Another year, another prediction of Kansas & Baylor as the top two teams; this is shaping up to be the 4th year in a row where those two teams are in the top two spots when the season ends. Kansas being up at the top is same as it ever was, there’s only one season in the last 18 where Kansas wasn’t in the top two; Baylor is the ascendant power, the last three seasons they have finished either first or second and odds are they’ll be in the top two again. There is a new challenger who could nudge Baylor to third, but outside of some incredibly bad injury luck - or Anonymous publishing a leaked video of Scott Drew letting Joe Biden use a cross as a makeshift dildo on him while he votes for Joe Biden, which results in Drew being fired midseason for voting for Joe Biden - I don’t see either team dropping out of the top third of the conference standings.
The Tiers
(teams listed alphabetically in each tier)
Tier 1
Kansas Jayhawks
There’s another timeline where COVID doesn’t happen and the Jayhawks are coming into this season having won 2 of the last 3 national titles, the 2020 Kansas squad was the best team in the country by a pretty fair margin and would have been the favorites to cut down the nets. Bill Self has made the Elite Eight or better in 4 of the last 6 NCAA Tournaments, and this is while his recruiting was “down” because of the NCAA sanctions looming. They’re still theoretically looming - I have serious doubts Kansas will actually get hammered, especially with the love tap Memphis just got - but his recruiting is back at elite levels and he’s got his roster back to the point where he can pick & choose among the transfer portal. Case in point, he brought Kevin McCullar over from Texas Tech to add to a roster with Dajuan Harris & Jalen Wilson. Zach Clemence & KJ Adams will attempt to fill a David McCormack-sized hole in the interior, though with Clemence and incoming freshman Gradey Dick there’s a good chance Kansas is going to experiment with more 5-out looks than we’ve seen in awhile. Pay close attention to Dick (heh), the hype around his shooting ability as a 6’8” guard is higher than I’ve heard for a freshman in awhile. There’s a real chance we see Clemence, Dick, Wilson, and Harris go to town from deep repeatedly this season. The defense is the question mark with this team, but if there’s a coach who will figure out how to make it work, it’s Self. He’s only had one season at Kansas where his team wasn’t in the top-25 in adjusted defensive efficiency…and that team won 31 games on the way to a Final Four berth. Must be nice.
Best case conference finish: 1st
Worst case conference finish: 2nd
zBaylor Bears
The backcourt is going to be nuts and also possibly one of their limitations. Perhaps I should explain. LJ Cryer, Adam Flagler, and dude-you-will-definitely-want-to-watch Keyonte George are all players any team in the country will take in a New York minute, and George is going to snatch some souls this year. (I would take George over Arterio Morris for several reasons, and some of them aren’t even gun-related.) Langston Love is going to be a reserve, which is a ridiculous amount of talent & depth for any team to have. The issue with their backcourt is that none of these guys are ‘natural’ point guards and while I think - excuse me while I fight back the vomit - Baylor will do really well, it might be just enough to cause them problems against the best teams. To put it another way: it’s something that could keep them from getting to the Final Four or winning the conference, but that’s about the extent of it. I also have mild concerns about them running Flo Thamba out there instead of Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua as Thamba isn’t switchable across as many positions as Everyday Jon, but they’re still talented enough across the board - Jalen Bridges is basically an all-Big 12 forward who gets to be the 3rd or 4th option in an offensive attack that was a top-ten offensive unit last season - that they’re going to score on pretty much everyone save for maybe Kansas (and still probably Kansas) & they’re still going to shut down pretty much everyone save for maybe Kansas (and still possibly Kansas). I’m giving the Jayhawks the edge, but not by much.
