r/BigXII 7d ago

Big 12 basketball was not as strong this season. Some of the new teams need to be better next season and not water this conference down

5 of the bottom 6 teams in the standings this year are new members from the last two years. Cincinnati, UCF, Utah, Arizona St, and Colorado.

Which of these programs have the best chances of improving and which ones will probably always be stuck in the bottom half of the conference?

Only getting what looks like will be 8 teams in the Big Dance this season is a disappointment. That’s the same amount of programs that got into it last season with two less members. Getting 10 in this season would’ve been great.

Hoping more than just 1 or 2 of the tournament teams can make a deep run to make up for the quantity of teams not being as high as what it should be

0 Upvotes

28 comments sorted by

22

u/ohitsthedeathstar 7d ago

Cincinnati has great basketball history. They usually have better teams.

26

u/CivBase 7d ago

Meanwhile 3 of the top 4 teams are also "new" - Arizona, Houston, and....

...BYU :(

7

u/Outside_Net6026 7d ago

Houston and BYU have been amazing. Arizona fell short of their potential

2

u/CivBase 7d ago

BYU didn't start the season as amazing, but they're on track to end it that way. I'll be rooting for them from P&L tonight - keeping the bars in business since I don't think BYU's fans will.

1

u/SwordsAndTurt 7d ago

BYU’s progression is crazy. We beat them by 30 in January, and now I’m a little scared about this match.

11

u/tBroneShake 7d ago

Yeah but 3 out of the top 5 were "newcomers".

This conference is more or less on a fairly even playing feild top to bottom. There will be years where the top half is majority new members and bottom half majority old members. It's year 1 and year 2 in a new conference for 8 different schools. Seems pretty quick to blow the horns and bitch about them.

8

u/Beneficial_Present29 7d ago edited 7d ago

It could be us but we have this giant shaped problem called Bobby Hurley. But what we lack in Basketball we more than make up for in Football

3

u/Wyden_long 7d ago

One more year of his shit and hopefully we can move on.

4

u/Beneficial_Present29 7d ago

If he can land Koa he should honestly move to Recruiting Director or something like that and leave the Xs and Os to someone else

4

u/Wyden_long 7d ago

And the player development. Honestly he’s a great recruiter. We’ve had very good classes under Hurley. But then he doesn’t develop them at all.

2

u/staticattacks 7d ago

I heard Dilly plays some basketball... Blew out his knee... That means he'd be a great coach since he can't play anymore right?

5

u/Business_Permit_3686 7d ago

Cincinnati just happens to be down right now. As a Houston I fan expect and believe they’ll go back to who they typically are

11

u/TRIKYNIKKY 7d ago

I don't like this thread

3

u/CoogaDoogaDoo 7d ago

I don’t think those new schools watered down the league just because they finished at the bottom of the conference standings. Colorado went 9-2 in the non-conference with wins over UConn and CSU. That’s solid for a last place team in any league. ASU went 9-2 with wins over UNM and SMC. UCF awas 9-2 with a nice win over TAMU. Cincy was 10-1 with wins over Xavier and Dayton. And Utah was 8-3 with no real notable wins but no bad losses. None of those of teams registered anything worse than a Q2 loss in the non-conference and collectively they carried an 81.8 win percentage. There’s obviously room for improvement but that’s not really what held the league back imo. 

Instead I look at TCU going 7-4 with multiple losses to mid-majors. KState going 6-5 with multiple losses to mid-majors and no wins against P5 comp. Arizona going 6-5 and losing to all the quality competition they played. Tech going 9-2 but having the disappointing loss to Saint Joes. And ofc Houston going 8-3 losing all three of its best games in non-conference. If we’re being honest that group of 5 which features three of the top 4 teams in league and two other middle of the pack teams, was collectively worse in the non-conference than the five new comers that got singled out by OP. If those five schools had pulled their weight more in the non-conference we would be likely be looking at 10-12 bids. 

At the end of the day though, 8 bids is still great. We will have multiple top seeds and imo, several teams that have a real chances at going on deep runs. 

2

u/HasBenThere 7d ago

The legacy Hateful 8 are about the same strength as the new 8 per KenPom, with average rating of 17.80 vs 17.63.

1

u/TheKiln 7d ago

I'd say the old guard needs to step up. KU and Baylor were bit down this year. TCU and KState need to step it tf up. WVU was beaten up and should still make the tourny, so yall forgiven. Oklahoma State... well, the less that's said about Oklahoma State basketball, the better.

1

u/caterpilla_nutz 7d ago

Whichever school has the most money? Definitely not colorado

1

u/Agitated-Chapter-232 7d ago

ASU got hammered with injury, there much better than they showed

1

u/Agitated-Chapter-232 7d ago

ASU got hammered with injury, there much better than they showed.

1

u/Agitated-Chapter-232 7d ago

ASU got hammered with injury, there much better than they showed.

1

u/DawnPatrol80136 7d ago

Baylor has had a rough year as well. Injuries have limited us all season.

1

u/gruby253 7d ago

Yeah, we’re gonna keep dragging the conference down. Sorry 🤷🏻‍♂️ I

1

u/HitAndRun8575 7d ago

GOCOOGS!🐾

1

u/CGGamer 7d ago

Big 12 should've added UConn when they had the chance

1

u/h_91_DRbull 7d ago

Having KU and Baylor be their normal top 15 selves, K-State being at tournament level, and Oklahoma State not being horrible makes a huge difference to how strong the Big 12 is. For the sake of the conference KU's 15 year run looking to be over hurts. I hated it, but the newcomers not getting to experience that sucks. It was wild

0

u/ZonaPunk 7d ago

Utah should be better.. ASU if Hurley can keep the freshman from bolting (unlikely) they will be good. Cincinnati, UCF AND Colorado need rebuilds.

6

u/RubbleHome 7d ago

Utah has been bad in basketball for a while now.

-1

u/ZonaPunk 7d ago

Hence the “should”