We have now seen 19 days of college basketball played in this most unusual of seasons. A number of games have been postponed or canceled outright because of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet we've still seen enough basketball to glimpse an emerging hierarchy among Division I's conferences.
Put simply, the Big 12 and the Big Ten are easily the two strongest conferences in the nation this season.
If you've been reading along here for a while, you know that I evaluate conferences based on top-to-bottom strength, NCAA tournament seeds and NCAA tournament wins. We'll have to do without that last measure when rating conferences early in the season, of course, but we can certainly look at both top-to-bottom strength and, thanks to my colleague Joe Lunardi, potential 2021 NCAA tournament seeding.
Here is how the nation's six major conferences rate out on each of these metrics.
Top-to-bottom strength
The conference ratings at KenPom.com effectively show the Big 12 and the Big Ten in a dead heat at the top of Division I. There's a chance that, statistically speaking, these could turn out to be two of the strongest leagues we've seen in recent memory.
This similarity in overall numbers shown by the Big 12 and Big Ten, however, actually describes two somewhat different power structures. The top-heavy Big 12 appears to possess an exceptionally strong "big five" in the form of Baylor, Kansas, West Virginia, Texas and Texas Tech. All of the above are ranked in the AP top 25, and, on the whole, the KenPom rankings are even more bullish on this group than are the pollsters.
Conversely, the larger Big Ten is apparently on track to show more depth when it comes to top-25-level teams. Specifically, there have been occasions early in the season when no fewer than nine Big Ten teams have resided in KenPom's top 30: Iowa, Michigan State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana, Rutgers and Purdue.
The ACC is a clear No. 3 in top-to-bottom strength, with the caveat that the league has yet to sort out its own top tier. Virginia, Duke and North Carolina were all ranked in the top 25 in the preseason, and all of the above have lost games already. Florida State, Clemson, Louisville, NC State and/or Virginia Tech might yet prove worthy of inclusion alongside the preseason favorites.
Think of the Big East and the SEC as co-equals at Nos. 4 and 5, with the Pac-12 at No. 6. While this ranking puts the Pac-12 in "last" in top-to-bottom strength among major conferences, the league is actually a good-news story. Its statistical strength has charted an unmistakable recovery after bottoming out in the 2018-19 season.
A large statistical gulf exists between the top six conferences and the rest of Division I. The American, Atlantic 10 and West Coast Conference, in turn, are a step above leagues such as the Mountain West and Missouri Valley.
Potential NCAA tournament seeds
Turning our attention to Mr. Lunardi's Bracketology, we can additionally rank the conferences based purely on their NCAA tournament-level members. Using my fiendishly clever sliding-scale "seed points" scheme in which a No. 1 seed is worth four points and a No. 4 nets you one, the Big 12 and the Big Ten again rise to the top of Division I.
The numbers for seed points will of course fluctuate with each update to Bracketology, but the "if the tournament were held today" test is favoring two leagues in particular so far:
Seed points
1. Big 12: 13
2. Big Ten: 11
3. Big East: 5
4. WCC: 4
5. ACC: 3
6. American: 3
7. SEC: 1
If the actual 2021 bracket were to take shape more or less along these lines, it would represent a stark departure from recent tournaments. The ACC has fairly dominated the top seed lines in each of the past five tournaments. From 2015 through 2019, the league racked up between 10 and 12 seed points annually. Just one other conference (the Big 12 in 2016) managed to reach double digits over that same span.
The conventional wisdom before the season held that the Big 12 would have clear national championship contenders such as Baylor and Kansas but that the undeniably deep and strong Big Ten might lack representation on this very top tier. That conventional wisdom has become more tenuous, however, as Iowa has averaged 99 points a game and Luka Garza, in particular, has posted an offensive rating that might best be termed stratospheric. It now appears both leagues might produce teams that will give Gonzaga a run for its money.
Presenting the ultimate 'blended' conference power rankings
Using both top-to-bottom strength and top-of-the-bracket representation as our guides, the early-season pecking order in the top third of Division I looks like this:
1. Big 12
2. Big Ten
(Gap)
3. ACC
4. Big East
5. SEC
6. Pac-12
(Gap)
7. American
8. West Coast
9. Atlantic 10
(Gap)
10. Mountain West
Consider the possibilities for 2021. The Big 12 and the Big Ten might both reach fairly exceptional heights in league strength ... in a quest to keep pace with a certain program from the West Coast Conference. It really could be a most unusual season.