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- Thread starter BryceC
- Start date
Big ten is better at the top this year, but isn’t balanced. Big XII is pretty balanced, even WVU ripped off some quality wins and was clearly competitive come the BigXII tourney.
You can debate all you want, but both leagues are good as a whole. The metrics are comparable for sure.
The “big 10 is better” is just how iowa fans are rationalizing their lack of basketball success. Can you imagine telling yourself “Iowa is the best ever” your whole life and having to watch ISU have more success than you in basketball for like 2 straight decades now? It must be tough, and they aren’t handling it well.
You can debate all you want, but both leagues are good as a whole. The metrics are comparable for sure.
The “big 10 is better” is just how iowa fans are rationalizing their lack of basketball success. Can you imagine telling yourself “Iowa is the best ever” your whole life and having to watch ISU have more success than you in basketball for like 2 straight decades now? It must be tough, and they aren’t handling it well.
The bottom of that conference is just flat out bad. There are teams in the middle that are not great either.
This will be a lot better conversation after we blow the doors off ohio st... hopefully.
I like making fun of the Big Ten as much as the rest of you, but it was really good this year, even counting the awful teams at the bottom at equal weight.
I've said all year that the Big 10 and Big 12 are pretty comparable. Neither has much of a shot at a national title, both have a few teams that are Final Four contenders, both have a bunch of decent teams and both have some bad teams. I think the Big 10 is a little better at the top and a little worse at the bottom, but all in all it is pretty close.
Not to mention, who really cares anyways.
Not to mention, who really cares anyways.
Pretty even this year (Big 12 has been consistently better in the past couple years), but lol at Iowa's record against their tournament teams.
They've been pretty similar for the past few years with both of them vying for top conference with the ACC since the Big East fell off. The ACC's argument for #1 is because of its top teams, not because it's harder overall or has tougher schedules. ACC schedules are even more unbalanced than B10 as well.
Cruise Iowa boards and it seems the consensus that the Big 12 sucked last year when 30% of our conference made the Elite 8. I'm guessing that's only been achieved a handful of times, if ever, in NCAA tourney history. A conference where 30% make the elite 8 is undeniably good, if the ACC or Big Ten achieved that (4 of the final 8 teams) ESPN would be in a constant state of orgasm. Not that I think we'll get 30% that far again this year or maybe ever again.
The thing is, the conference vs conference thing is distorted thanks to the unbalanced schedule. The b1g and ACC might have better teams at the top, even better leagues than the big12 but as a whole, with the round robin, the big 12 teams played tougher schedules in their league. It amazes me how the talking heads ignore how tough it is to win on the road in college basketball, in any league.
Does anybody remember Deanvogs who used to post here? He pointed out in a thread on one of the Hawk sites the Hawks had the easiest conference schedule of all B1G teams.
ACC regular season title is completely meaningless on a given year now. Their schedules are even more unbalanced than the Big Ten's because of 15th team and two less games.
Next year they'll move to 20 but the extra team still will make it the least balanced schedules of a major conference.
The Big 10 was a fine conference this year. Why is this so hard to accept? Equally true is that iowa is an average team.
DeanVogs devoted THOUSANDS of posts about Fran being a better coach than Fred because Iowa was putting a ton of players in the NBA (one guy at the time, zero now) and ISU none (four guys right now and a fifth was killed). I'm not sure anything has aged worse on these boards.
And should be immediately deleted if that doesn't happen.
The difference is Iowa will be rooting hard for every Big Ten team while we will be rooting against Kansas and Kansas State
honestly, it is so hard to tell how leagues stack up, when every statistic we use starts out based on the non conference, where only a select few head-to-heads of power 5 teams happen, and then a few games become the basis for the hype and analysis. A lot of paper tigers this year.
This all gets rewritten through the tournament.
Through the season, a lot of scouting changes the course of teams down the stretch, and whether or not they can adapt or deal with being so well scouted is a difference maker.
This all gets rewritten through the tournament.
Through the season, a lot of scouting changes the course of teams down the stretch, and whether or not they can adapt or deal with being so well scouted is a difference maker.
I'm assuming he's still a big Fran supporter. That guy is a complete homer
I tend to look at % of teams in the tournament vs number when discussing the differences between power leagues.