Ranking the top conference tournaments you should watch this weekend
Conference tournaments are a huge data point to consider when choosing your March Madness brackets. For single-bid conferences, this is obviously the only way for teams to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. Even in larger, more competitive conferences, it is a final statement, an indication of a team’s tendency to enter the Big Dance.
Specifically, conference tournaments say a lot about who will cut down the nets as national champions. Three of the last four men’s national champions (Florida 2025, UConn 2024 and Kansas 2022) have won their conference tournament. More importantly, since 1993, no champion has missed the semifinals of their conference tournament, according to the NCAA.
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With that in mind, here is a ranking of the eight best conference tournaments you should watch this weekend. The numbers indicate which team you should pick as national champion will play.
(All times EST)
1. Big Ten
Friday: Action starts at 12 p.m., watch on BTN
Saturday: Action begins at 1 p.m., watch on CBS
Sunday: Action begins at 3:30 p.m., watch on CBS
You simply won’t find a greater number of teams in college basketball. No conference has more ranked teams than the Big Ten’s six, and all remain in the field. The longer nature of the Big Ten tournament also means there’s more to watch than any other conference can offer, and it’s the last title game to start on Selection Sunday — giving it a showcase quality you can’t find anywhere else.
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This tournament also features a top title contender (No. 3 Michigan), an all-time coaching great looking to cap off his legacy (Michigan State’s Tom Izzo), an elite coach seeking his first national title (Purdue’s Matte Painter) and one of the big out-of-nowhere stories of the season (No. 11 Nebraska). Add in the strong rivalries that have lasted for decades (such as the guaranteed matchups between Ohio State-Michigan and Wisconsin-Illinois), and you have everything you could want.
2. Great East
Friday: Action begins at 5:30 p.m., watch on FOX and FS1
Saturday: Action begins at 6:30 p.m., watch on FOX
No conference tournament offers a grander stage or a stronger sense of nostalgia. When you watch these teams compete at Madison Square Garden – the most famous arena in the world – it’s impossible not to think of Ray Allen against. Allen Iversonsix overtimes and Gerry McNamara And Kemba Walker do generational shopping.
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Even though some of the teams responsible for those memories are gone, the combination of elite talent and basketball-specific branding makes the Big East tournament unique and self-sustaining outside of national intrigue. The Rick Pitino-Dan Hurley rivalry and Seton Hall’s quest to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament are compelling for everyone, but they’re really just byproducts of the drama pressure cooker that is the Big East. Ultimately, the only thing these schools love more than basketball is hate each other.
3. Big 12
Friday: Action begins at 6 p.m., watch on ESPN2
Saturday: Action begins at 5 p.m., watch on ESPN
The highest concentration of elite talent is found in the Big 12. Arizona, Houston and Iowa State are three of the top seven teams in the country, placing them firmly among the nation’s true title contenders. The 14ththThe top-ranked Kansas Jayhawks shouldn’t be overlooked either.
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Even without a BYU star AJ Dybantsathere are also plenty of elite NBA draft prospects to watch. Kansas Guard Darryn Peterson is still in the running to become number one overall, and Houston’s goaltender Kingston Flemings should be in the top five by Sam Vecenie of The Athletic. that of Arizona Brayden Burries And Koa Peat are potential lottery picks. Motiéjus Krivas (Arizona), Chris Cenac (Houston) and Joshua Jefferson (Iowa State) are also first-round prospects in a stacked class.
Long story short, if you want to watch the best the sport has to offer, tune in to the Big 12 tournament.
4. SEC
Friday: Action begins at 1 p.m., watch on ESPN and SEC Network
Saturday: Action begins at 1 p.m., watch on ESPN
Sunday: Action begins at 1 p.m., watch on ESPN
The SEC’s top-tier talent is nothing to sneeze at either, especially with eight teams remaining. Defending champion Florida is advancing with a top seed in its sights, and teams like Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee are looking to build on their recent success in the NCAA Tournament. Vecenie has it all Darius Acuff Jr. (Arkansas), Nate Ament (Tennessee), Thomas Haugh (Florida) and Labaron Philon Jr. (Alabama) participates in the lottery.
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The X-factor here, however, might be the presence of two double-digit seeds. The 11th-seeded Oklahoma Sooners and 15th-seeded Ole Miss Rebels have both won two games in the tournament and will face Alabama and Arkansas, respectively, in the night quarterfinals on Friday. If one or both of them win, we could see a Cinderella story debut in March.
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5. VAC
Friday: Action begins at 7 p.m., watch on ESPN/ESPN2
Saturday: Action starts at 8:30 p.m., watch on ESPN
This was expected to be Duke’s No. 1 tournament to lose, and it still is. Cameron Boozer is likely the Naismith Player of the Year and a top-three pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. However, the Blue Devils fought to the last shot against a middling Florida State team in the quarterfinals, a concerning development after losing key contributors. Caleb Foster And Patrick Ngongba.
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Maybe defeating Goliath won’t be the near-impossible task it seemed. Even if the Blue Devils beat Clemson — which prevented a Duke-North Carolina rubber match — in the semifinals, they will face a good team for the championship in Virginia or No. 10 Miami, the highest-voted unranked team in the AP poll.
6. Mountain West
Friday: Action begins at 6:30 p.m., watch on CBS Sports Network
Saturday: Action begins at 3 p.m., watch on CBS
Until Friday’s semifinals, the Mountain West tournament has been somewhat chalky — the remaining teams are No. 1 seed Utah State, No. 2 seed San Diego State, No. 3 seed New Mexico and No. 5 seed Nevada. That’s definitely a positive for the conference trying to make some noise in the NCAA Tournament; As a one-bid league (at least as it stands), the conference needs its representative to be able to compete with the best teams.
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Utah State is currently ranked eighth in Lunardi’s field, so the Mountain West can add one more team if someone can knock off the Aggies. They’re ranked 32nd in KenPom, but San Diego State and New Mexico are both in the top 50, meaning they can make some noise if they get into The Big Dance.
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7. Atlantic 10
Friday: Action starts at 11:30 a.m., watch on USA Network and CNBC
Saturday: Action begins at 1 p.m., watch on CBSSN
Sunday: Action begins at 1 p.m., watch on CBSSN
Top-seeded Saint Louis is currently in the NCAA Tournament field as a 10 seed in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology. The intrigue is whether the A-10 can get multiple bids. VCU is projected among Lunardi’s final four teams, and even though bubble teams are dropping like flies all around them, the Rams need to put up a strong performance to feel good about their position.
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Saint Louis, meanwhile, was ranked for much of the season, but suffered three of its four losses in the final six games of the season, including a blowout 29-point loss to George Mason in the finals. Can a team come out of nowhere and possibly make the Atlantic 10 a three-bid conference?
8. Ivy League
Saturday: Action begins at 11 a.m., watch on ESPNU and ESPNNews
Sunday: Action begins at 12 p.m., watch on ESPN2
You know all these schools outside of basketball. The four qualifying schools (Yale, Harvard, Penn, and Cornell) are all among the most respected institutions of higher education in the world. The team that wins the Ivy League’s NCAA Tournament bid is always a fun underdog given the emphasis on academics over athletics.
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Yale has won four of the last five Ivy League tournaments held since 2019 (2020 and 2021 were canceled due to COVID-19) and is the top seed. The No. 13 seed Bulldogs defeated No. 4 seed Auburn in the 2024 NCAA Tournament; the year before, a 15-seed Princeton team scored massive upsets over 2-seed Arizona and 7-seed Missouri before falling to 6-seed Creighton in the Sweet 16.
