Is the ACC the best basketball conference?
That's not an easy question to answer because there is no standard for how to measure and compare conferences. When you compare conferences, you are comparing the sum total of the teams in the conferences. Just because one team in a conference was really good doesn't mean the conference is good. Likewise, having one or two bad teams doesn't necessarily mean a conference is also bad (although it does hurt). By peering into the stats over at
StatSheet.com, we can draw some fairly objective conclusions about which conferences are better than others.
Let's start by looking at the
2006-2007 season. If you check out the
Conference Summary Stats for 2006-2007, many relevant stats are available in the sortable table. The ACC was ranked first in RPI, had the highest non-conference winning pct (ie, ACC teams playing non-ACC teams), the most teams to make the NCAA Tourney, and the most draft picks in the
2007 NBA Draft. That's pretty compelling! The only blemish on the ACC's record for last season was
performance in the NCAA Tourney where ACC teams went 7-7. Other than that, I think you can make a strong case for the ACC being the best last year.
Let's widen our view a bit and consider the last several years. Is there another conference that stacks up with the ACC? Absolutely. Using the StatSheet.com
Conference Comparison feature, we can compare stats for up to five conferences at a time. Currently you can't select the time period, it defaults to as far back as they have data. After a little more analysis I came up with the ACC, SEC, Big East, Big Ten and Big 12 as the top 5 conferences.
Here you can compare them.
Interestingly enough, the SEC is neck-in-neck with the ACC in terms of RPI data since 1998. The ACC has an edge with non-Conference winning percentage going back to 1980. And while other conferences beat the ACC in terms of total NCAA tournament teams since 1980, the ACC is comfortably in front as far as the number of Sweet 16, Final Four, and NCAA Championship teams. Lastly, the ACC is also way in front with total NBA draft picks since 1980.
Now if we want to just look over the last few years, we can use the "Chart It" links on the comparison page to view a chart of season-by-season stats. Here is a chart (using the
Chartlet feature) of the Conference RPI rankings since 1998:
Conference RPI is the average RPI across the teams in the conference and is perhaps the best single metric we have to judge the strength of a conference. As you can see from the chart, one conference doesn't really stand above the rest. The ACC and SEC have the highest rankings over that period of time, which explains why they were so close in the overall average shown in the comparison table. However, all the conferences tend to jump back and forth from year to year.
I've looked at several charts now and many exhibit the same characteristics. Much as individual teams fluctuate in terms of performance, so do their conferences. A clear 'best' conference can be determined every year without too much debate, but extending that out over a longer period leads to more subjective analysis.
