![]() The only thing the conference didn't do was win the national championship-and it fell just short of that goal when Villanova's Kris Jenkins made a 25-footer at the buzzer to beat the Tar Heels, 77-74. ![]() Six of the league's teams-North Carolina, Virginia, Miami, Duke, Notre Dame and Syracuse-reached the Sweet 16, and even after the Hurricanes and Blue Devils lost in the regional semifinals, the entire Elite Eight on the right side of the bracket was composed of ACC squads, guaranteeing that the league would make up half of both the Final Four and the title game. Pitt was the only team from the league that didn’t win at least one game in the Big Dance. 14 in the final AP poll of the regular season, hadn’t self-imposed a postseason ban.ĭuring the NCAAs, the ACC was the best conference in the country, and it wasn’t particularly close. The league received seven bids to the NCAA tournament and could have even gotten eight if Louisville, which finished fourth in the conference standings and was No. 3, plus two other teams in the top 10 and a total of five in the top 25. 1 in the AP poll and finished it with the Tar Heels at No. The ACC began the regular season with North Carolina at No. ![]() What it can do instead is have its top teams dominate the postseason. In part because it has 15 teams instead of 10 and thus can’t play a double round-robin schedule like the Big 12, the ACC will often have a hard time matching that league’s regular season strength. Still, based on the full season’s body of work, the Big 12 deserves to be second on this list. First, the Wildcats upset the Jayhawks in a back-and-forth Elite Eight game to set up a showdown in Houston with the Sooners, whom Villanova then handed the worst loss in Final Four history, 95-51. 1 Virginia in the Midwest Regional, and eventual national champ Villanova cleared out the rest of the Big 12. But the Cyclones, Jayhawks and Sooners all advanced to the Sweet 16. The Bears (for the second year in a row), Texas and West Virginia were upset in the first round, and Texas Tech lost an 8-vs.-9 game to Butler. 3 seeds Baylor and Iowa State), the Big 12 fared better but still not as well as expected in 2016. Not only did seven of the league’s 10 teams get bids to the Big Dance, the Big 12 was the only conference to produce five top-five seeds.Īfter an epic NCAA tournament flameout in 2015 (the conference went 0–3 on opening day, including losses by No. Along with West Virginia, the Big 12 had three teams in the AP's top 10 in each of the final three weeks of the regular season. The league featured the nation’s top team, Kansas, and its best player, Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield. The Big 12 spent most of the season widely considered to be the best conference in the country. It gets undisputed bragging rights for the next six months. Still, all that should matter to this league is that it cut down the nets. 11 Gonzaga in its first round matchup, and Xavier was an upset victim in the East, winding up on the business end of Bronson Koenig's buzzer-beater. But the Wildcats, which won the regular season race by two games and lost the conference tournament championship by two points to Seton Hall, were the only Big East team to win more than one game in the NCAA tournament, as the other four teams combined to go 3-4. Butler and Providence picked up first-round wins over Texas Tech and USC, respectively, in 8-vs.-9 games before falling to No. In just its third season, the reconstituted Big East produced the national champion in Villanova, which pulled off the most dominant run of any title team during the analytics era (2002 to present). The 2016 Effy Awards: Chris Beard, Jay Wright among coaching winners Those slip-ups allowed Indiana, which ended the season on a five-game winning streak, to emerge as the somewhat surprising regular-season champion. The Terrapins, meanwhile, followed a 22-3 start by losing five of eight to close the regular season. But then Spartans star Denzel Valentine, who had established himself as the player of the year frontrunner, suffered a minor knee injury that knocked him out of four games, and the Boilermakers' defense-anchored by two 7-footers in A.J. 6 by December, when Michigan State began a four-week run at the top of the polls and Purdue also moved into the top 10. 3 in the preseason AP poll, and they were still No. Maryland was a national title favorite, ranking No. 11 Michigan (First Four)īefore the New Year, the Big Ten had all the pieces in place to be considered one of the best conference in the country.
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