By Aidan Joly
It’s no secret that the Big 12 is the best conference in college basketball this season. It feels like any night, any team can beat any other team in that conference and every single game is a war between two heavyweights.
So, just how many teams can this league send to the NCAA tournament come March?
We’ll dive into this first by examining the teams in the Big 12, and then how the 36 at-large bids will be dispersed across all of the other leagues.
In Tuesday morning’s KenPom rankings, all 10 teams in the Big 12 rank in the top 41 teams, with Texas Tech being the lowest team in that No. 41 spot. Kansas is the highest at No. 5, followed by Texas at No. 8, a much-improved West Virginia sits at No. 23. Baylor, Kansas State, Iowa State and Oklahoma State make up Nos. 26-29 in that order, then Oklahoma is 31st and TCU is 32nd. So if you’re keeping score at home, 90% of the league is within the top 32 in KenPom, which in today’s college basketball is simply unheard of.
Putting it this way: on Wednesday night, Baylor and West Virginia will face each other in Morgantown. No. 23 against No. 26 in KenPom. The loser of that game will drop to 0-4 in conference play. But does it matter? Both of these teams are still very good and should both easily make the tournament, despite a poor start in conference play.
On the other end of this spectrum you have Kansas State, which is an interesting case study. The Wildcats went 14-17, 6-12 in Big 12 play last year and coach Bruce Weber resigned at seasons’ end. Bring in Jerome Tang, who has led Kansas State to a 14-1 record thus far and a 3-0 start in conference play, all three of them wins against then-ranked teams, including scoring 116(!) points on the road(!) against Texas on January 3. It followed that up by dropping 97 on Baylor, again on the road, four days later. It was rewarded in this week’s AP Poll by moving all the way up to 11th in the country after being previously unranked. And there’s the power of the Big 12 this year.
As part of the KSU tidbit, shoutout to Keyontae Johnson. It’s a miracle he’s playing again and he’s become a star.
You don’t even have to mention the likes of Kansas, Iowa State, TCU and Texas, who are all already tournament locks. You can throw Oklahoma in the “should be in” category as well.
As for the entire conference, it has a conference rating of +18.27 on KenPom, meaning only 21 teams in the country would be projected to finish over .500 in this league. Texas Tech, the team lowest in KenPom as previously stated, has an adjusted efficiency margin (the KenPom analytic most commonly used to evaluate teams) of +15.24, a number that would project the Red Raiders to win 22 of Division I’s 32 conferences.
Now, an examination of the other leagues and how many teams each of those should and can send to March. The Big Ten is strong and should send eight or nine teams. Of course, and with all of these leagues, one of them will get the automatic bid. The numbers here include that bid. I’d be willing to mark the SEC at seven. The ACC is once again down and probably won’t send more than six. Put the Big East down for at least four, maybe five. The Mountain West is good enough for three, possibly four bids. But probably three. PAC-12 is only two or three, believe it or not. Gonzaga and St. Mary’s both get bids from the WCC. Potentially give the American Athletic an extra bid.
With all of those, I have a low end of 26 at large-bids taken up and a high end of 30. For our purposes, I’ll meet in the middle and say 28. So, that would leave eight at-large bids available for the Big 12, on top of the automatic bid, which gives us nine teams making it out of the 10, leaving an odd one out, which right now would likely be Texas Tech. Part of this is worth noting that Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are both squarely on the bubble, so the performance of those two teams over the next two months matters. However, there is obviously no shortage of chances for quality wins.
Conferences have only sent nine or more teams to the tournament four times: 2018 ACC (9), 2017 ACC (9), 2012 Big East (9) and the 2011 Big East, which sent a record-breaking 11 teams to the tournament out of 16 in the league at the time, which is a number record. As for percentages, the Big 12 has sent seven teams to the tournament several times, most recently in 2021, for a percentage record of 70%. The Big 12 would have to send eight teams to the tournament this year to break that record, which seems very possible with seven already solidly in.
Kansas, Texas, West Virginia, Baylor, Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and TCU, as of now, welcome to history.
AJ Hoops 