Earlier this month, the Knight Commission for Intercollegiate Athletics released a survey indicating a clear majority of Power 5 respondents favors the creation of a fourth division at the top of the NCAA for sports other than basketball. Then again, these same respondents favor preserving the NCAA tournament's tradition of providing automatic bids in basketball for every Division I conference.
These survey results also shed light on one particularly urgent matter of terminology: We need to stop saying "Power 5" in the context of college basketball.
The term is self-evident in football, but there is a case to be made that there are six major conferences in basketball.
If we define a "major conference" as one that clears certain thresholds for top-to-bottom strength, NCAA tournament seeding and NCAA tournament wins, the membership of this particular club becomes clear. The ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12 and SEC are all major conferences in basketball. No other league hits these same targets.
While the Big East is a nonfactor in FBS football, it has claimed two of the past four national titles in basketball. We should adjust our vocabulary accordingly.
Let's consider the characteristics that might define a major conference in basketball. For each of these measures, we'll look at the past seven years of basketball. This marks the point at which the "old" Big East was dissolved and the American Athletic Conference was launched.
Top-to-bottom strength
The simplest question to ask about any league is how good its teams are at basketball. Fortunately, there is a straightforward round-number test that applies in this instance. Leagues that collectively record an adjusted efficiency margin of +10.00 or better at KenPom can be viewed, more often than not, as major conferences.
The American Athletic Conference met this standard, in effect (+9.97), once -- in 2013-14, when the league included both national champion Connecticut and a very good Louisville team. Since then, the Huskies have returned to the Big East and the Cardinals relocated to the ACC.
Other than the American's inaugural season, however, no conference besides the usual suspects has posted such a high figure since 2014. Meanwhile, the top six conferences have met this +10.00 standard 40 out of 42 times over the past seven seasons. For the record, the Pac-12 fell short in both 2017-18 and 2018-19 before rallying and recording a much stronger collective performance last season (+11.35).
NCAA tournament seeds
If you have been reading along for a while, you might recall that I like to measure the quality of a league's NCAA tournament bracket position through a fiendishly complex metric called seed points. In this dauntingly intricate bit of analytics, which really should be the subject of its own TED talk, a No. 1 seed is worth four points, a spot on the No. 2 line nets you three points, a No. 3 seed earns you two points and an appearance on the No. 4 line translates as a single point.
Controlling for league size, the ACC and Big 12 have been the two highest-performing conferences in the nation over the past seven years in terms of earning the best NCAA tournament seeds. (For the 2020 tournament that never happened, I used the consensus seeds shown at bracketmatrix.com.)
The Big East is a clear No. 3 in this category, the Big Ten is No. 4 and the SEC and Pac-12 have been almost identical at Nos. 5 and 6. After that, there is a very large gap before you get to the American at No. 7. The league has earned a total of just four top-four seeds in its history. Gonzaga alone (16 seed points) has outperformed the American (seven seed points) in terms of seeding since 2014. There's a distinct top six with respect to tournament seeds over the past seven years.
NCAA tournament wins (not including First Four games)
In terms of NCAA tournament wins since 2014, the ACC and the Big 12 once again rate out as strongest (again, holding league size constant by looking at performance per-team-season). That is not entirely coincidental. Virginia in 2018 notwithstanding, high seeds do tend to translate into tournament wins.
The same Big Ten that looked rather lackluster in terms of recent seeding performs much better when it comes to tournament wins and clocks in at No. 3. Then comes the SEC, the Big East and, finally, the Pac-12, whose 12 teams have recorded 32 tournament wins since 2014. That's almost twice as many victories as the AAC has managed (17) over the same span with a membership that has fluctuated between 10, 11 and 12 teams.
Whether the preferred measure is top-to-bottom strength, NCAA tournament seeding or wins during March Madness, there are six conferences that stand above the other 26 in college basketball. Saying "Power 5" makes all kinds of sense in football, but it is devoid of meaning in hoops. There are six major basketball conferences until further notice.