It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how many teams you place in the NCAA Tournament.
In a men’s college basketball world driven by money and prestige, the Big 12 Conference wages a never-ending battle with the other major conferences for the number of slots in the 65-team postseason tourney.
For four years — 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003 — the Big 12 was riding high, with half of its teams earning NCAA berths. Then the number slipped to four last year, and 2005 isn’t looming as a return to those halcyon days.
With a little more than a month to go until Selection Sunday on March 13, the Big 12 only has four teams virtually certain to obtain NCAA bids — Kansas University, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Texas Tech.
Note the absence of Texas.
Two weeks ago, the Longhorns would have been a lock for that list, but then they stepped into a den of rattlesnakes. Coach Rick Barnes lost starter P.J. Tucker because of grades and freshman standout LaMarcus Aldridge to injury. And in Saturday’s stunning home loss to Iowa State, gimpy veterans Kenton Paulino and Sydmill Harris saw only limited action and weren’t expected to play against Colorado tonight.
Only once in the eight years the Big 12 has existed have the Longhorns failed to make the NCAA Tournament, but they could be watching the tourney on television if their injury woes continue.
Still, the ‘Horns’ remaining regular-season schedule isn’t particularly rugged, and, with 15 wins already in the bank, they should post a high-enough RPI to slip into the NCAA field. But with a 4-4 league record, UT no longer is a factor for the league championship and the automatic No. 1 seed in the Big 12 tournament.
Kansas remains the team to beat at the halfway point of the conference race. The Jayhawks, unbeaten in eight games, clearly have benefited from being in the weak northern division, but they’re not likely to run the table because they still haven’t played any of the other three contenders, and two of those games (Oklahoma and Texas Tech) will be on the road.
“We have put ourselves in good spot,” KU coach Bill Self said Monday, “but we know that the second half of our conference schedule is a lot tougher. The places we have to go on the road are quite a bit tougher than the places we have been.”
Instead of using the words “quite a bit,” Self could have said “a whole lot” and not been guilty of coach-speak.
KU’s other road games are against a pair of non-contenders, but Kansas State (Wednesday) and Missouri (March 6) still are the most aggravating anti-KU places the Jayhawks enter every year.
Kansas State hasn’t defeated KU in Manhattan since Peter Minuet bought the other Apple for $24 worth of trinkets, but streaks don’t last forever (with the possible exception of Nebraska’s dominance of KU in football). At the same time, the Jayhawks have escaped Columbia, Mo., by fingernails the last three years, and who knows how the Tigers will play that Sunday afternoon? MU coach Quin Snyder sure as heck has no idea.
Missouri’s basketball situation is a mess. Athletic director Mike Alden issued a vote of confidence for the embattled Snyder last week. A day later, the Tigers went to Texas A&M and quit in the second half. Ahead by one at halftime, Mizzou fell behind by as many as 30 points to the revitalized Aggies after the break.
Missouri really isn’t that bad, but it’s clear the Tigers lack athleticism and scoring punch. Worse, the future looks bleak. Missouri’s three-year NCAA probation includes the loss of one scholarship next season and two scholarships in 2006-07. Morevoer, MU’s coaches cannot recruit off campus until November.
So even if Alden changed his mind, fired Snyder and hired a new coach, Mizzou still would be facing those NCAA restrictions.
All of that is good news, of course, for Kansas because with Missouri effectively hamstrung and with the other Big 12 northern schools essentially treading water, the Jayhawks will continue to have a more favorable schedule than the southern schools, assuming the balance of power remains south of the Kansas-Oklahoma borderline.
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They call it the streak
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