Best case conference finish: 1st
Worst case conference finish: 3rd
Tier 2
TCU Horned Frogs
I don’t think it’s very controversial to say this could be the best TCU team in modern history, or perhaps ever. The only real contenders are a couple squads from the 1950s and last year’s team, so this is somewhat unintentionally a backhanded compliment. Jamie Dixon returns most of the squad who were a couple of sketchy late-game calls away from knocking off a 1-seed (Arizona) and going to the Sweet 16; their first-round win was their first in the NCAA Tournament since 1987, when Jamie Dixon was playing on the team. Their offseason losses were only role players; when Mike Miles & Damion Baugh announced their return to campus the ceiling for this squad rose to the highest level it has maybe ever been. It’s defense which Jamie Dixon has been displaying to get his squad to this level; they ended the season ranked 15th in adjusted defensive efficiency, and adding Rondel Walker should only boost that side of the team. Their two questions are who will step up to provide offense from the perimeter & Damion Baugh’s eligibility, but with the way Eddie Lampkin and the rest of the team hits the offensive glass the shooting may not be as glaring a problem as it would be on other squads. If it were up to me, TCU would start the season ranked at or near the top-10 in the country. I don’t know that I buy them winning the Big 12, but I expect them to be in the hunt for longer than anyone other than Kansas or Baylor if Baugh is reinstated before conference play. (Baugh is currently appealing a NCAA suspension for signing with a non-certified agent during the draft process.) Do not sleep on TCU, Jamie Dixon made the NCAA Tournament 11 times in 13 years at Pitt & advanced to the second weekend three times. This could be the start of an extended run of TCU being a problem for the rest of the Big 12.
Best case conference finish: 2nd
Worst case conference finish: 5th
Tier 3
As per usual, this tier is a backyard brawl of teams with some sort of flaw or flaws that could prevent them from contending for a conference title. You could put these teams in nearly any order and I wouldn’t argue much, and just about all of them have the potential for jumping into the next tier if they solve their flaw(s).
Iowa State Cyclones
The Cyclones lost Tyrese Hunter and Iziah Brockington to the transfer portal which would have been a real blow to most programs, but to their credit they came back and snagged the likes of Jaren Holmes, Jeremiah Williams (welp, so much for that), Hason Ward, and the one who most caught my eye, Osun Osunniyi. (Osunniyi is an ideal big for a no-middle defense and a player I wish Texas had pushed for harder than they did; if he’s on Texas then my view of the Longhorns’ season prospects is markedly higher.) The Cyclones are going to be a defensive stalwart in this conference, possibly even better than last year’s squad which was 5th in AdjD. The question is going to be who can get them buckets; Hunter was their only reliable creator and his perimeter game was more cold than hot, so it’s going to be up to a guy like Gabe Kalscheur to take the next step and become a reliable offensive force. If he can do that throughout conference play, then teammates like Caleb Grill & Aljaz Kunc can start to get open looks from three and maybe the Cyclones don’t have to win every game 44-40 this year. That’s a big if though, and I’m going to need to see it before I count on it happening.
Best case conference finish: 4th
Worst case conference finish: 8th
Oklahoma Sooners
I am a fan of Porter Moser’s approach to defense, in some ways he’s the opposite of Chris Beard in that his defensive strategy can change from game to game & season to season. That means he has to have the right guys on his squad to really maximize what he’s doing, and while I think he’s starting to build his program in his image I still have a nagging doubt that maybe he’s falling prey to the same thing that’s happened to myriad mid-major coaches who jumped into the Big 12: when he gets here, he’s not fully adjusted to getting the caliber player it takes to contend in a conference as tough as this one. That’s not a knock on any single player he’s picked up - I think getting a guy like Grant Sherfield is a good sign he’s adjusting - and I think some of his incoming recruits like Otegah Oweh & Milos Uzan could turn into good Big 12/SEC players, it’s just something I need to see him do consistently better at before I start slotting the Sooners higher in conference predictions. Also, for as flexible as his teams are defensively, his offense last year was very much…not. Some of it was due to the talent deficit on hand not being up to what the Big 12 requires, but that goes back to the first point. I’m not out on Moser as a Big 12/SEC-level head coach - I think he gets there eventually - there’s just a learning curve when you move up into a conference like this. As for this team, a team which relies this heavily on Tanner Groves showing out every night has a ceiling and unless one or more of the freshmen really shine, I don’t see this team doing better than middle of the pack.
Best case conference finish: 5th
Worst case conference finish: 9th
Texas Longhorns
Texas finished 4th in the Big 12 last year, a respectable result that was well short of the inflated preseason expectations. They come into this season with many of the same questions as they had at the end of last season, which I’ve gone into in the previous piece so I won’t belabor it here. It’s possible Texas contends for a conference title, but I look at it like someone hitting a 5-game parlay; it’s possible, but several things all have to go right.
