College Hoops 4th Best Conference History - Current Big East (Original BE Could Have Been Best)

The domination in our game of Villanova team that dominated the title game in 2018 for one of two titles in there years and the two UConn teams that won titles in a six year stretch is no surprise.

The biggest surprise in our first 188 all-time great games has been DePaul's 1980 squad, which stunned Kareem and UCLA in route to a 3-0 record. We assume they will end up coming down to earth, but for right now they have helped the top six teams in the Big East to a 17-7 mark and the ranking as the 4th best conference in our game so far.

Add Patrick Ewing's 1984 Georgetown team, and you can remember how the actual 1980s Big East that launched ESPN legitimately challenges the ACC for title of the top conference in the country.

You may ask why Marquette merits four teams in the game is simple - I went there and am completely biased and even wrote a book on Marquette basketball once. Obviously a great program, but so far all four teams rank slightly below average of the all-time great teams. However, most of us would argue the actual all-time great team out of Marquette was Jim Chones squad in the early 70s that went 49-1 with only a last second loss to Ohio State in the tournament, and then loss Chones to the ABA before No. 2 Marquette could make a run at the UCLA dynasty. Of course none of team Marquette teams ranked from 8 to 10 were actually in the Big East - the 2011 team led by Jimmy Butler and Jae Crowder and was in the Big East.

The Creighton 2020 team actually won our 2020 tournament we decided to play after Covid cancelled the actual tournament. They beat Duke for the title, but their six wins in that tournament did not include games against any teams in the All-Time great team.  

Rnk	Great Team	Year	Key Player	W	L	Pts	Allow	Rate
	Top 6 Big East teams			17	7	73.1	68.2	4.7
1	Villanova	2018	Mikal Bridges	7	2	79.4	70.3	10.8
2	Connecticut	2004	Ben Gordon	4	2	73.5	64.0	7.0
3	DePaul	1980	Mark Aguirre	3	0	80.3	67.7	5.6
4	Connecticut	1999	Richard Hamilton	0	1	60.0	64.0	4.0
5	Seton Hall	1989	John Morton	1	1	78.0	78.0	0.5
6	Georgetown	1984	Patrick Ewing	2	1	67.3	65.3	0.4
7	Georgetown	2007	Roy Hibbert	1	2	76.7	75.3	-1.4
8	Marquette	1971	Jim Chones	1	1	68.0	69.0	-1.8
9	Marquette	2003	Dwyane Wade	2	2	73.3	74.0	-2.4
10	Marquette	1977	Butch Lee	1	1	66.0	61.5	-2.8
11	St. John's	1985	Chris Mullin	0	1	75.0	76.0	-2.8
12	DePaul	1945	George Mikan	0	1	51.0	55.0	-5.2
13	Marquette	2011	Jimmy Butler	0	1	82.0	87.0	-7.0
14	Villanova	1985	Ed Pinckney	0	1	65.0	72.0	-9.2
15	Creighton	2014	Doug McDermott	0	3	66.3	80.0	-9.7
16	Creighton	2020	Ty-Shon Alexander	0	1	72.0	106.0	-10.2
17	Butler	2010	Gordon Hayward	0	3	54.7	76.3	-13.0

We invented the Value Add Basketball Game, and since then have grown it to to 135 teams of all-time great teams and players. We have played 188 games to date, and 63,000 unique visitors have clicked on the game. 

Seven current conferences have at least six all-time great teams in the game. We decided to rank those conferences based on the average rating of their top six teams so far in our games against other teams.

Click on the game to play yourself - it contains everything you need to play the Value Add Basketball game, which lets you pit any of 136 great all-time college teams against each other. To pick your two teams it is best to click on this Google doc and print the pages of the teams you want (each team is one page). I track my games on this google sheet, but play your own for free!