NCAA Basketball: Most competitive end of 2019-20 conference races

While not determinant of NCAA Basketball Tournament berths, regular-season conference championships are often considered the true indicator of intra-league dominance. Here are the most compelling conference battles heading down to the wire.

We get it. Conference tournaments are sexy! They offer the perfect appetizer for the NCAA Basketball Tournament’s main course. The drama and intrigue closely resemble the emotions felt in March’s dance of madness. Locks for the Big Dance can fine-tune their rotations and schemes, bubble teams can try to play themselves onto the right side of the cut line, and one-bid leagues with no hope of placing a team into the NCAA Tournament at-large discussion clutch dreams of dancing on with a conference tournament title.

Still, for college basketball purists, the regular-season conference championship carries more weight and significance as a measure of the true conference champion than does a performance in a single-elimination, (mostly) neutral-court tournament. Shouts to the Ivy League which held out the longest against the scourge and plague of conference tournaments (but they really are so fun!).

And although a regular-season title won’t give your favorite team a chance to be the next Cinderella story in March, a solid consolation prize awaits in automatic qualification into the NIT for the regular season champions that do not win their league’s auto-bid. Not to mention the glory, pride, and achievement that comes to a team that survived a grueling league schedule and came out on top. We happen to love the simplicity and beauty of an outright regular-season crown!

With only a handful of games remaining, some regular-season conference battles still hang in the balance. Read on to find out which conference races we find most compelling.

*Standings current as of games through 02/26/20