Big East Basketball: Five-Year Ranking

Big East Basketball

BIG EAST FIVE-YEAR STANDINGS

This ranking tries to answer a simple question: Who has been the best team in the Big East over the last five years?

A heavy emphasis is put on league play & NCAA Tournament success. NIT wins are meaningless here, as are non-conference wins.. if you feel your team is slighted by this, feel free to make your own ranking. No doubt other factors could be taken into account such as the RPI, or one could have favored postseason success more heavily. But I feel satisfied this simple system does a good job of ranking the teams recent performance.

100 total points is set up to be the equivalent of batting .300 in baseball.. anything above and beyond is all-world stuff. 50 points is mediocre and you only start to get bad below 40 points. South Florida, for example, at 16 points is shockingly horrendous. Unlike the previous rankings done for the ACC or Big 12, note that no team here breaks the 100 point mark. A sign perhaps of the league's parity.

The postseason scoring system is listed below, along with some related notes & thoughts. Check back next for the Big Ten ranking..

-Ties are broken by favoring conference winning %

Thoughts

- As noted, four of the league members were formally in Conference USA. It works out that the CUSA also played a 16-game schedule, so the numbers fit. However, the argument can be made that a team like Cincinnati is overrated here because the 12 league wins they had in '04 & '05 would have been equivalent to only 9 or 10 in the Big East.

- As mentioned in the intro, not one Big East team breaks the 100 point mark. Kansas, Texas, UNC, and Duke all broke that mark in their respective leagues. Those teams all won 74% or better of their league games, while UCONN tops the Big East with a 71% mark.

- UCONN's 28 postseason points, the best in the Big East, and still solely due to the 04 mark, would only be equal to the 2nd place in the ACC (Duke) & Big 12 (Texas).

- The bottom of the Big East is much worse than the other leagues. Rutgers, St. John's, and South Florida are about as bad as it gets in BCS basketball, with just 2 NIT trips between them.

- Miami, the worst team in the ACC, has made the postseason 3 times in the last 5 years. Their postseason success (2 NITs & 1 2nd Round trip) is equal to the 6th worst Big East team.

- West Virginia, despite being tied for 8th in Big East winning %, is tied for 4th in postseason success. Syracuse and Notre Dame, who have fared better in league games, barely have half the postseason success.

- Notre Dame has been particularly bad in the postseason considering their Big East record. The only comparatively poor postseason BCS team so far is Oklahoma.

- Pittsburgh has easily been the Big East's most consistent team. The only one to win 10 or more games each season, and the only one to make all 5 NCAA Tournaments.

Postseason Points

NIT = 1

NCAA 1st Round = 2

NCAA 2nd Round = 4

Sweet = 6

Elite 8 = 8

Final Four = 10

Final = 11*

Champs = 12*

* I've stopped giving 2 points per win in the final games, to prevent one year wonder teams from getting too much of a boost (ie, Georgia Tech or Ohio State in the Big Ten). Also, CBI bids receive no credit.