Bishop & Disu have to be elite rim protectors and
Dylan Disu has to play at an all-conference level and
At least 2 of these 3 players have to hit 36%+ from three: (Hunter, Rice, Carr) and
Dillon Mitchell has to look more like a developed lottery pick than a developmental lottery pick and
Chris Beard has to modify the offense & defense to optimize the talent on hand
All of these things are possible - well, maybe not Mitchell, who despite me enjoying his athleticism appears to be the latest in a long line of super-athletic, raw lottery pick Longhorns who will contribute more in the NBA at age 23 than in college at age 18 - but getting all of them in the same season is tougher. Even if only one or two of these things happen, Texas will still be a good team that makes March Madness. The difference between all of them happening and none of them is the difference between a 3-seed and a 10-seed in March. Even if Beard can’t get the offense humming and the defense is only at ‘normal’ Beard levels, Texas shouldn’t be in much danger of missing the tournament; it will probably look a lot like last year, maybe a bit worse.
Best case conference finish: 4th
Worst case conference finish: 7th
Texas Tech Red Raiders
Mark Adams had about the best first year possible; he was in the discussion for the conference title until the last couple of weeks, he made the Sweet 16 and took Duke to the wire, and for Tech’s jilted fans he beat Texas twice. His ability to take a number of new pieces and assimilate them into a coherent group capable of beating anyone - he very nearly accomplished the rare feat of beating both Kansas & Baylor on the road - was remarkable. His task this offseason is probably tougher though; he lost Bryson Williams to the pros, Terrence Shannon to Illinois, and Kevin McCullar to Kansas. Any one of those would be difficult to replace, but all three? That’s going to take some doing. Adams brought in De’Vion Harmon (previously of Oklahoma & Oregon), D’Maurian Williams, and D’Fardaws..sorry, was turning into muscle memory, Fardaws Aimaq. Aimaq was a Texas target & eventually chose Tech over Texas and a litany of other pursuers; much will be made of him in previews, but privately the word I’m hearing is a bit more mixed. He will not be confused with Bryson Williams as Aimaq is more of a back-to-the-basket big with limited range - plus he recently broke a bone in his foot and it’s hard to really project how good he will be & when, they’re saying he’ll be ready by conference play but I have visions of Cam Ridley sitting on a bench in my head - and that alone changes the math for Tech. Williams was awesome for Tech and the opinions of how Aimaq will be at the Big 12 level are decidedly more ambivalent. The Red Raiders are going to have similar three-point shooting questions as Texas, though De’Vion Harmon is a better three-point shooter than anyone on Texas so it’s possible the Red Raiders will have marginally fewer questions than the Longhorns. Also, there’s a guy in Lubbock who was highly recruited by Beard in Austin by the name of Jaylon Tyson, you might remember him as the entire 2021 Texas freshman class. If he starts having the impact at Tech that they hoped he would have at Texas, that’s going to sting just a smidge.
Any way, long story short I think Tech will be good, though I don’t think there will be a well-defined gap between Tech and Texas like there was last year. Their talent levels are similar but differently allocated, and whichever coach synthesizes their roster better is probably going to end up on higher in the conference standings.
Best case conference finish: 4th
Worst case conference finish: 7th
Tier 4
Kansas State Wildcats
Kansas State is the biggest wildcard in the conference for a couple of reasons. First, they have a new head coach in Jerome Tang, who left Baylor after 48 seasons as Scott Drew’s assistant and lead recruiter to take on his first head coaching gig since he coached the Cleveland Cavaliers. touches ear I’m being told it was the Cleveland Indians of Cleveland, Texas. Second, a large portion of their season hopes are resting on the health of Keyontae Johnson, whose name might ring a bell to most of you because you faintly recall him collapsing on the court for Florida in December, 2020. He was diagnosed with a heart issue and has spent the better part of two years trying to get back on the court; he has been medically cleared to play and for the sake of everyone involved I hope that was done because he is fully recovered - rather than, as a hypothetical, because KSU was willing to sign off where others might not have - but that is a big gamble on a number of levels. Johnson was the preseason SEC player of the year before his on-court collapse, and if he can be that guy then Kansas State will be significantly more dangerous to play. If he’s not, well, the team is almost entirely made up of new players and I don’t need to tell Texas fans what it’s like to watch a full squad try to get synced up in real time. Maybe Markquis Nowell and Desi Sills shine along with Johnson and the Wildcats make a run to the middle of the pack, but that’s TBD so KSU is sitting in 10th in my prediction because I’m taking the easy way out rather than put Huggy Bear in the last spot. Apparently I’m not alone, because the Big 12 coaches voted KSU 10th as well.
