1. ACC
The ACC has the national champion in Virginia, arguably the team with the best recruiting class in North Carolina, a team on the rise in Pitt, a trendy final four pick in Louisville, nine 20+ win teams from last year and oh yeah, they have Coach K and Duke.
To say this conference is loaded would be an understatement. Many pundits even picked three of their teams to make the Final Four last year and they very easily could have been right. Yes, this conference has some bad teams, cough Wake Forest, but what conference doesn’t. Conferences are normally ranked off the top of their conference to start with and no one can compare with the ACC coming into this year.
Other conferences may be able to match up with them at the very top but the depth of the ACC is ridiculous. Duke, North Carolina and Louisville are all legitimate title contenders and even though Virginia lost a lot of talent Tony Bennett will have them competing again.
Throw in the fact that teams like Pitt are improving and this makes for one tough conference. Yes, Danny Manning is torpedoing the Demon Deacons and that hurts, the rest of the conference has to have a fairly good feeling about where they are at. Notre Dame finished in last place last year, but Mike Brey has done a mostly fantastic job in South Bend and will have them back before too long.
Will the ACC repeat as national champions this year is to be seen, but they probably have the most teams capable of doing that going into the year. The Big Ten will get their shot at them during their annual challenge, but the ACC will be favored in most of those games. If the Big Ten can win that then maybe they jump to the top, but for right now the ACC reigns supreme.