How much does NCAA Tournament success matter in evaluating the pecking order of college basketball conferences? It’s a question that must be pondered when ranking the performance of the sport’s power six conferences from the 2022-23 season. Unlike in the 2021-22 campaign when the Big 12 ranked as our No. 1 conference after producing the national champion following a great regular season, things aren’t so clear this time around.
The Big 12 enjoyed another excellent regular season but did not send a team to the 2023 Final Four. Also complicating the conference hierarchy are the contradictions of the Big Ten and the Big East. The Big Ten performed well in head-to-head matchups with the Big East, sent a larger percentage of its teams to the Big Dance and ranked 23.5 spots higher in average NET ranking at season’s end.
However, a Big East team hoisted the national championship trophy on April 3 while the Big Ten’s beefy NCAA Tournament contingent watched from home following yet another disappointing postseason performance for the conference. Elsewhere around the country, the SEC dropped one spot from last season while the ACC and Pac-12 continued bringing up the rear.
In our annual conference power rankings, we’ve combined a number of factors, incorporating the regular season, NCAA Tournament and overall talent to take a full snapshot of the conference landscape in college basketball from the 2022-23 season.
Draft prospects were taken from the latest CBS Sports NBA Big Board, which features the top 50 prospects for the 2023 NBA Draft. Here is last year’s final conference power ranking.
1. Big 12
This season snapped the Big 12’s streak of four straight NCAA Tournaments with a team in the Final Four, but the league had two Elite Eight teams in Kansas State and Texas. Their runs were enough to make it a respectable postseason for the conference after it clearly stood out above the pack during the…
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