Going purely by the mathematical ratings, the top six Pac-12 teams in our game rank as the 5th best conference of all time.
However, subjectively it is clearly the 2nd best conference of all time for the following reasons:
1. In the game we made a point of only including a couple of teams from each program, and trying not to include teams from the same school within a few years of each other. We could have easily included another half dozen teams from the John Wooden years that would have made the Pac-12 the second greatest basketball conference of all time. The same applies in our all-time Statis-Pro Baseball Game where we only include a few New York Yankees teams - and UCLA is the Yankees of college basketball.
2. The 2nd through 5th greatest conferences of all time based on our rankings are all within 1.2 points of each other anyway, so a virtual tie,
3. The top six Pac-12 teams in the game have dominated all-time great teams for an 18-6 mark, but for some reason several surprise blowout losses among those 6 losses - such as Kareem's UCLA team getting shocked by double digits again 1980 DePaul, have held the overall rating down just a bit.
Bill Walton's 1972 UCLA team so far has been 10 points better than the rest of the conference and in fact ranks #1 of our 135 great all-time teams. Their 6-0 mark was in the tournament of our first 96 teams, where they took the title with a win against Michael Jordan's UNC.
In addition to the great UCLA teams of the past, that 2017 Oregon team was the best in the country - and I believe would have been the clear No. 1 if their one big guy Chris Boucher (a star) was not injured at the end of the regular season to miss March Madness.
Arizona's great teams include the 1997 squad that beat Kentucky for the national title. I also really meant to include Utah's more recent team with Delon Wright, the subject of 2014 articles on my Value Add basketball ratings system, but forgot to make the team so we actually have 135 teams instead of 136.
| Rnk | Great Team | Year | Key Player | W | L | Pts | Allow | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 6 Pac-12 | 18 | 6 | 74.6 | 71.2 | 4.6 | |||
| 1 | UCLA | 1972 | Bill Walton | 6 | 0 | 72.0 | 62.0 | 15.5 |
| 2 | UCLA | 1967 | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | 2 | 1 | 83.0 | 87.0 | 5.6 |
| 3 | Oregon | 2017 | Dillon Brooks | 4 | 3 | 71.9 | 69.9 | 2.7 |
| 4 | Arizona | 2015 | Stanley Johnson | 3 | 1 | 75.3 | 70.5 | 2.6 |
| 5 | Arizona | 1997 | Mike Bibby | 2 | 1 | 68.7 | 71.0 | 1.0 |
| 6 | USC | 2021 | Evan Mobley | 1 | 0 | 77.0 | 67.0 | 0.0 |
| 7 | Colorado | 2021 | McKinley Wright | 1 | 0 | 86.0 | 82.0 | -0.6 |
| 8 | Utah | 1998 | Andre Miller | 0 | 1 | 69.0 | 79.0 | -4.6 |
| 9 | UCLA | 2006 | Jordan Farmar | 2 | 3 | 66.0 | 72.4 | -5.2 |
| 10 | California | 1959 | Jack Grout | 0 | 1 | 69.0 | 71.0 | -5.8 |
| 11 | Arizona St. | 1980 | Byron Scott | 0 | 1 | 64.0 | 79.0 | -10.0 |
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!
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