Is the BE Best this season?

[SirSaxa]

NY Times Column Questions Strength of Big East

EXCERPT
But an analysis by Ken Pomeroy, a writer and analyst for Basketball Prospectus, challenges the notion that this season’s Big East is the toughest conference ever. In fact, he finds the Big East is barely this season’s best conference.

[RDF]

I think that question is answered in March. I don't think it's as tough as hyped--but I think it's by FAR the best conference in terms of Depth. Georgetown is 10th/11th in Big East and they hung in game at Duke without Greg Monroe getting serious minutes. Look what Georgetown did to the Maryland team that beat the "greatest team ever" in UNC?

[NJHoya95]

And let's not forget, we beat Memphis a team that might be #2 when the polls come out tomorrow.

[lurkerhoya]

We have 3 legit Final 4 contenders and our middle of the pack teams are giving a better run to top teams in other conferences than they're middle guys are giving to our top teams. The best team in every conference, where they are clearly #1 with the exception of UNC/Duke, is in danger of playing on Wednesday in BET.

[GUJook97]

Villanova is the FIFTH best team in the Big East. There are 10th in the RPI, 11 in the rankings. That is all you need to know.

[grokamok]

I think the Big East has the best set of teams of any conference in the nation this year; that is to say that, were the ACC to add 4 teams distributed evenly in overall quality among their current twelve, and the two conferences were to play every team from the other conference on truly neutral floors, the Big East, at this point in the season, would win more games. The same would be the case if you added 5 teams to the Big Ten, 4 teams to the Big Twelve, 4 to the SEC (something of a joke this year) or 6 to the PAC Ten.

That said, the Big East really underperformed in the pre-conference season. As such, any rankings taking into account the entire season almost inevitably would show the ACC as the superior conference (and, depending on the ranking system, the Big Ten as well); this is in no way inaccurate as long as one adopts the underlying assumption that early (and, thereby, out-of-conference) performance is as meaningful as late (and, thereby, in-conference) performance. The Big East teams just don't seem to get the importance of properly preparing for and bringing focus to these out-of-conference games, and it leads to more unexpected losses (I'm looking at you, Pitino) and fewer unexpected wins in the early season than certain other conferences experience.

I think that the Big East teams, as a whole, will perform better than one would expect from their eventual seeding in the NCAA tournament (due to certain probabilistic realities, the expected number of wins for teams seeded 9-16 is less than one but not zero, declining with seed, while the expected number of wins for a 1-seed is not as high as one might think). I think this will be because the Big East teams will be a bit under-seeded due to the overall out-of-conference performance.

Until the various Big East programs get their act together with regards to the importance of individual teams' out-of-conference performance for the greater good of the conference in general, it is likely that the above will continue to be the case. Of course, all of this is a pet personal hypothesis; I'll have to see whether or not this year's NCAA performance supports this.

[hometownhoya89]

we're the best. see us in march. i'd be interested to see where SOS compare for the ACC vs. top 12 in the Big East. we're definitely better than any other conference.

[grokamok]

From the Sagarin Ratings, the Big East top 12 average SOS is 77.72 and the ACC average SOS is 77.38. This is a slight and nearly statistically insignificant difference with an NCAA median SOS around 71.9 with extremes of 80.67 and 63.82. On top of this is the fact that the Big East isn't just it's top 12 teams - it is all 16, just as the WCC is 8 teams, not just Gonzaga and St. Mary's.