Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Which Conference is Stronger in NCAA Hoops?

ACC or Big East? Let us know your thoughts!!
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3 comments:

New Hampshire Paulo said...

This question is easy, hands down the Big East is better.
Right now the Big East has 8 teams ranked in the top 25, that's double the ACC. The Big East Eight, are a combined 124-26, and excluding losses to other Big East teams they are an incredible 124-11.. need more???
4 of the top 8 ranked teams in the Nation call the Big East their homes to the ACC's 3.

Now, to really take this all home, and prove the strength and superiority of the Big East, I won't even use the East's #1 or #2 team (UCONN & Pitt both 18-1), I'll use the #6 team in the Big East (15 overall), the Syracuse Orangemen and compare them to the current #1 team in the polls, the Duke Blue Devils.

Syracuse is 17-4 overall. With huge road wins over big programs like Kansas, Memphis, Florida in KC, and with a home win over #22 ND, we're talking some serious credentials. Couple this with the fact that Syracuse faces 9 ranked teams during their last 14 games to
Duke who has 4 in their final 14.
Sure Duke is good, but with only 3 W's over ranked opponents and only 1 on the road (Purdue) their schedule clearly is a much easier road than any Big East team.

Simple and Easy, Big East is the #1 conference in this heezy

January 27, 2009 at 2:01 PM
New Hampshire Paulo said...

Just wanted to add, that while the question does not specify men's or women's NCAA hoops, I think it is pretty clear what we're talking about here.

January 27, 2009 at 2:03 PM
Mean Gene's Progeny said...

Since I live squarely in ACC country, perhaps the capital, I've spent some time previously mulling this question over in my head.

The problem with the comparison between the two conference begins before even comparing the merits of the teams. Size: the Big east has four more teams than the ACC. How should we treat this fact? Personally, given the disparity in size, I don't believe any fair comparison can begin between the two conferences. That would be like putting a 2,000 population high school football team against one from a school that has 1,500 students (the ACC is 75% the size of the Big East). I think we can all draw from our experiences in high school sports that the larger your talent pool is, the better your teams are. The same concept applies here.

Secondly, as Paulo pointed out, Duke has a much easier conference schedule this year than Syracuse. However, isn't this penalizing Duke for being in the ACC and isn't related substantively to the talent level of Duke and the other forerunners at the top of the ACC? Can we penalize the ACC, which admittedly has fewer ranked teams than the Big East but also has four fewer teams overall? This seems to be a red herring to the overall issue of which conference is stronger.

Lastly, at this point in the season, some Big East teams are benefitting from being highly ranked in the preseason. ND, who has lost four straight is still ranked. G-town has lost three straight. Nova, while going 3-3 has lost to every ranked team in this stretch and beaten USF, St. John's and SH (in OT). It is possible that the BE still has these three teams ranked because they were ranked highly to begin with, allowing them to cushion the loss fallout in the rankings. Additionally, the overall national perception of the strength of the BE allows rankers to write off other loses to BE teams. However, this only leads to a circular logic that benefits the BE.

If I were to discount these three critiques of an equal comparison completely, I believe there is no argument that the BE is better than the ACC in every qualitative comparison. However, to simply tout the BE without recognizing the flaws of the comparison is a chest-thumping that I am not prepared to do. Of course, all of this can be settled definitively in March.

January 27, 2009 at 2:34 PM

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