richter@milano.UUCP (02/06/86)
One of the standard questions in college basketball, year in and year out,
is, "What's the best conference in America?". This year the ACC is
obviously number 1. But how do the other conferences rate, relative to
one another? I decided to use the computer ratings, prepared by Jeff
Sagarin of MIT and listed each Tuesday in USA Today, to rate the conferences.
In particular, I totaled the ratings of the teams in each of several
conferences, then computed the average rating per team. I don't know if
this is a reasonable indication of conference strength (I was just curious).
However, with that caveat, here are the results I computed, using the
ratings in the 2/4/86 edition of USA Today:
1. ACC (31.4)
2. Big Ten (40.7)
3. Big Eight (47.6)
4. Big East (48.6)
5. Metro (56.6)
6. Southeastern (56.7)
7. Sun Belt (72.1)
8. Pac-10 (89.0)
9. Southwest (107.4)
10. PCAA (112.2)
11. Missouri Valley (116.4)
12. Atlantic 10 (132.4)
13. Mid-American (140.0)
14. WAC (144.4)
(I'd like to have computed the values for every conference, but I didn't
have the time.) Enjoy!
--
Charlie Richter MCC Austin, Texas
uucp: {ihnp4, seismo, harvard, gatech, pyramid}!ut-sally!im4u!milano!richter
arpa: richter@mcc.ARPA
"The airplane stays up because it doesn't have the time to fall."
- Orville and Wilbur Wrighttbridg@iuvax.UUCP (02/11/86)
The ACC has a big advantage in having so few teams. Try doing the same program but, only consider the top 7 or 8 from each conference. If you do that I am sure the Big 10 will rank much closer to the ACC.