Big 12 Conference Thread

Kind of weird league this year...any fans here?

Texas for sure has been the biggest disappointment, although I thought they were overrated from the outset. Too reliant on the jumpshot. Kansas and Missouri biggest surprises of course, this has been Bill Self's best coaching job. I thought they were screwed after that bad loss to UMass, but man have they pulled together.

Oklahoma is still the class of the conference and the team to beat. In my mind they are the best team in the country.

Big 12 is down this year compared to previous years. Texas has fell off majorly. Baylor has faded down the stretch as well. Kansas is real young this year but they are getting better as the weeks progress. They lost a few days ago at Mizzou. That was a bad L because they were up 11 on two occasions and lost the lead due to a lot of bad decision towards the end. Allowed mizzou to steal a victory with a last second shot. I thought Collins would've kept them poised at the end but he had a bad game. They've done that a few times this year. Lost big leads in the 2nd half to Arizona and Syracuse and now Mizzou. Kansas State has been rolling lately and if they beat KU 2/14 then they'll be in a strong position for a tournament berth if they finish in the top 4 in league play. Oklahama is hands down the best team in the league with Blake Griffin ballin' out of his mind. I don't see anybody other than OU making a deep run in the NCAA's. Texas can if they get their act together. They look like they just show up and expect people to roll over because their Texas. I don't know what's going on with Abrams. He's up and down. Kansas can if they get in the right bracket and play to their potential. I can see a sweet 16 for them. But unless Little becomes a consistent 3rd option and they stop turning the ball over 20+ times. They won't make much noise. If Collins and Aldrich come back. Then you're talking title talk again but that's a big if.

Orange wrote:Oklahoma is still the class of the conference and the team to beat. In my mind they are the best team in the country.

Coming from a Texas fan it is hard to admit it, but what you said is very true. They are playing some great basketball right now, but there is still a few close wins that are making people think twice about giving them the number one ranking. Without a doubt though they are clearly the best basketball team in the Big 12. No one else is even close to their level right now.

Also Jay Hawk, it is a shame that Texas has played so poorly this year. Like Conor said I agree that they were ranked to high coming into this year, but I do believe they are better than a lot of the teams that are in the top 25 right now. The games that Texas have lost, excluding Oklahoma, were games that they could have won. They had ten point leads in the second half against Notre Dame, Michigan St, Arkansas, and Nebraska, but let them come back. When we get a good lead on a team we cannot establish a consistent offense and we just let teams come right back because we settle for jump shots and contested threes from Abrahms. Well, pretty much any shot from Abrahms is going to be contested, but still he needs to settle down a bit. Shot selection is really the only problem I have with this years team. Coming into this year I actually thought we would be better, but who knew Atchley would be playing this bad. I cannot remember the exact stat, but the Longhorns are like 22-0, or something close to that number, when Atchley scores over ten points. We definitely need to get him firing from all cylinders because we could actually miss out on the tournament this year. Although if we miss out this year we will at least have the best recruiting class in the country. We're ranked second only behind North Carolina according to ESPN, but I believe we have a better class. If you add J'Covan Brown (top 50) from this years class who could not play because of academics and Jai Lucas (top 25) who transferred from Florida are class for next year is very hard to beat. Total we will have 6 recruits (2 in the top ten overall) in ESPN's top 100 coming to Austin.

yeah I think Texas is underachieving for their talent level and I wouldn't be real happy if I was a top seed that had to play them as a 9-10 seed in the second round because they have good talent. OU has played a lot of close games against some mediocre teams so I don't know too much about them, they are certainly good but I don't know if they are elite yet, I guess we will find some of this out against KU and Mizzou, though neither of those teams are elite so it is hard to compare but it is the best the Big12 has to offer this year.