Sorting through the conference
While the Big 12’s football programs may be a touch behind the Big 10 and the SEC, the basketball side of the conference is every bit the monster those conferences claim to be in football. The conference is led by Houston, Iowa State, and of course Kansas this season. Well, hopefully we can continue to say Kansas once the stink from the last two games washes off. After that top group, the conference features the 2021 National Champion Baylor. Arizona fans will be mad that they’re not included and who knows the Utah fans would say. That’s not even mentioning BYU that just landed the #1 recruit for next year’s class or Cincinnati that while down recently is currently sitting in the Coaches and AP top 25.
As we’ve seen the last few years, this conference is a meat grinder with no cupcakes to be found on the schedule. Using Torvik’s ratings, only the SEC comes close to the level of competition teams will see each night in conference play. The ACC features five teams and the Big 10 has two currently ranked 100+. Only the Big 12 and SEC have all conference teams in the top 100 from the 4 major conferences. It should be mentioned that the five lowest rated teams in the Big 12 are all below the bottom team in the SEC…might be concerning what happens with that conference if they’re going to comit to caring about basketball. Or you could also point out that since the cancellation of the 2020 tournament, only one SEC team has made the Final Four so until they show they can perform when it matters you’re safe being skeptical about teams from that conference.
Moving on, as the title says this is meant to be a wide overview of the Big 12 teams heading into the 2025 conference season. With the number of teams in these conferences, an in-depth preview for each program is too time intensive so I’m going to break them up into tiers according to their current Torvik rating. I think this can serve two purposes:
- It helps to recognize the relative strength of the teams by grouping them with teams of similar ratings.
- We can return to this post once the season is finished to see how the early season ratings held up. There’s likely to be a few misses high and low. Feel free to call out who you think is currently underrated or overrated in the comments.
Tier 1
Houston, Iowa State, Kansas
Houston (#1): Kelvin Sampson continues his run at Houston with another team that makes scoring hell for the opponents. Even though they’ve had three early season losses, both Torvik and Kenpom believe in them due to their offense and defense being top 15 in their adjusted ratings. Seeing what he’s done at Houston, Indiana fans have to hold really deep “what if” beliefs based on what he’s accomplished in his time at Houston.
Iowa State (#6): The Hawkeyes Cyclones are sitting at 7-1 with a big win over #5 Marquette and their only loss to #4 Auburn by 2 points. They made the Sweet 16 last season and finished with a 29-8 overall record and going 13-5 in conference play. Both Kenpom and Torvik’s ratings have their offense and defense in the top 10. They seem to have recovered from the Steve Prohm era that featured 3 seasons with an overall record below .500.
Kansas (#8): The Jayhawks are sitting at their lowest point in the ratings so far this season following losses at Creighton and Missourin over the last week and a half. We’d hoped the offensive stagnation that plagued the team in the 2024 season would be fixed with the addition of AJ Storr, Zeke Mayo, Rylan Griffen, and David Coit but those issues were still lurking recently. Prior to those losses, KU looked the part of the best team in the nation with wins over Duke, UNC, and Michigan State.
Tier 2
Texas Tech, Baylor, Cincinnati, Arizona
Texas Tech (#18): The Red Raiders are 7-2 with losses to St. Joseph’s and Texas A&M with their only noteworthy win being over Syracuse (who doesn’t appear to be very good again). Nonetheless, both rating systems have them in the top 25 even though KenPom has them 7 spots lower than Torvik. They feature an efficient offense and a solid but not great defense.
Baylor (#20): If I were using KenPom instead of Torvik to create the tiers, Baylor would have a strong case to be included in the top tier as Pomeroy has them at 13. The Bears have been interesting this year getting blown off the court by Gonzaga to start the year while also not being competitive in their loss to Tennessee. Their 3rd loss was to UConn by 4 points. Notable wins early in the season came against Arkansas and St. John’s.
Cincinnati (#22): If you had to guess where Cincinatti ranks all time in wins, would you guess 12th? I wouldn’t have guessed that high but it’s true. They’ve been to two consecutive NITs and went 7-11 in their first season in the Big 12 last year. Torvik and Kenpom are in agreement, top 40 offense and a top 20 defense. They’re sitting at 7-1 with a loss to Villanova and no real notable wins. If you’re looking for something to do on Saturday, they play their crosstown rival Xavier at 1 pm. That game’s always worth watching and we’ll be cheering for Xavier in honor this site’s founder.
Arizona (#24): The Wildcats are entering their first season in the Big 12 after going 15-5 in last year’s Pac 2/10/12. They made it to the Sweet 16 and lost to Clemson by 5. As far as coaching hires go, Arizona deserves some credit for hiring Tommy Lloyd after firing Sean Miller due to NCAA violations. Lloyd has barely missed a step since taking over and has kept the program relevant and winning.
Tier 3
BYU, West Virginia, Kansas State
BYU (#39): As mentioned above, BYU made a big splash this week in landing the top recruit of the 2025 class AJ Dybantsa. He can’t help them this year but could be something to watch out for in the future if they’re going to get deep in the NIL money game. They’re 7-2 with an overtime loss to Ole Miss and a 19 point loss to Providence. The rating systems like their offense and dislike their defense overall. They shoot a lot of 3s and make them at a decent clip to go with strong rebounding.
West Virginia (#45): West Virginia’s right behind BYU in the ratings and they’re the opposite of the Cougars, stronger defense and a middling offense. They play a deliberate pace and have kept opponents from making shots against them. Offensively, they also put up a lot of 3s ranking 15th in 3 pt rate.
Kansas State (#57): Another case where the rating systems are diverging on the tiers, Kenpom has the Cats at 70, which would drop them to tier 4 here. So far, the Wildcats don’t really do anything particularly well on offense or defense but they’re also not poor at anything either. Torvik has their offense and defense rated as 60th. Pomeroy’s system is less impressed with the offense, rating them as 88th overall. They also lost to Liberty.
Arizona State (#58): Similar performance as K-State so far according to the ratings of the Four Factors. Not great or bad on offense or defense overall, although they haven’t been able to get opponents to turn the ball over much. They only lost to Gonzaga by 8, so that’s something.
Tier 4
Utah, TCU, Oklahoma State, UCF, Colorado
Utah (#68): Better defense than offense to this point in the season. One plus for Utah is that they at least play at a fairly uptempo pace, so their games should at least be watchable. They did make it to the NIT semifinal last year.
TCU (#69): Bad offense. Good defense. They’ve forced opponents to turn it over and have made it tough hit 3s.
Oklahoma State (#73): They just don’t want to show up Gundy, so they’re living in the basement for awhile. 4-14 record in conference last year and 12-20 overall.
Central Florida University (#88): Below average offense and middling defense. Give them credit as they have played a tough non-con schedule. A win over Texas A&M to start the year and they’ve had losses to Wisconsin and LSU in overtime. Not looking looking forward to January 5th based on that game.
Colorado (#99): Another pretty decent size difference between Torvik and Pomeroy with the Buffaloes as KenPom has them at 77. They did get a win against UConn but they also went to double overtime against Northern Colorado and have uncompetitive losses to Michigan State and Iowa State.