I guess the question is the deepest conference the best conference? What’s the criteria?
If you are talking depth, BIG 12 current 7/8/9/10 is
Oklahoma
OSU
WVU
Texas Tech
B1G current 7/8/9/10 is
Northwestern
Illinois
Wisconsin
Indiana
B1G wins that plus you have Ohio State and Maryland behind those four.
That’s a deeper conference.
I mean, this ALL has to be subjective, right? I don't think there is really
any way to effectively compare how good each conference is, honestly, much less an objective measure. March Madness is a crapshoot, things like the Big Ten/ACC Challenge depend entirely on matchups, teams get hot at different times in the season, you can't use intra-conference results to pump up or disparage a single conference, etc. I honestly think it comes down to the eye test.
I think the Big XII, in my own personal opinion, is both the best AND deepest conference. However, I think that was the Big Ten in 2020-21, and we laid an egg in the Tournament ... Big XII just might do the exact same thing! Additionally, Alabama is the only team that has me convinced they are TRULY elite this year.
I mean, just looking at some of the teams in a top 25 with not many Big Ten teams, it's quite clear that the teams in our conference are capable of playing with these teams that the national media (and many of our self-hating fans) are screaming are so much better than our conference's teams...
#2 Kansas - Needed a miracle putback at the buzzer to beat Wisconsin on a neutral court. They did beat Indiana handily at home, but IU hasn't exactly proven to be the top of our conference...
#5 UCLA - Lost to Illinois on a neutral court.
#6 Gonzaga - Got spanked by Purdue on a neutral court that was heavily favorable to the 'Zags (Portland).
#7 Texas - Lost to Illinois on a neutral court.
#8 Xavier - Lost to Indiana at home...
#9 Tennessee - Beat Maryland by three points on a neutral court.
#10 Virginia - Beat Illinois in a really close game on a neutral court.
#12 Iowa State - Got absolutely demolished at Iowa...
#16 Auburn - Beat Northwestern by one point on a neutral court...
#17 Miami (FL) - Won a close game at home vs. Rutgers.
#19 Clemson - Lost to Iowa on a neutral court and needed TWO overtimes to beat Penn State at home.
#20 Marquette - Lost to Purdue.
The point is NOT that the Big Ten is the best conference or even that it is the deepest ... it's that the following points are only being repeated at this point by COMPLETE morons:
(A) The Big Ten is bad ... this is ridiculous, when you look at the inter-conference results.
(B) The Big Ten is "OVERRATED" ... we have TWO RANKED TEAMS, lol.
P.S. Congrats on the ranking. :)