Support That the SEC is the Weakest Major Conference

[themistocles]

First of all, I realize that this analysis is not legitimate because some teams seek tough OOC foes, whereas others pad their records with very weak OOC opponents, but just to see which appear to be the stronger conferences nationwide, I decided to compute the average number of non-conference losses per team in all the major conferences, plus Gonzaga's Big West. This turned out not to work very well for New Mexico's Mountain West, so I won't include them. Anyway, I figured that OOC average losses might give some idea of overall strength. These are (with the number of teams to the right) from low to high:

2.3 - Big East
2.6 - Big 10
3.1 - Big ACC
3.4 - Big 12, Pac 12
4.1 - SEC
5.4 - West Coast (Gonzaga's league)

Despite the noted weaknesses, this does support the argument that the SEC is weak and that Gonzaga does not deserve a #1 ranking.

[themistocles]

Further Support has been arriving over the past two days, losing 3 of 4 games in the NIT.

Ouch.

[tommyuf21]

There's no getting around the facts. It's a bad year for the SEC. Thankfully, just about everyone should be much better next season.