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Based on projected bids for the 2015 NCAA tournament, the Big 12 enters the 2014-15 college basketball season as the best conference in the nation.

Quantifying a qualitative statistic like "best" conference is hardly an exact science, but we gave it a shot anyway.

Simply ranking the strength of conferences by the number of teams projected for the tournament doesn't make sense. For starters, not all conferences are created equal—the ACC has 15 teams while the Big East and Big 12 have only 10. Also, not all projected bids are created equal—title contenders like Kentucky and Arizona shouldn't count the same as borderline teams like Cincinnati and Seton Hall.

Taking those things into consideration, a formula was created.

We see a total of 10 conferences potentially sending multiple teams to the 2015 NCAA tournament—sorry, WCC fans—and we ranked those 10 conferences based on the following formula.

Locks for the tournament count as 100 points each. Teams with a better than 50 percent chance but less than 100 percent chance of dancing are worth 75 points each. Bubble teams count for 50 points while long shots are given 25 points apiece. Each conference's total was summed up then divided by the number of teams in the conference, rating each conference on a scale from 0-100.

Which teams fall into which categories and the resultant scores are listed on each of the following slides.

Statistics are courtesy of Sports-Reference.com and KenPom.com (subscription required).