Current Sagarin conference rankings

Heading into the conference season I thought I'd take a look at how the conferences stack up. I like the Sagarin ratings from USA Today. Here's the top-16:

Jeff Sagarin NCAA basketball ratings

CONFERENCE CENTRAL MEAN SIMPLE AVERAGE TEAMS

 1 BIG TEN          = 83.07  82.59  ( 1)   11
 2 ATLANTIC COAST   = 81.93  82.22  ( 2)   12
 3 BIG EAST         = 81.16  81.80  ( 3)   16
 4 SOUTHEASTERN     = 80.85  81.14  ( 4)   12
 5 MISSOURI VALLEY  = 80.39  79.97  ( 5)   10
 6 BIG 12           = 80.04  79.87  ( 6)   12
 7 PACIFIC-10       = 78.70  79.15  ( 7)   10
 8 ATLANTIC 10      = 77.44  77.15  ( 8)   14
 9 MOUNTAIN WEST    = 75.95  76.26  ( 9)    9
10 WESTERN ATHLETIC = 75.82  76.06  ( 10)   9
11 MID-AMERICAN     = 75.54  75.15  ( 11)  12
12 COLONIAL         = 75.05  74.77  ( 12)  12
13 HORIZON          = 74.12  74.20  ( 14)   9
14 WEST COAST       = 74.03  74.75  ( 13)   8
15 METRO ATLANTIC   = 73.36  73.11  ( 16)  10
16 BIG SKY          = 73.29  73.20  ( 15)   8

The Pac-10 is 7th. Not sure how the Missouri Valley conference is 5th. The other surprise is that the ACC is second. Hopefully the low Pac-10 ranking means the Beavers will get to 8 wins again in conference.

Here's the Pac-10 as a whole and how they rank this pre-season:


HOME ADVANTAGE= 4.63     RATING    W   L  SCHEDL (RANK) VS top 10 | VS top 30
 11 Washington          = 88.13   10   0   67.94 ( 322)    0   0  |   1   0
 16 UCLA                = 86.86   10   1   75.73 (  97)    0   1  |   2   1
 30 Arizona             = 84.24    7   3   77.51 (  45)    0   1  |   0   2
 64 Washington State    = 80.70    7   2   71.94 ( 248)    0   0  |   0   1
101 Southern California = 77.89    8   2   68.11 ( 321)    0   0  |   0   0
112 California          = 76.82    6   3   69.80 ( 299)    0   0  |   0   0
124 Oregon              = 76.00    5   5   72.18 ( 240)    0   1  |   0   1
133 Oregon State        = 75.44    6   4   72.72 ( 223)    0   0  |   0   0
155 Arizona State       = 74.34    6   3   68.76 ( 315)    0   0  |   0   0
200 Stanford            = 71.05    4   4   69.03 ( 310)    0   0  |   0   0


Washington at 10-0 doesn't look nearly as impressive when you take into account that they had one of the easiest pre-season schedules in the nation. But I do think they will be good. Meanwhile Arizona and UCLA had one of the toughest, which makes their records all the more impressive. No one else in the conference has any excuses for their average records, including the Beavers. The Pac-10 is only 3-5 against top 30 teams and 0-3 against top-10 teams. Looks like the Pac-10 is a bit down this year.