College Hoops

Where west coast ranks among conference hierarchy

Where west coast ranks among conference hierarchy

An unfortunate trend over the past several years has been that the Pac-12 is losing strength in the college basketball world, and getting passed up by some conferences that were considered lesser in the past.

This isn’t really just a basketball problem, either. In the college football world, many regard the Pac-12 as one of the worst Power-5 conferences, and their lack of a College Football Playoff team since 2016 is a good measuring stick for their failures.

That didn’t use to be a problem on the hardwood, though, with national powers like Arizona and UCLA leading the way, while a second-tier of teams like USC, Oregon, Washington, Stanford, and Arizona State also carried the water.

The past few years have been tough, though. The Ducks missed out on the tournament altogether this past season, and while the Wildcats, Bruins, and Trojans found some success in March, it’s been a while since the power balance in the CBB world leaned towards the west coast.

Recently, CBS Sports went through and ranked the power conferences in the sport using tournament bids, tournament win-percentage, number of draft prospects, and NET rankings. Here is how things shook out:

1
Big-12

Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports

BY THE NUMBERS

2nd in NCAA Tournament bid percentage: 6 of 10 (60%)
2nd in NCAA Tournament record: 13-5 (72.2%)
T-4 in top 75 NBA Draft prospects: 6 (0.6 per team)
1st in average NET ranking: 33.2 (66.7 last year)
1st in average NET ranking excluding bottom two teams: 23.8 (33.4 last year)

2
Big Ten

BY THE NUMBERS

1st in NCAA Tournament bid percentage: 9 of 14 (64.3%)
6th in NCAA Tournament record: 9-9 (50%)
1st in top 75 NBA Draft prospects: 14 (1 per team)
2nd in average NET ranking: 57.2 (46.4 last year)
4th in average NET ranking excluding bottom two teams: 45.6 (35.4 last…

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