http://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketb...ording-bpi

Which college basketball conference is the strongest?

Answering that question is dependent on how you define a conference's success. Best competition from top to bottom? Most powerhouse teams? NCAA tournament entries? Final Fours? National titles?

For our purposes, we believe the definition involves objective analytics, avoiding any inherent biases or perceptions about the leagues. Using the Basketball Power Index and ESPN's other analytic tools, we used a hybrid approach to equally weigh three metrics and evaluate the strength of each conference, and we subsequently ranked the leagues from No. 1 to 32.

• Average conference BPI: The average BPI rating for each team in the conference.
  

• Top quartile conference BPI: This is a proxy for how good the conference is at the top by taking the average BPI of the top half of each conference and seeing where that compares to the other conferences.
  

• Projected Sweet 16 teams: ESPN's 10,000 simulations of the remainder of the season using BPI allow for an objective look at how many teams, on average, a conference will send to the Sweet 16. Sometimes a good conference has bad luck (see ACC, 2017), while in other years a conference exceeds expectations.
  

1. Big XII
2. ACC
3. Big East
4. Big Ten
5. SEC
6. AAC
7. Pac-12
8. Mountain West
9. Atlantic 10
10. Missouri Valley
11. Sun Belt
12. Conference USA
13. West Coast
14. Summit League
15. Mid-American
16. WAC
17. Colonial Athletic
18. MAAC
19. Ivy League
20. America East
21. Southern
22. Horizon
23. Ohio Valley
24. Big South
25. Big Sky
26. Patriot
27. Big West
28. Southland
29. Northeastern
30. Atlantic Sun
31. SWAC
32. MEAC

Surprised no on has commented on this yet. This is great to see, and right about where we should make sure the Belt is viewed.

A few other notes:
1. Good for the AAC for jumping a Big 6 conference. Wichita State has paid off, although I guess it's possible for them to have been there anyway.
2. Good for the Missouri Valley for maintaining such a strong spot without Wichita!

As good as that looks, the current Conference RPI rankings for the Sun Belt are very discouraging. We are currently ranked 22nd, just ahead of the Ivy League. Really at the bottom of midmajors or top of lowmajors.

(01-27-2018 11:40 AM)mjs Wrote:  As good as that looks, the current Conference RPI rankings for the Sun Belt are very discouraging. We are currently ranked 22nd, just ahead of the Ivy League. Really at the bottom of midmajors or top of lowmajors.

It's been a disappointing season for sure. A lot of teams seem to have underachieved compared to the experience/talent coming back. UTA, Troy, Coastal, and even Texas State have lost some OOC games that should've been won.