The college basketball rankings show there is one dominant conference.
Have you looked at the latest AP college basketball poll? Notice anything wacky? Like the Big 12, which everyone wants to blow up because of football, has six teams from Kansas State to Baylor. And the Big Ten, which had 9 in the NCAA tournament last year, has one team, the No. 1 team, Purdue. The AAC (American Athletic Conference) also has one, No. 3 Houston, a former No. 1.
You have to give props to three other leagues with one ranked team, even though it won’t last long for any of them. Florida Atlantic University from Conference USA is at No. 21 with a 19-1 record. No. 18 College of Charleston from the Colonial Athletic is 21-1 with its only loss to unranked Carolina, which will benefit from beating the Cougars back on November 11. And don’t forget 25th-ranked New Mexico of the Mountain West, where the Lobos are in fifth place but have an 18-3 overall record against what must be a tough schedule.
The Big (formerly Bad) East has four teams in the lower half: No. 13 Xavier, No. 16 Marquette, No. 19 UConn and No. 23 Providence.
The ACC is one of two leagues with three ranked teams: No. 7 Virginia, No. 20 Miami and No. 24 Clemson. Can you remember the last time both Duke and Carolina were not in the polls? I think it was the 2021 COVID season.
The SEC also has three, but further up the ladder with No. 2 Alabama, No. 4 Tennessee and No. 15 Auburn. Notice that Kentucky is absent.
The two conferences with two teams each are the Pac-12, with No. 6 Arizona and No. 8 UCLA, and the West Coast with No. 14 Gonzaga and No. 22 St. Mary’s. The Zags will move up and Mary will be gone with one more loss.
What all this says more than anything else is how many more great college basketball players there are than, say, 15 or 20 years ago.
So who will be the best conference when the dust settles and the 2023 Big Dance bids are handed out? It’s got to be the Big 12, which has 10 teams and not even one with a losing record. Kansas, the defending national champion and perennial conference kingpin, is currently in fourth place after losing its third straight game for only the third time in Bill Self’s 20-year tenure.
The ACC will have to scramble to get more than the five teams it had in the 2022 tournament. Right now, 10 teams have winning records overall, nine of them (except Virginia Tech) also are above .500 in conference play, nine of them bunched from first to ninth place in the ACC race. Whoever has the most games remaining against bad teams Florida State, BC, Notre Dame, Georgia Tech and Louisville will be in the best shape to get ranked and invited.
Featured image via Todd Melet
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