A great thing about basketball is that you can drop games early and have them be learning experiences. But that doesn't mean that these games don't matter. Because they do. And they will all season. The primary reason is due to the way the selection committee works when they're doling out invites. Games are broken up into several categories of various levels – good wins, bad losses, etc…. And all of it is based on strength of schedule. Of course, the selection committee relies on the RPI rather than much more relevant and meaningful metrics, but that's another story.
The strength of schedule component is driven by two things: your schedule, and how your conference mates fared against their schedule. When teams play more than half their games in-conference, then that's what drives strength of schedule. In other words, root for your conference.
So how are conferences doing? I'm not interested in how the top end of conferences are doing. I'm interested in the whole shebang. Because the conferences that do well in out-of-conference play will be the ones sitting in the pole position come Selection Sunday.
Here's a table of the top eight conferences according to Ken Pomeroy (and by extension, Vegas). The columns are how they've fared against different levels of teams: top 50, top 100, top 200, top 300 and the cupcakes. Division II teams have been removed.
|
No. 1-50 |
No. 51-100 |
No. 101-200 |
No. 201-300 |
300+ |
||||||
|
Con. |
W |
L |
W |
L |
W |
L |
W |
L |
W |
L |
|
Big Ten |
1 |
2 |
|
1 |
4 |
|
6 |
|
6 |
|
|
Big East |
2 |
|
2 |
1 |
6 |
|
5 |
1 |
8 |
|
|
Big 12 |
|
2 |
1 |
|
1 |
|
4 |
|
8 |
|
|
ACC |
1 |
1 |
|
2 |
7 |
2 |
6 |
|
2 |
|
|
SEC |
1 |
1 |
1 |
|
3 |
1 |
10 |
1 |
4 |
|
|
MWC |
1 |
2 |
|
|
2 |
1 |
4 |
|
2 |
|
|
Pac 12 |
|
|
|
|
9 |
|
6 |
1 |
3 |
|
|
A 10 |
|
3 |
3 |
2 |
7 |
3 |
5 |
3 |
1 |
|
Big Ten: They're 1-3 against top 100 teams, but have then feasted on the rest, going 16-0 against anyone rated worse than 100th. An area of concern is that 60% of their games have been against team rated 200+. When you have the best conference, play a harder schedule.
Big East: These are the guys with the best wins through the week and a half. They're 4-1 against top 100 teams. Shamefully, 32% of their games have been against complete cupcakes.
Big 12: 1-2 against good teams, and only one other game against a top 200 team. Someone needs to talk to them about how to schedule smartly. Half their games against RPI killing cupcakes? Really dumb.
ACC: They haven't played well against the good teams, going 1-3 vs the top 100. But they're 13-2 against 101-300 and have only played two teams ranked over 300. Not overly impressive results, but the smart scheduling will pay off in March.
SEC: 2-1 against the big boys, 3-1 against decent teams, and then 15 of 22 games (68%) played against 201+. Compare that to the ACC who has only played 38% of their games against the same subset of teams.
Mountain West: How has this conference only played 12 Division I opponents? It's too early to read anything into their results.
Pac 12: Not a single game against a team rated in the top 100? No wonder everyone is talking about how they're doing better – they haven't played anyone.
Atlantic 10: The kings of smart scheduling. Are they struggling for wins? Yes, especially at the bottom end of the conference. But they've only played 1 (!) of 27 games vs 300+, and 2/3 of their games have been against top 200 teams.
