This week on the Respect the Hustle Podcast, analyst William Whelan offers up his take on debate about which conference is tops in college basketball, with a nod towards each conference’s NCAA Tournament chances. Things are finally heating up as we’re just a month and a half away from Selection Sunday and you don’t want to miss a second of coverage.
While the Big 10 and ACC stole most of the headlines in the preseason, with the likes of Maryland, Michigan State, and North Carolina collecting their usual amount of hype from fans and media alike, both conferences have fallen behind the pack when it comes to the Power Five’s RPI rankings. In fact, the two conferences that lead the way in RPI are the Big 12 and Pac-12.
With Oklahoma, Kansas, and Iowa State, the Big 12 has three teams that will be fighting it out for top three seeds come March Madness. It’s also an elite group that drives the conference through the court of public opinion. However, teams like West Virginia, Baylor, and Texas give the middle pack of conference teams depth, while even the bottom tier squads like Texas Tech, Kansas State, and Oklahoma State hold respectable metrics. Is this the best conference in America?
If not, the Pac-12 certainly has a claim with only one team sitting outside of the RPI 100, that team being Washington State. While having no elite teams has held down the Pac-12’s reputation for most of the year, folks are finally starting to see that Arizona, Oregon, Utah, Colorado, and the rest are playing some darn good, competitive basketball.
