Fresh off the Big Ten/ACC Challenge and the Big East/SEC challenge, its time for ESPN Stats & Information to take a look at how the 32 Division 1 college basketball conferences stack up. For a recap of how we rank the conferences check here and here.
The Big Ten finished last season atop the rankings and starts this season right where it left off. It currently has the nation’s best out-of-conference winning percentage and just defeated the ACC 8-4 in the annual conference clash.
The Big Ten is great with the computers, but has only the fourth-most human bonus coming from the AP and Coaches poll. Essentially this tells us the Big Ten appears to be a very deep league this season, though not as top-heavy as some of the other heavyweights.
The Big East accrues the highest human bonus based largely on being the only conference with three schools in the AP and Coaches top 10. Unfortunately it also has some dead weight toward the bottom with seven teams outside the top 100 on average computer ranking, which hurts it with the computers.
The Pac-12 has zero teams in the AP or Coaches top 25 and opens the season behind the Mountain West and Atlantic 10 conferences.
Without further ado, here are the initial conference rankings.