I get what your saying but I just don't think the Big Ten underachieves on basketball. They pretty consistently get multiple teams to the sweet 16, which I think is a good indicator of the strength of a conference. Anything past that is more of a commentary on the individual team because it becomes such a crap shoot from there.
I would call elite 8 a good barometer since you've probably had to beat at least one decent team to get there- sweet 16 can be beating some less than stellar schools especially if you have a good seed
