losses- Seton Hall, @ Georgia, Wisconsin.
Miami- Big wins- @BC, BAd losses - N.C State and a blow out by UNC
BC - Big wins- UNC Bad losses- Harvard, St. Louis (yes you read that right, Harvard and the Billicans of St. Louis)
FSU- Big wins- Florida Bad losses- Northwestern

After these teams competition drops off and competitive teams of old - GA Tech, Maryland, NC State are just not good this year!

As of now I see 5 teams dancing from the ACC- Duke, UNC, Wake, Clemson, and V-Tech . I do worry about the alliterative Classic Clemson Collapse which seems to happen when they get to 15 wins. They have 17 now and have lost 2 of their last 3. Watch out!

Also from the polls, the ACC has 4 ranked teams, 3 of which in the top 10...

The flip-side of that coin is the Big East- A tough, physical, gritty conference with league legends Georgetown, Syracuse, UCONN, and St. Johns. People are talking that this league can get 9 teams in to the dance this year, and maybe even 10 (that I doubt the committe will ever let happen) Right now I think that the Big East has 6 locks with three teams on the bubble. Marquette, Louisville, UCONN, Pitt, Syracuse, and Nova are in. Georgetown, Notre Dame and West Virginia are on the verge, and Providence has a shot as well. Mene Gene made the argument of sample size and how the extra teams in the Big East help aid it in being a more "powerful" conference. Agreed to a point but that same argument can be said if the big east had only 4 strong teams and 12 weak teams, you would say that since there are 12 weak teams and only 4 teams with merit, that it was overall a weak conference. I look at it as how many teams are going to get in the tournament, the Big East's RPI's when the numbers finally come out, will be very strong, and their SOS (strength of schedule) will be one main factor in such a good RPI. That stat basically spells out a great deal how strong your conference is, as a higher percentage of games are in and not out of conference... advantage big east

Conclusion-
Big East has 8 teams in the top 25 with a few lurking on the outskirts. To the ACC's 4.
Big East has 4 top ten teams to the ACC's 3.
Big East teams play a harder schedule.

Not saying that the best team is in the Big East, I think its either in the ACC (UNC) or Big 12- Oklahoma, but as far as a conference goes, this year Big East is the cream of the crop.