CNHI: Big 12 parity could put league in elite class come Selection Sunday

[TopFrog]

Big 12 parity could put league in elite class come Selection Sunday

• By Sean Isabella | CNHI Sports

Heavyweight boxing matches last 12 rounds. An 18-round heavyweight bout, a line Oklahoma State coach Mike Boynton likes to drop here and there, doesn’t exist.

So, why use it? Well, it’s about the best hyperbole to describe the Big 12 basketball season to date — a knock-down, drag-out slugfest featuring all sorts of blows that have Big 12 coaches proudly crowing it as the strongest league in the country.

“There's still some guys standing, most of us,” the first-year coach OSU said during Monday’s Big 12 conference call. “Some of us have more bruises than the others.”

Heading into this week’s Big 12 tournament in Kansas City, the fight paints a clear picture, one that, despite Kansas winning its 14th consecutive regular season championship, is littered with parity and a months-long WWE Royal Rumble-type odyssey.

Read more at http://www.normantranscript.com/okl...cle_f2d84192-21a0-11e8-b25e-2fed26c0bc98.html

 

[Limp Lizard]

Four schools — Kansas, Texas Tech, West Virginia, TCU — are considered locks

Been 20 years since TCU has been a lock to the NCAA tourney. So good to hear.

 

[Portland Frog]

Lunardi projects Big 12 might get 8 teams in. BIG is projected to have 4 teams in. How many teams are in the BIG again? (Of course, the reality might differ greatly from projections come selection Sunday).

 

[Sebastian S]

Playing a round robin and each school plays 2x really helps the strength of schedule of the big 12 schools.

 

[Portland Frog]

Which is a better measure of conference "strength?" How many teams a conference gets invited to the tournament; or how far team(s) advance from any conference in the tournament?