AMES, Iowa – How do you judge a conference to be The Best?
Do you pick the conference that has the single best team in the land, even though the rest of the league doesn’t really measure up? If that’s your metric, then the SEC is the nation’s best conference because it has Kentucky, the nation’s best team.
But no sane person would make that argument this season. Certainly not a sane person who pays attention to the much-maligned-but-still-relevant RPI metric, which has Kentucky’s conference — can we officially change its name to that during basketball season? — ranked fifth in league RPI. Even though the non-Kentucky parts of the SEC are better than people give them credit for — South Carolina is gonna be an NCAA tournament team, y’all, Arkansas will run hog-wild over teams at home, Georgia and LSU might be on the bubble, and even though Florida is struggling, it still has Billy Donovan — the league is still Kentucky and everyone else. And that’s not much of an argument for best conference.
Maybe you define “best conference” as the league that has the most teams that could be in the Final Four. If that’s your metric, go with the ACC. Duke — college basketball’s most efficient offense — is the only team in Kentucky’s stratosphere. Virginia is still unbeaten and looking even better than last year’s team that won the ACC. Louisville was one solid outside shooter away from beating Kentucky. The Cardinals have the look of a prototypical Rick Pitino team. And UNC, though not a typically explosive Tar Heels team, is still the fourth ACC squad in the top 10 of KenPom.com’s rankings. A projected Final Four could realistically have Kentucky and three ACC teams.
If that’s your metric for judging conference greatness, fine.
But I’m telling you: Don’t ignore what’s beneath that upper crust. In the ACC, the lower you get, the uglier it is. Yes, the ACC has five teams in KenPom’s top 14 (Notre Dame being the fifth). It also has five teams outside KenPom’s top 100.
My favorite metric? Conference strength, top to bottom. The Big East is the nation’s most surprising conference and could send as many as seven teams to the tournament (though six seems more realistic). But the conference that’s an absolute gauntlet this year from top to (almost) bottom, and the one that I believe is the obvious choice for top conference in the land, is the Big 12.
Seven teams ought to emerge, beaten and bloodied, from Big 12 competition this season and play in the NCAA tournament. (Sorry, TCU: that strength of schedule that currently ranks 351st among the 351 teams in Division I basketball means your undefeated non-conference season won’t make you the eighth.)
I went to snowy Ames, Iowa, the other night to see my preseason dark-horse Final Four pick, Iowa State, play a team in Oklahoma State that has outperformed the low expectations it had leading into the season. On paper, this game figured to be an Iowa State blowout: One of the best offenses in the country, coming off a tough loss to South Carolina, in its Big 12 opener at one of the most difficult home environments in college basketball.
Instead, it was an absolute war — and that’s something I expect to see every night in the Big 12 for the next two months. The only things that kept a scrappy, defensive-minded Oklahoma State team from pulling off the upset were two Iowa State blocks of Oklahoma State three-pointers in the final three seconds.
Afterward, I asked Oklahoma State head coach Travis Ford how difficult it is when your team is right there for a big road win but still loses. Ford’s answer echoed what I expect to hear from a lot of Big 12 coaches throughout this season.
“I hope our team takes away from this that we played a very good team, a great team, one of the best offensive teams in the country, in one of the toughest places to play in the country, and battled them to the end — but that’s not good enough,” Ford said. “Our team obviously didn’t have the accolades that the Iowa State team had before the season. (This game) did let our guys know we can play a little bit. But the difference between winning and losing: We can play, we can compete, but you still gotta make some plays down the stretch.”
A couple plays here, a couple plays there: That’ll likely be what determines the champion of a deep-as-Shakespeare Big 12 where Kansas’ extraordinary 10-year reign is very much up in the air.
Consider the somewhat absurd depth the Big 12 has this season. Six teams are ranked in the AP top 25; in late December, seven teams were ranked for the first time in conference history. KenPom’s less reactionary, more math-based ranking system has seven Big 12 teams in its top 23. The league’s winning percentage in non-conference play (.825) is the best by any league since the 2004-05 season. That wasn’t just fattening up on easy competition, either; the Big 12 won 61 percent of its non-conference games against the four other BCS conferences.
So who is going to win this, the best league in the country? Honestly, I have no idea. You have to pick a young, talented Kansas team as the favorite. The road to the Big 12 title will go through Lawrence until someone unseats the 10-time champ. Even with two blowout losses (to Kentucky and to, inexplicably, Temple), you have to assume that in typical Bill Self fashion, these guys will keep getting better through March – specifically Kelly Oubre, who played awful early but is finally living up to some of his sky-high potential.
After that, I would have said Texas — the tallest and most athletic team in the Big 12 — would be the biggest challenger to Kansas, especially now that starting point guard Isaiah Taylor has returned from injury. But then Oklahoma and its dominant defense came into Austin and stomped Texas by 21 this week. Oklahoma doesn’t have great depth, but its starting five is the best in the Big 12 and could bring a league title to Norman. High-octane Iowa State has more weapons and a greater diversity of them than any team in the Big 12; when things are clicking for Fred Hoiberg’s team, they’re as good on offense as anyone in the country. No. 14 West Virginia is a scrappy, Bob Huggins-y bunch, with the nation’s best turnover percentage on defense; led by freshman guard Jevon Carter, the Mountaineers force opponents into turnovers on nearly a third of their possessions. And although I don’t think they’ll win the league, don’t sleep on Baylor, who’ll win some games on the back of their offensive rebounding alone. Or Oklahoma State, who have two offensive stars in Le’Bryan Nash and Phil Forte.
Call me crazy, but that’s five teams that could win the Big 12, plus two more – Baylor and Oklahoma State – that ought to be NCAA tournament shoo-ins.
So if you want to raise the flag of the ACC, where the top of the conference is so stacked but the bottom is so bad, go ahead. But you’ll be wrong. Don’t fly over Big 12 flyover country this season — because that’s where the nation’s deepest and best basketball conference resides.
Email Reid Forgrave at reidforgrave@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter @reidforgrave.
