Welcome back, college sports fans to the antepenultimate post for the GCR’s 2025-26 season. Just two more to go after today before we take a break as we prepare for the 2026-27 football season. Just in case anyone is wondering, aside from a little bit of down time from posting, the next six weeks will be reprogramming the GCR for conference realignment (19 schools so far), coding the schedule (which could change a little over the summer especially for FCS schools), and testing potential metrics based on what we’ve learned during basketball season that may improve our football product.
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This post is about the Final Women’s Conference Comparison for this past season. While UCLA won a well-deserved title, the Big Ten was not the strongest conference. The Big East is actually a great one to use to describe how the conference rankings work. There are two different measures of center that we could have used: mean (or what people intend to say when they say “average”) or median of the Scores of the teams within the conference. Mean (calculated by totaling the values and dividing by the number of teams) while Median is simply the one in the middle (after lining the values up from lowest to highest). Median is used when one does not want an outlier (see UCONN or Boston College) to positively or negatively impact the quality of whatever one is trying to measure. Median is very useful when looking at things like net worth. In the 1980s, North Carolina posted that the Mean starting salary for history majors was over $90,000 a year. What they didn’t say was that Michael Jordan was a history major. The Median was probably about $12,000 (we made that number up, but it wouldn’t be much higher) at the time, which is what the average history major could expect. For conference comparisons, we decided the metric and measurement should include outliers. The Big East is better overall because of UCONN and Boston College’s horrible season should impact the ACC. Using the Median, we would get an indication of how the middle team performed, not the conference as a whole. The Mean takes the good, the mediocre, and the “it was a rebuilding year” all into account. Here are all 31 conferences from the SEC to the Northeast:
| Conference | Record | Avg Score | Best Team | Worst Team |
| SEC | 360-180 / 667 | 64.61 | Texas (35-4/2) | Arkansas (12-20/232) |
| Big Ten | 369-221 / 625 | 60.08 | UCLA (37-1/1) | Northwestern (8-21/291) |
| B12 | 330-210 / 611 | 57.42 | TCU (32-6/7) | Houston (7-23/307) |
| ACC | 340-262 / 565 | 52.06 | Duke (27-9/8) | Boston College (5-26/342) |
| Ivy | 130-100 / 565 | 50.76 | Princeton (26-4/11) | Yale (7-20/315) |
| Big East | 198-158 / 556 | 49.10 | UCONN (38-1/4) | Depaul (8-24/318) |
| Atlantic 10 | 247-209 / 542 | 48.05 | Rhode Island (28-5/15) | VCU (8-23/309) |
| Sun Belt | 247-212 / 538 | 47.16 | Marshall (28-9/35) | Louisiana (5-26/346) |
| American East | 152-131 / 537 | 46.16 | Vermont (27-8/34) | Lowell (8-21/312) |
| West Coast | 203-193 / 513 | 44.62 | Gonzaga (24-10/55) | Seattle (5-25/347) |
| C-USA | 195-185 / 513 | 44.46 | LA Tech (26-7/25) | W Kentucky (8-21/308) |
| WAC | 117-108 / 520 | 43.94 | Abilene Chr (24-11/87) | Utah Tech (9-20/299) |
| American | 210-206 / 505 | 43.38 | Rice (29-6/30) | Wichita St (8-23/317) |
| Summit | 144-146 / 497 | 42.90 | South Dakota St (27-7/21) | Omaha (6-27/341) |
| Atlantic Sun | 191-189 / 503 | 42.46 | Jacksonville (24-9/65) | Bellarmine (2-30/359) |
| Ohio Valley | 172-172 / 500 | 42.43 | W Illinois (26-6/46) | E Illinois (4-27/353) |
| Big Sky | 164-163 / 502 | 42.25 | Montana St (27-8/33) | Portland St (6-25/340) |
| Coastal | 204-207 / 496 | 41.90 | Charleston (27-6/36) | Wilmington (7-24/329) |
| Mtn West | 196-193 / 504 | 41.70 | San Diego St (27-6/31) | San Jose St (4-28/352) |
| MAC | 201-202 / 499 | 41.69 | Miami OH (28-7/48) | Buffalo (3-27/356) |
| SoCon | 122-124 / 496 | 41.51 | Furman (18-13/137) | W Carolina (3-26/354) |
| Horizon | 179-180 / 499 | 41.20 | Green Bay (25-9/67) | Detroit (7-24/330) |
| Big West | 170-177 / 490 | 40.34 | UC Irvine (26-7/78) | Cal Poly (4-26/351) |
| Patriot | 144-146 / 497 | 38.19 | Army (26-8/70) | American (7-23/332) |
| Southland | 176-200 / 468 | 37.84 | McNeese (29-6/40) | New Orleans (3-27/355) |
| Big South | 133-152 / 467 | 37.54 | High Point (27-6/57) | Presbyterian (3-27/357) |
| Missouri Valley | 169-194 / 466 | 37.31 | Murray St (31-4/42) | Valparaiso (0-32/363) |
| MAAC | 177-224 / 441 | 33.68 | Fairfield (28-5/37) | Niagara (1-28/362) |
| SWAC | 152-228 / 400 | 32.06 | Alabama A&M (22-11/122) | Prairie View (2-28/360) |
| MEAC | 100-155 / 392 | 31.05 | Howard (26-8/106) | SC St (5-25/350) |
| Northeast | 124-188 / 397 | 28.74 | Fair Dickins (30-5/84) | C Connecticut (2-27/361) |
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One non-sports note. G is a proud dad today as JoJo won an award for Outstanding Senior in Applied Mathematics: STEM Education last evening. Now, there is no doubt who the smart one in the GCR really is.
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That’s it for today. Tune in tomorrow for the Men’s Conference Comparison. Then we will end our season Saturday with a new GCR ranking: The Best Program Ranking. Thank you for reading and especially for sharing with others, JoJo and G.
Congratulations, Jojo! I am proud to have known you growing up. Just curious: Which of your interests will make you more money? Math or acting … or working with your Dad on college rankings?
Hi Carl,
JoJo is doing her college thing, so she asked me to answer. First, she said thank you. She said that she is supposed to say working with dear old (emphasis on old) dad, but the calculations show math. I would like to add that you made an extremely positive influence on JoJo in those rough middle school years. For that, I thank you as well,
G