ESPN’s Joe Lunardi made a bold claim during Thursday’s Gonzaga-Saint Joseph’s telecast:

@HolyLandofHoops @ESPNLunardi just talked about how if the Jesuits had their own conference they would be the 3rd best in the nation.

— XUfan2012 (@XUFan2012) November 20, 2014

Sounds like something worth examining.  To gauge whether Lunardi is on or off his rocker, I took a look at the 20 Jesuit universities playing Division I men’s basketball.  Here is what such a conference would look like.  All data below from Ken Pomeroy.

The Candidates

Gonzaga and Big East schools both old (Georgetown) and new (Xavier, Creighton) lead the way.  Our Billikens are fifth and lead a parade of Saints, Sans, and Santas as we move down the list.

As you can see from the “Best Win” column, a handful of quality wins so far for the group, with Holy Cross over Harvard by far the most surprising.  Nice work, Crusaders.  On the flip side, Lunardi’s own Saint Joseph’s Hawks could do nothing when left alone with Angie Dickinson, the Seattle hoops scene remains totally WAC, and when Saint Peter’s took Niagra they experienced poor basketball lasting more than two hours without even consulting a doctor.  So there are some early embarrassments on the record.

The Rankings

Before we build a fake conference to figure out how these Jesuit Juggernauts would fare against the rest of the country, let’s take a look at the current (real) conference rankings.

OK, let’s start with a quick rocker proximity check for Joey Buckets.  Here is where a full, inclusive 20-team Jesuit Conference (“JesCon20”) would rank among the nation’s best:

Ugh.  JesCon20 is both plodding offensively (99.8 AdjO) and thoroughly mediocre on the defensive side, only getting to the 11th-ranked conference overall.  No fun to watch and certainly not what Lunardi had in mind.

Joeymandering

In order to make The Lunardi Proclamation come true, we are obviously going to have to do a bit of Jesuit basketball gerrymandering.  Let’s call it Joeymandering.  Twenty teams is way too big and unwieldy anyway, and we are sure Loyolas & Friends would not want to hold their compadres back, so let’s Joeymander the list down and just take the top 14.  Seems reasonable.

We are moving on up like George and Weezy.  Lept over the top-heavy American, and are now within striking range of the A10.  However, considering the JesCon14’s average team is not even in the Top 100 (#110 in AdjO; #104 in AdjD), we must trim further.

Six more have to go. We are taking it to JesCon8.

Now we are getting somewhere.  The JesCon8 conference  has a boutique feel and the offensive chops to compete with the Top 3, but is going to be held back by its Pac12-ish defense.  They can hold their conference summit around a table at Sushi Den, but still are not Top 3.

With a little more Joeymandering we might be able to make a man’s dream come true.  We take it to JesCon6.

Yahtzee!!  Bonzai!  We did it!  High sixes and Hail Marys all around!  JesCon6!  JesCon6!  JesCon6!

So Joe Lunardi was correct all along.  What he meant to say was:

If the Jesuits had their own conference — then kicked out their 14 lowest-ranked schools — they would be the 3rd best in the nation.

Well said, Joey Buckets.  Well said.

Conclusion

We leave you the Braketologist’s Dilemma: in order for us to Joeymander a Jesuit Conference worthy of the #3 ranking in America and prove our guy right, we had to leave behind Lunardi’s own Saint Joseph’s Hawks.  They would have to form their own MAACish amalgam.

Between now and March Saint Joseph’s could play their way into the Top 6 of this, the Number Three Fake Conference in the country, or maybe Joe Lunardi just holds the line and keep the JesCon6 Hawk-less and riding high in the rankings.

Either way, it is bound to be an interesting broadcast at the (Fake) Conference Tournament at the JesuDome in Rome, Italy.