With the non-conference just about over for NCAA Basketball, which mid-major programs have stood out the most? Here’s a collective ranking of the teams.
It’s the end of the 2018 calendar year, meaning that conference play for NCAA Basketball is just around the corner. In fact, some conferences have already started to have their teams play another to accommodate their respective schedules.
But before we go to the heart of the season, it’s time to take a look back at what happened in the non-conference portion. A ton has happened, including multiple No. 1 ranked teams, various tournament winners, and of course, upsets along the way.
Many of those upsets happened between power conference schools and their mid-major adversaries, which will have consequences down the road on the bubble. But some of those “mid-majors” shouldn’t be considered stepping-stones but rather legitimate threats to make some noise once March arrives.
Since the start of the season, we here at Busting Brackets have done a weekly Top-25 national power ranking, which features a few mid-majors. So what I wanted to do was create a list specifically of the 25 best mid-major programs in the country to this point of the season. But that’s a hard task to do by myself, so I enlisted some help.
For this special project, I’ve compiled top-25 mid-major rankings from myself and the following 11 Busting Brackets writers:
TJ Miller – @timmyjmiller, Jason Burgess – @collegehoopsguy, Logan Butts – @logan_butts, Bryan Mauro – @threecolorbeard, Holden Walter-Warner – @hwalterwarner, Daniel Garay – @danielgaray_, Joey Loose – @jloose128, Adam Childs – @AdamChilds21, Stu Luddecke – @sluddecke93, Connor Hope – @CondorianFM and Pan Kiralis – @HoopsHouseRow
Using everyone’s individual rankings, I’ve combined them to create the official Busting Brackets Mid-major top-25 rankings. There are some surprises on this list, including the omissions of preseason mid-major favorites Western Kentucky, Marshall, George Mason, New Mexico and others.
So who cracked the list? And who’s No. 1? Find out now.