Talent is incoming to the Wildcats starting next year, Tang has already started his Baylor rainmaking in Manhattan in earnest. So if teams are going to rack up wins on the Wildcats there’s no time like the present.
Best case conference finish: 5th
Worst case conference finish: 10th
Oklahoma State Cowboys
I’ve waffled back and forth on OSU maybe more than any other team in the conference. They lost the better Boone brother and Mike Boynton’s human security blanket Isaac Likekele, their perimeter shooting is going to depend on volume shooters such as Bryce Thompson & Avery Anderson progressing, and most of their incoming help - Caleb Asberry & Russell Harrison, to be specific - is taking a significant step up from the JUCO ranks. That said, they’re probably going to be at or near the top of most conference defensive metrics; Boynton usually puts together an aggressive defense that generates turnovers, and Moussa Cisse is going to block more shots than Ken Paxton’s office blocks Twitter accounts. Their ability to crash the offensive glass should still be above-average for the conference and that means even if the guards can’t hit the broad side of a barn they’ll still get some points on putbacks. They’ll score in the paint well and if players like former Chris Beard Texas Tech recruit Tyreek Smith start to shine then they could be the surprise of the conference. Still, under Boynton they’ve never finished better than 5th in the conference and Cade Cunningham isn’t walking through that door.
Best case conference finish: 6th
Worst case conference finish: 10th
West Virginia Mountaineers
I think it says a lot about the Big 12 that every team in the last tier of this ranking could be mentioned as a March Madness bubble team well into February. Somebody in this conference is going to be 5-13 in conference play and still be a top-60 KenPom team; the Mountaineers were 4-14 in the Big 12 and still #66 in KenPom! This conference is a a bag of sentient hammers sent from the future to obliterate testicles as a last-ditch attempt to prevent overpopulation. There’s an alternate reality where the Mountaineers are currently rolling out a starting lineup of Deuce McBride, Courtney Ramey, Sean McNeil, Jalen Bridges, and Oscar Tshiebwe with Tre’ Mitchell coming in off the bench and basically penciled in from the jump for a 2-seed, and that alternate reality seems like a lot of fun. As it stands they only have…Tre’ Mitchell. Emmitt Matthews is back as the rarest of all creations, a player who transferred away from a program then transferred back. Other than those two, Huggins is doing his usual plumbing of the JUCO ranks and signing 14 walk-ons who will each play 5-6 minutes per night, one of whom will inevitably turn out to be whatever Chris Beard thought Tristen Licon would be. I feel like they’ll be in the bottom half of the conference, but as with every season we’ll have to wait and see how Huggy Bear deploys this team.
As an aside, I’m going to pay attention to how long Tre’ Mitchell sticks around in Morgantown; Bob Huggins is a tough love coach - he and Rick Barnes are similar in this way - and Huggins isn’t afraid to bench a talented player if they aren’t meshing well (see also: Tshiebwe, Oscar) so it will be a data point on Chris Beard’s coaching style if Mitchell sticks it out for a season or more at West Virginia.
Best case conference finish: 5th
Worst case conference finish: 10th
My Dumb Conference Prediction
As I said before, you can put 4-7 in a bag, shake it around, and draw them out like bingo numbers & whatever order you have seems plausible to me. (I have a harder time seeing OU finishing 4th than the others, but it’s not impossible.) I’ve probably flipped Iowa State, Texas, and Texas Tech in my head a half-dozen times while writing this, but it feels like that’s the land of 10-8 to 8-10 conference records this season. The difference between the 4-7 group is small enough that Fardaws Aimaq breaking a bone in his foot had me move Tech from 4th to 6th. I spent most of the summer feeling like somebody would jump Texas for 4th, but between the Aimaq injury and Iowa State losing Jeremiah Williams it’s almost as if Texas will end up in 4th by default if they can avoid the same sort of injury issues. It’s also possible that OSU and/or KSU rise up and enter that group, I’m only putting KSU 10th because they have a lot of as-yet unanswered questions rather than because I think they’re genuinely the worst team in the Big 12. So uhh good luck, gamblers.
Texas ending up in 4th place by default was also the theme of last season
Fardaws Aimaq shot 43% from 3 last year, how is his range limited again?