Big East Basketball is all the rave. As of tonight, the super-conference has nine teams in the AP Top 25.
Read and weep: nine of sixteen are ranked.
Wow.
Some say that because the Big East has at least four more teams that most of the other power conferences, it’s expected that they perform better as a whole.
The size issue may be a demerit but I feel that Pittsburgh, Connecticut, Georgetown and Notre Dame are good enough to go deep into March.
And top-to-bottom the Big East is undoubtedly the best basketball conference in the country. Imagine being Rutgers and playing #2 Connecticut, #3 Pittsburgh and an out-of-conference #1 North Carolina all in the same week. I almost feel bad for the Scarlet Knights.
Does competitiveness top-to-bottom make a better conference or is it the amount of teams that are capable of getting to the Final Four?
The argument personified is the Big Ten versus the ACC. The Big Ten is coming off a pretty weak couple of years. Purdue and Michigan State are backed by solid play from an entertaining Michigan team as well as a surprise Minnesota squad.
However, what the ACC loses in depth, the top-heavy conference makes up for in power with Duke, Carolina and Wake Forest in the AP Top 5.
So who’s the second-best conference in the nation? And what constitutes a “better conference?”
