Is The Big East Really That Good?

You may have heard that the University of Washington Huskies now have the dubious honor of being the only major conference regular season champion to not make it to the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament. After going 14-4 during the Pac-12 season the Huskies missed out on the NCAA Tournament because of a supposedly weak conference this year. ESPN and other sports media distributor loved to remind us how bad the Pac-12 was. This precieved weakness worked against the Huskies and coupled with their unexpected loss to the Beavers in the first round of the Pac-12 tournament gave the selection media all the ammo they needed to keep the Dawgs on the outside looking in.

What really annoyed me about the Huskies missing out wasn't that the Huskies didn't make it because of the media's portrail of their conference but that other less deserving Big East team's did make it because of the supposed strength of that conference. Both West Virginia and Connecticut made the tournament. West Virginia went 9-9 and Connecticut went 8-10 in the Big East. You read that right, UConn went 8-10 in their conference and made the tournament!

Believe it or not the intent of this post isnt to bitch and moan about the Huskies missing the NCAA Tournament. Their misfortune was just what sparked the idea of looking closer into the Big East's supposed dominance. Sports journalists have been telling anyone and everyone for the last several years how great the Big East is. They frequently get compared to the SEC's football dominance. I wanted to know if their glorified stature as college basketball's best conference was earned or not.   

To start my research I looked at all how many teams each conference has had make the tournament since 2007. I thought this would show which conferences the selection committee favors. Table 1 shows all of the conference with at least 1 At-Large bid since 2007 along with the total number of teams they have sent. What we see is the Big East has sent the most teams to the tournament and by a large margain. The Big Ten comes in second and they are 14 total teams behind or 2.33 teams per year. This shows quite obviously that Big East teams are being rewarded for their seasons with trips to the NCAA tournament.

Table 1: Total Number of Teams Sent by Conference Since 2007

Now that we know the Big East is being treated like a dominate conference, the next question to ask is do they deserve it? The best way I could think to look at this was to find out if their team's find success in the tournament. I took the results of all the first round games and calculate a winning percentage (W%) for each conference. I used only first round data because it eliminates win stacking* that would occur because of really good teams.  Table 2 shows the resulting winning percentages of the top ten conferences (check out the Ohio Valley Conference with a .667 W%). As you can see the Big East did pretty well for themselves coming in fourth with a .673 W%. However, they are definitely not as dominate as the Big 12 or the Big Ten with their .765 and .743 W%. 

Table 2: Top Ten Conference W% Since 2007

Finally, I looked at what conferences the teams from the championship games were from. Out of the ten teams that made the Championship game only 1 was from the Big East. The ACC, Horizon and Big Ten each had two teams in the finals (Technically the Horizon had Butler twice, but whatever). So, when you look at the NCAA Championship game to find dominance the Big East comes up short again.

Basically all my research pointed to one thing, the complete and total Big East love by the media is not all that warranted. The Conference has been good over the last 5 years, but it hasn't been dominant. The Big Ten and Big 12 have both found more success. The Big East is a good basketball conference, but it just doesn't live up to the hype. The NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Committee should stop giving them so much credit on selection Sunday and recognize other more deserving teams.

* An example of what I mean by win stacking: The Pac-12 and Big 12 both have three teams make the tournament.  All three Pac-12 teams win their first games and lose in the second round. For the tournament the Pac-12 has a 3-3 record or .500 winning percent. Meanwhile two of the Big 12 teams lose in the first round but one team makes it all the way to the finals before they lose. For the tournament the Big 12 has a 5-3 record or .625 winning percentage.The Pac-12 appears to be less successful despite having more teams win in the tournament. The success of that one Big 12 team unfairly over shadows the failures of the others.