Every week, the Blue Zone will make a take on college basketball—whether that take may be hot, cold or lukewarm. This week's take is in from Chronicle contributor Jacob Ronkin:
The take: No Big 12 team will win it all
Every year, fans across the country argue endlessly over the best men’s college basketball conference. This year, a new name has surfaced in these debates—the Big 12—which has perennially been dominated by Kansas.
Unlike any other major conference, the Big 12 has seen Kansas win or share the regular season title 13 years in a row, and, prior to the start of this season, it looked like Kansas would coast to title No. 14.
But a new group of contenders look to challenge Kansas’s place on top—No. 10 Texas Tech, No. 12 Oklahoma, No. 15 West Virginia and No. 26 Kansas State. Each of these teams sit within two games of Kansas with eight conference games for each to play.
Between Jevon Carter of West Virginia, Trae Young of Oklahoma, and Mohamed Bamba of Texas, there is enough star power in the league to merit immediate consideration among the best leagues in the country.
Despite the hype around the Big 12 competitors, Kansas is still overwhelmingly likely to at least gain a share of the regular season title—ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) projects they have a 90.4 percent chance at it.
Every other team in the conference combines for a 27 percent chance, showing they are still unlikely to challenge Kansas’s control of the league. Additionally, even when the conference peaked with four teams ranked in the top 10 of the AP poll three weeks ago, the Big 12, according to ESPN’s BPI projections, only had the fourth-best chance of any conference to produce the national champion.
While national championships are not the only way to define a conference’s success or strength, the Big 12’s struggles in non-conference play and constant upsets in conference play show that it is even more unlikely that one of its teams will be cutting down the nets in San Antonio in April.
Prior to conference play, Kansas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma all lost to unranked opponents at neutral sites, with losses to Washington, Seton Hall, and Arkansas, respectively. West Virginia also lost by 23 to then-No. 25 ranked Texas A&M at a neutral site.
Last weekend, the Big 12-SEC Challenge provided an opportunity for the conference to assert its dominance, as Auburn, currently the top-ranked team in the SEC, was not playing, and many other SEC programs had been struggling.
Analyst projections had the Big 12 comfortably winning the series, but it ultimately lost six to four. Losses by West Virginia, Oklahoma and TCU tipped the scales and the SEC showed once and for all that the Big 12 was not as strong as it appeared to be just a few weeks ago.
It is easy to see why people love the Big 12: the conference has great players, quality teams, and close matchups every single day.
While that recipe creates a fun league to watch, it does not equate to conference power. The league play upsets just underscore that there is not a large difference between the top and bottom of the conference, and the non-conference losses show that the Big 12 is not the best conference in basketball.
While no other league has cemented its spot as the best conference in college basketball, the Big 12 has proven in recent weeks it will not claim the title either. The Big 12 has only won one national title as a league since its creation in 1994, and it does not look like that will change this year.
Check back next week for another take.
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