Conference realignment leads to bigger and better SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC

Conference realignment has led to a dramatic shift in women’s basketball. Texas and Oklahoma will bolster an already strong Southeastern Conference while USC and UCLA add two of the top teams in the country to the Big Ten.

Throw in Stanford and Cal joining the ACC, and Arizona, Colorado and Utah joining the Big 12, and the remaining four power conferences have become even better.

“Women’s basketball is at an all-time high. I am super excited about not just our team but overall. I’m excited to see how the teams that have been spread out over certain conferences, the Big Ten, the ACC, former Pac-12 members,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said. “I’d like to see how all that unfolds. I’m super excited. I know there will be a women’s basketball game on every single day of the week. I look forward to tuning in.”

Staley's top-ranked South Carolina team plays No. 4 Texas twice and No. 10 Oklahoma once in the regular season.

“It’s pretty much upgraded what I think is the best conference in the country.,” Staley said of the two newcomers from the Big 12. “They’ve upgraded us to another level.”

Texas coach Vic Schaefer is making his second appearance in the SEC after coaching Mississippi State before leaving for the Longhorns. He's seen the league grow from having a few dominant teams like Tennessee and Georgia to one where half a dozen teams are going to be vying for the top spot with South Carolina.

“I think the parity that we have in our league right now is really incredible. Back then you had some really dominant teams, then you had some teams that maybe they couldn’t beat those top teams,” he said. “In our league right now on any given night, if you’re not ready to play, you won’t get beat, you’ll get embarrassed.”

While the level of play and parity may have increased in the conferences, so has the travel. Many teams now in the ACC and Big Ten will have to go coast to coast. In the Big Ten, the West Coast schools will combine six games into three trips to the Eastern and Central time zones. Teams from those time zones will go west just once to play two games over four days.

The ACC likewise has adopted a 2-for-1 approach in putting together the schedule: play two games for every one trip and essentially alternate weekends of playing at home vs. on the road.

That would have Stanford or Cal playing a pair of road games at neighboring North Carolina schools or in the Eastern time zone on the same trip, or each hosting the same visitor within a four-day span.

“I’m sure we’ll learn a lot,” ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips told The Associated Press. “I don’t know that we’ve got it completely figured out, but we looked at it in a fair equitable way. .... I feel good about it. Is it perfect? It’s not perfect. But we needed to start somewhere and I feel like we’re at a good place going into Year 1.”

USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb, who used to also coach at California, said that teams that use charter flights will now need bigger planes unlike the 30-seaters that they could use for Pac-12 matchups; smaller planes would have to refuel for those longer trips. Fortunately for the Trojans, many of their eastern road trips come over winter break so not as much class is missed.

“I’m really excited to see the Big Ten atmospheres across the country that we’re going to get to experience and how our players react and respond to that,” Gottlieb said.

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AP Sports Writer John Zenor and AP Basketball Writer Aaron Beard contributed to this story.