The college basketball season is now in full swing and the Big 12 conference stands as one of the most intriguing thus far with how the landscape in shaping up.
Prior to the season, not many could have realistically said they expected Kansas, Iowa State and Oklahoma to all be hovering in the bottom half of the conference, but even more surprising is that Oklahoma State, West Virginia and TCU are all slotted above Kansas in the conference standings.
As it stands now, the Big 12 standings are as follows:
No. 16 West Virginia: 7-0
TCU: 7-0
Oklahoma State: 6-0
No. 6 Texas: 6-0
Baylor: 6-1
No. 11 Kansas: 5-1
Texas Tech: 4-1
No. 20 Iowa State: 3-1
No. 22 Oklahoma: 4-2
Kansas State: 3-3
There’s surely no reason to start worrying about anybody in the bottom half of the conference, especially considering two of them are ranked in the top 15 and have only one loss, but there is reason to look at some of the unexpected successes of the conference to this point and start considering them as potential threats to the Big 12 powers down the road.
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With that said, the primary team to look out for would seem to be West Virginia, who has knocked off the defending national champion, Connecticut Huskies en route to their 7-0 start.
Deservedly so, the Mountaineers are now ranked in the top 20, which also comes as the biggest surprise after West Virginia lost two of it’s top three scorers from last season and had only Juwan Staten to rely upon. But this, of course, came before Devin Williams, Jonathan Holton and Jevon Carter all stepped up as double-digit scorers.
But most impressively about the Mountaineers is how they’ve been cruising past all but one of their opponents by at least 10 points, with a combined scoring margin advantage of 137 points in only seven games.
Additionally, just as with West Virginia, TCU entered the season with their hopes firmly upon the shoulders of Kyan Anderson, but some extremely well distributed efforts across the board have lifted the Horned Frogs to a 7-0 record thus far.
As for the biggest disappointment of the earlier stages of the season, Marcus Foster and Kansas State get those honors after slipping to .500 with a 3-3 record.
The Arizona loss was understandable as the Wildcats are one of the top teams in college basketball, but the losses to Long Beach State and Pittsburgh – which was a 23-point blowout – are ones that won’t bode well for a team that was expected to be right in the race with Texas, Kansas, Iowa State and Oklahoma.
Again, it’s far too early to start to take anything from these standings too seriously, but it is interesting that some of the usual conference bottom-feeders are making an early case for some recognition as cruising through the early portion of their schedules.
We’ll see how it shapes up as conference play inches nearer, but with some unexpected names in the driver’s seat in the conference standings, we should be in for another remarkable season in the Big 12.