WCC

One (Gonzaga)

Two (Gonzaga & Saint Mary's)

Two (Gonzaga & San Diego)

Three (Gonzaga, Saint Mary's, San Diego)

Colonial

Horizon

MAC

WCC

Other (Big West, MAAC, Sun Belt)

In recent weeks, the Rise & Fall series has chronicled the progress (or regress) of college basketball's major conference teams. But if I equated each team to a civilization, I was mistaken. It is really the NCAA conference that equates to a burgeoning civilization or nation, each with its sometimes stable and sometimes rotating member states. Like civilizations, the prestige and power of conferences wax and wane..

 

People have been emailing me this week asking how I came up with the groupings for the Conference Rise & Fall articles. While the groupings I used were based on a mix of intuition and stats, here are the actual conference RPI's over the last decade. Notice the clean split between certain league divisions.. for example, the BCS leagues and non-BCS leagues. The difference in avg RPI between the best and worst BCS leagues (ACC & Pac-10) is 2.7, which is almost as big as the gap between the Pac-10 and the closest non-BCS league.

Yes (Gonzaga & St Mary's are At-Large locks)

No

The Chinese New Year, the year of the rat (perhaps a good omen for Coach K), is upon us. However, on the west coast it is the year of a plumper, more rotund, creature – the fat boy. Armed with his sweaty back, gut swinging low-post drop step and point-blank lay-ins, the fat boy is all the rage in the Pac-10 and WCC.

 

Gonzaga (17-5, 6-0)

#18 Saint Mary's (18-3, 5-1)

Atlantic 10 (63%, 6th RPI)

Horizon (56%, 10th RPI)

MVC (64%, 8th RPI)

MWC (67%, 12th RPI)

WCC (52%, 9th RPI)

Other (Conference USA, MAC, etc)

Following yesterday's "High-Major" ranking, today's "Mid-Major" list contains what I consider to be the usual 13th through 17th ranked conferences: Big West, Horizon, MAC, Sun Belt, and WCC. Of course, some years there are other leagues that squeak into the Top 17, but only once since 2000 (Ivy in 2002) has a league not included in my rankings finished in the top 16 RPI.

 

Gonzaga

Saint Mary's

San Diego

San Francisco

Other