ACC > Big East?

The ACC improved to 9-6 against the Big East on Saturday with Duke's 76-67 win over Georgetown and will likely finish the regular season with a 10-6 mark against the 16-team superconference.

Statistically, 10-6 should answer any question about conference supremacy, after all, what greater measure is there than head-to-head results?

Except the only thing 10-6 tells us definitively is that St. John's would be in last place in the ACC. Four of the ACC's 10 wins will be against St. John's (Duke plays at St. John's on Feb. 19), which is not faring much better (1-4) in the Big East.

Throw out the garbage teams — Virginia, South Florida, St. John's, Rutgers — and the conference's have four wins each. For the record, the ACC's "good" wins, primarily Duke over Georgetown and UNC over Notre Dame, are better than the Big East's.

The Big East has a Pitt road win at Florida State and a 13-point neutral site win by UConn over Miami, although Mike Tranghese might be more proud of the 27-point Georgetown win over Maryland.

The rankings aren't much help either because while the ACC has the top two teams, the Big East has more top-25 teams (eight).

The real problem is the Big East's size makes it impossible to compare to the ACC or any other 12-team conference. Of course, the ACC is to blame for the 16-team Big East, but that's another blog post.

The Big East will get more teams in the NCAA Tournament because it has more teams than the ACC. It also has more bad teams than the ACC, which helps inflate conference win-loss records.

The success of the respective conferences in the tournament might help answer the question, although Kansas won the title last year and I don't hear anyone arguing the Big 12 was the best conference in the country.

One thing ACC and Big East fans can agree on: ESPN needs to dump the Big Ten from the "Challenge" and go back to the ACC vs. Big East.

ACC (9-6)
@ Duke 76, Georgetown 67
@ UNC 97, Rutgers 75
Virginia Tech 81, @St. John's 67
Miami 70, @ St. John's 56
#Florida State 58, Cincinnati 47
@Boston College 82, St. John's 70
@Boston College 81, Providence 76
#UNC 102, Notre Dame 87
@UVa 77, South Florida 75

Big East (6-9)
Marquette 68, @N.C. State 65
#Seton Hall 77, Virginia Tech 73
Pitt 56, @ FSU 48
#Georgetown 75, Maryland 48
#UConn 76, Miami 63
@Syracuse 73, UVa 70

Note: #-neutral site