Top College Basketball Conferences In 13-14

[RealGM Articles]

My projections for 2014 are now complete. A description of how I upgraded my model along with my full rankings for all 351 D1 teams will be revealed later in October in partnership with ESPN. But now that I have compiled the rosters for this season, let’s spend a minute on the age-old debate about conference strength.

The ACC is eventually going to take over as the top basketball conference by just about every possible metric. If that doesn’t happen this season with the addition of Syracuse, Pittsburgh and Notre Dame, it should happen next year with the addition of Louisville. And the first table shows a large reason why. When it comes to recruits that were ranked in the Top 100 out of high school, none of the other conferences comes close to the ACC.

T10 = Top 10, number of players ranked in the RSCI Top 10 out of high school

N90 = Next 90, number of players ranked 11^th to 100^th out of high school

JT100 = JUCO Top 100 players

ARM = Average Returning Minutes for teams in the conference

Note: If a player was ranked in the RSCI Top 100 out of high school and the JUCO Top 100, I do not count the player as a JUCO Top 100 recruit to avoid double-counting.

Conf	T10	N90	JT100	ARM	Teams
ACC	2	67	5	61%	15
B10	1	39	3	59%	12
BE	0	31	8	70%	10
P12	3	28	12	58%	12
SEC	7	38	16	56%	14
B12	4	27	12	51%	10
AAC	0	34	10	65%	10
MWC	0	13	5	50%	11
A10	0	5	3	68%	13
WCC	0	5	5	63%	10
MVC	0	1	14	49%	10
CUSA	0	1	23	52%	16

There are a number of interesting trends in the table besides the ACC’s strength.

- The Big 12 and Mountain West are almost certainly going to fall back this season. Both leagues return only half of their minutes from last season, and you can expect both leagues to receive fewer NCAA bids than last year.

- The Big East is not necessarily going to be one of the top leagues year-in and year-out with its new membership. But 2013-14 should be a strong year for the league because on average teams are returning 70 percent of their minutes from last year.

- The Big East and the American Athletic conference may have to improve their recruiting going forward if they want to continue to have true national title contenders. This season there is not a single former Top 10 recruit outside the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC and Pac-12. (SMU does have a Top 10 recruit for next season which is good news for the future of the AAC.)

- While the Big Ten has been beat up on in the past for not having very many elite high school prospects on the team rosters, right now the Pac-12 actually has the fewest elite recruits per capita among the top level leagues. (The Big 12 has the same number, but the Big 12 also has two fewer teams.)

- The MVC and CUSA still have a number of quality recruits on their rosters which separates them from the other mid-major leagues. But both leagues have a low number of returning minutes and that may prevent these leagues from earning multiple NCAA bids this year.

The next table shows my prediction for the number of minutes that will be given to players in each class this season.

Conf	Pred Min Fresh	Pred Min Soph	Pred Min Junior	Pred Min Senior
ACC	21%	33%	23%	23%
B10	20%	27%	28%	24%
BE	18%	18%	31%	32%
P12	21%	26%	27%	26%
SEC	28%	21%	25%	26%
B12	29%	25%	26%	20%
AAC	21%	17%	30%	32%
MWC	23%	14%	38%	26%
A10	19%	24%	23%	34%
WCC	17%	15%	34%	34%
MVC	20%	29%	26%	25%
CUSA	21%	18%	30%	31%

- The WCC might not have as many elite recruits as the other leagues, but it can make up for it with experience. This year no power league is likely to give as many minutes to upperclassmen as the WCC.

- The Big East and American Athletic conferences should also start a number of upperclassmen. That experience may give those leagues some advantage early in the season.

- The SEC and Big 12 should remain very young. In the SEC’s case, last year was a bit of a down year and a number of the programs will continue to rebuild around new players. It also matters that the league’s top program, Kentucky, will be playing a lineup made up almost exclusively of freshmen.

- Despite returning about half their minutes from last year, the MWC and CUSA will not be very young. The reason (as will be emphasized again in the next table) is that those leagues rely very heavily on transfers.

The next table lists the number of key newcomers this season:

T10 Fresh = RSCI Top 10 Freshmen

N90 Fresh = RSCI 11-100 Freshmen

New JUCO = New Junior College Transfers

New D1 = New D1 Transfers

Conf	T10 Fresh	N90 Fresh	New JUCO	New D1
ACC	1	15	4	11
B10	1	13	3	11
BE	0	9	6	10
P12	1	7	11	13
SEC	6	13	9	10
B12	1	12	11	6
AAC	0	13	6	10
MWC	0	2	11	11
A10	0	0	4	11
WCC	0	2	7	9
MVC	0	0	17	9
CUSA	0	0	22	16

- Again, in no small part because of realignment the Top 7 leagues have a monopoly on this year’s Top 100 freshmen. With teams like Memphis now in a power conference, there simply aren’t many prospects escaping to the mid-major leagues.

- The SEC is the home to almost all of this year’s Top 10 recruits, due mostly to Kentucky.

- For a league like CUSA, it is all about transfers. The league has 38 transfers in all starting this season (after either sitting out a year or through various immediate eligibility rules.)

- Most leagues need JUCO players as emergency stopgaps, but after dominating college basketball last year, the ACC and Big Ten feel little need to go the JUCO route.

- The Big 12 has missed the memo about D1 transfers. Iowa St. has fewer this year than in recent seasons, and overall there are not many former D1 players now setting up shop in the league.

Obviously coaching, scheduling, and other factors can tip the balance of power. But talent, experience, and the addition of key transfers will go a long way towards determining which conferences are the strongest in 2013-14.

Follow @DanHanner

[Amen316]

This is a good article but there are couple things that should be noted: There are incredible biases in ranking high school players that go to college. I have seen this first hand and if you are a bird watcher of any HS Scouting services watch what happens to a players recruiting rank when he chooses a school not related to Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, UNC, Texas, and Michigan. It never fails the smaller the school the player picks the bigger the drop in that players ranking begins.
It happens worse in NCAA football rankings because USC is full of 4 and 5 star recruits and many of the players that chose schools outside of USC and Oregon in the PAC-12 alone saw their rankings plummet. It is tough when you have people many times getting influenced into changing their rankings so a college can win the recruiting war.
I will be so glad when this aspect which is dirty untrue and taints the sport and colleges as well is cleaned up also.

[Amen316]

A couple examples:
2004 - Rated 5th overall out of high school Dwight Howard clearly number 1 player coming out of high school but because he did not pick one of the major schools his stock dropped. The NBA knows this and made him the number 1 pick in the draft
2005 - 5th Andrew Bynum pretty much same story as 2004 we had him number 1 and so did alot of recruiters where and why he fell on scouting publications was clearly bias reasons to the colleges they represent
2006 - Seriously do I need to get into Greg Oden and Kevin Durant not being placed as the top 2 no because ever scout in america knew they were but the publications are tainted
2007 - The final one I will do because your getting the picture. When Derrick Rose chose Memphis over the other big schools he dropped out of the top spot and plummeted to 7. Everyone knew he was the best player coming out of high school but his small Memphis school does not pay big money to taint Scouting agencies that are out there.
I do not mean the scouts are dirty but somewhere between what is scouted and how it is ranked comes some real dark influences to the rankings

[Amen316]

I would be wrong not to point out Scout.com placing Andrew Wiggins down to 3 because he chose Kansas over Kentucky. There is no doubt Andrew is a special player but seriously I am surprised they did not put all 5 Kentucky players above him