Conference debates happen every year in college basketball, but at no point are they fiercer than in the weeks leading up to Selection Sunday. And this women’s college basketball season, there is plenty to debate between three conferences: the Pac-12, the Big Ten and the ACC.
While the SEC has two of the top-five teams in the country, South Carolina and LSU, no other program from the conference is represented in the most recent AP Top-25 poll. The Big 12 has three current Top-25 teams (No. 15 Oklahoma, No. 17 Texas and No. 22 Iowa State) and the Big East has two (No. 6 UConn and No. 14 Villanova).
To determine the best conference, Just Women’s Sports used three factors: expert analysis, AP rankings and NET rankings. The NET is a system that takes into account a team’s results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, offensive and defensive efficiency, and quality of wins and losses.
Here are the cases to be made for each of the top three conferences.