College Basketball Weekly: A pre-conference play primer

College Basketball had a gloomy December, with cancellations, Christmas and Final Exams limiting the number of games most teams played in the last few weeks. COVID likely isn’t going away, but as conference play kicks into gear, the schedule will be more crowded with intriguing matchups, even if a few are canceled.

Let’s take a look at the best five conferences in the country this season, the Wooden Award race and rank the 25 best teams in the nation. I hope you all like to read 🙂

Ranking College Basketball Conferences

Typically, this isn’t an interesting practice. The ACC boasts the most power at the top and the Big 12 and Big 10 round out the top three each year. Not the case in 2021-22. In fact, you could argue neither of those three are the top league so far. Let’s take a look.

1. Big East

The sixth of the “Power Six” conferences, the one that doesn’t field division one football teams, is the best in College Basketball this season. It’s the deepest the conference has been since its transition from the beloved Old Big East — which was ruled by power brokers like Rick Pitino, Bob Huggins and Jim Calhoun.

Instead, it’s Kevin Willard’s Seton Hall — a team that’s nine deep with experience, defense and puzzle pieces on offense that paint a better picture than the sum of its parts. It’s also Ed Cooley’s Providence, led in scoring by six seniors. And Travis Steele at Xavier, who’s having a much better season than his predecessor Chris Mack. He’s got a tough 6-4 duo of super-senior guards, shooting all over the lineup and a frontcourt that just got last season’s leading scorer back.

I’m yet to even mention Villanova or UCONN. Jay Wright’s group already has four losses. A tough schedule and tight six-man rotation are hurdles so far, but he’ll have his group humming during league play. Dan Hurley at Connecticut has the best team of his tenure, and they haven’t had a healthy roster in any of their three losses so far.

Deep league, tough and talented. The Big East may have more top-eight seeds than any conference this March.

2. SEC?

Tentatively, yes. The top half of the league is the best in the country, but the bottom half makes the SWAC look competitive.

LSU is top ten in all major advanced analytics rankings, Auburn just got its second-leading scorer from 2021 back and they’ve already overachieved. Our Kentucky Wildcats won by a combined 64 points against decent UNC and WKU teams. There’s also inconsistent Alabama who can beat (or lose to) anyone in the nation. As well as Tennessee, headlined by a five-star point guard, solid defense and now with a win over top-10 Arizona.

Who knows, maybe even Texas A&M is finally good? If you want more SEC talk, check out Kassidy’s roundup from the other day.

3. Big 10

Sort of like with the SEC, the bottom fourth is atrocious. In conferences with 14+ teams, that’s just reality. But at the top, Ohio State, Purdue, Illinois and Wisconsin boast six of the best players in College Basketball.

EJ Liddell and Kofi Cockburn are bigs scoring more than 20 per game. Purdue might also have one, if they played Trevion Williams or Zach Edey more than 20 minutes per game. Both of them are scoring north of 26 points per 40 minutes. And Jaden Ivey is the Boilermakers’ best player to date. Johnny Davis as Wisconsin is arguably the most valuable player to his team in the entire country.

Crazy talent at the top of the Big 10 again.

4. Big 12

The Big 12 benefits from a lack of muck at the bottom of the standings. Iowa State was the basement-dweller last winter and went 0-18 in league play. They fired one coach and hired another and have U-turned the ship on the way to a 12-0 start to leapfrog into the top ten of the AP Poll.

My Baylor Bears won the championship and lost their three perimeter engineers in Davion Mitchell, Jared Butler and MaCio Teague. But they re-tooled and re-took the unanimous no. 1 spot a month into the season behind dominant play on both ends.

Of course, there’s Kansas and West Virginia who figure to make the tourney with ease. Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech all signed new coaches this offseason but are pace for pace with KU and WVU so far. Once again, the Big 12 could lead the country in tourney teams.

