There are a number of ways to compare the quality of conferences in college basketball. One is to compare the average team in each conference. If one does this with men’s basketball, the Big 12 is the best. One is to compare the median team in each conference. If one does this with men’s basketball, the Big Ten is the best. One is to compare how many NCAA Tournament bids each league is expected to receive. This one is rather obviously flawed (you can’t justify using it to compare the ten-team Big 12 and the fifteen-team ACC), but it’s the most common, and it, too, favors the Big Ten. The leagues are close enough in quality that determining which is better is a subjective exercise, and we aren’t going to engage in it here. What we are going to talk about is how absurdly deep the Big 12 is, because this year’s Big 12 is absurdly deep.
Currently, the worst team in the Big 12, Kansas State, is ranked 68th in the country by KenPom. The Wildcats are projected to finish something like 14-16, a record that could leave them just one win away from an NIT berth (15-15 would bring no guarantees, but it could well get this team in, given its expected résumé). The last time a conference had all of its teams in KenPom’s top seventy at season’s end was 2017, when the Big 12 did it. I’m not sure a conference has ever put all its teams in either the NCAA Tournament or the NIT, and while the Big 12 can’t do this in 2022 because of Oklahoma State’s postseason ban, that’s the only reason it can’t do it. Again, this year’s Big 12 is absurdly deep.
To drive this home, let’s look at how Kansas State would stack up in the ten next best conferences, again using KenPom:
- K-State is better than four of the Big Ten’s fourteen teams.
- K-State is better than five of the SEC’s fourteen teams.
- K-State is better than five of the Big East’s eleven teams.
- K-State is better than six of the ACC’s fifteen teams.
- K-State is better than six of the Mountain West’s twelve teams.
- K-State is better than six of the WCC’s ten teams.
- K-State is better than seven of the Pac-12’s twelve teams.
- K-State is better than seven of the AAC’s eleven teams.
- K-State is better than nine of the MVC’s ten teams.
- K-State is better than eleven of the A-10’s fourteen teams.
The best part of this? Every team the Big 12 is adding as it expands is better this year than Kansas State, with the lone exception of Cincinnati, who comes in at 76th right now (better than three of the Big Ten’s fourteen teams). What a league.
