Top 5 Conferences In College Basketball

What the Top 5 Conferences in College Hoops?

The major non-conference portion of college basketball is all but over, which means the teams are headed into…dun, Dun, DUN… conference play.

In the non-conference, I think we get an idea of how good a team can be, but that’s never really proven until conference play.

There’s a familiarity between coaches and teams within conferences, and teams know each other so well that it makes it really hard on even the good teams to win in conference play.

Until teams are tested by other teams in their conference, it’s hard to know if they’ve got the “IT” factor, or X-factor, needed to run the table in the NCAA tournament.

That’s why I enjoy conference play so much, other than the great rivalries of college hoops. Everything in the conference matters now. Every game is important for seeding, and that makes it that much more intense.

Because conference play is right around the corner for most teams and some teams have even played their first conference game, I think it’s important to understand which conferences are the best conferences in college basketball through almost-half of the season.

Here’s couple things to know about the conference rankings:

• For the teams projected into the tournament, I used Jerry Palm’s predictions from CBS Sports. He’s basically CBS’s version of Joe Lunardi, but I tend to lean toward Palm’s work. It’s cleaner and makes more sense, no offense to Lunardi, of course.

• I left out the SEC! Why? Because it’s Kentucky and then everyone, which is basically like the rest of the country. That’s how good the Wildcats are, a true cut-above everyone in college basketball.

All right, here are the top 5 conferences in college basketball this season!

Next: Pac-12