5. ACC

I’ll make it brief. Duke is the only guarantee to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. North Carolina likely will because the rest of the ACC is dogwash, Otherwise, the East Coast lacks a contender in 2022. Heck, we’re to the point where Wake Forest is a serious ACC Contender.

Wooden Race

If not for Iowa’s 250 pounds of white chocolate fudge with eyebrows as dominant as his post moves, last year’s Wooden Award race would’ve been close and captivating. Instead, Luka Garza took a baseball bat to the Big 10 record books with season averages of 24 points and eight rebounds per game while shooting 55% from the field.

This season, it’s a wide-open field — not due to a lack of dominant College Basketball players, but a plethora. This is how I see the top three right now:

1. EJ Liddell | Ohio State

Liddell broke out as the second-billed star of OSU’s one-two punch in 2021 that made them a two-seed. He lost his pick-and-roll partner and leading scorer Duane Washington, and the Buckeyes have one of the worst backcourts of any power five team. Yet Liddell has only improved, scoring more points with less playmaking help. More efficiently, more isolated.

He’s scoring 20.6 points per game, grabbing over seven rebounds and at 6-foot-6 blocking three shots a game. While shooting 56% from the field and 35% from three.

His team really isn’t that good. Without him, Ohio State is a surefire bottom-half Big 10 team. Instead, with him, OSU is slaying Duke and staying ranked in the top-15 of the AP Poll.

Let’s talk about that Duke game. Where Liddell was double-teamed by Duke’s mammoth front-court for most of the night, but still managed to score 14 points, grab 14 rebounds, dish out six assists, block three shots and hit a stepback jumper at the elbow with a hand in his face to seal the game against the then-undefeated, then-top-ranked Blue Devils. He was the first spoiler of the Coach K farewell tour, and for that, he’s the nonconference Wooden winner for me.

2. Ochai Agbaji | Kansas

He and the Jayhawks are flying under the radar at 9-1 with a loss to Dayton on the resume. No team on Kansas’s schedule is overlooking Agbaji, though. As 6-foot-5 wing, he’s shooting 62% from inside the three-point line and 48.4% from outside while scoring 22 points per game. Making him the single most efficient non-big in College Basketball. By a landslide!

That doesn’t cover his defensive contributions, where the guard-sized Agbaji has been playing the four and guarding forwards for most of his career in Bill Self’s lineups. Which are usually slick forward-thinking small-ball groups that punish teams with speed and toughness on the perimeter.

Not sure if his ridiculous volume or efficiency will last through Big 12 play, but there is no denying his excellence at the moment.

3. Oscar Tshiebwe | Kentucky

Not biased, but statistically undeniable. Our man Big O is College Basketball’s leading rebounder with room to spare at 15.5 per game.

That’s not all. Oscar leads every single rebounding percentage category — offensive, defensive and total. He’s seventh in the nation in field goal percentage (64.9%) and Box Plus/Minus (14.0). Also third in win shares per 40 minutes and second in Player Efficiency rating. There is plenty of other Oscar Tshiebwe content to read on this site so I’ll keep this brief.

The belief that Oscar is one of the best players in the entire country is not at all crazy. In fact, it’s an opinion backed by math.

College Basketball Pre-2022 Rankings

Well everyone loves to argue over the AP Poll, so why not add in my own list of the top 25 College Basketball teams that everyone is sure to agree with. Here’s how I see things a month and a half into the season:

1. Baylor
2. Duke
3. Iowa State
4. Purdue
5. LSU
6. Arizona
7. Gonzaga
8. Kansas
9. Ohio State
10. USC
11. UCLA
12. Houston
13. Seton Hall
14. Xavier
15. Kentucky
16. Providence
17. Wisconsin
18. Texas Tech
19. Tennessee
20. Colorado State
21. Auburn
22. West Virginia
23. Alabama
24. Villanova
25. UCONN

Argue with me in the comments or on Twitter. I promise I’ll respond.