Nick KrugKansas coach Bill Self and four other Big 12 coaches put Baylor at the top of their preseason ballots, and that was enough for the Bears to claim the No. 1 spot in the preseason coaches poll for the second time in three years.
But not by much.
The Bears landed on top with five first-place votes and 77 total points. Self’s Jayhawks were right behind them with four first-place votes and 73 total points.
“That’s probably a good place for us to be,” Self said Thursday a few hours after the poll was released.
Texas and TCU were the other teams at the top, with UT finishing in third place and with one first-place vote, and TCU taking fourth not far behind the Longhorns.
Coaches were not allowed to vote for their own teams, but Self had no problem voting for the Bears, who won the national title in 2021 and have been as good as anyone in college basketball during the past three or four seasons.
“They have a great team returning,” Self said of Scott Drew’s Baylor club. “I also think other teams in our league are capable of winning it, too, whether it be Texas or TCU or whoever. I think when you go through and look at it 1 through 10, it looks like a pretty darn good league again.”
In a conference that long has seen Kansas as the near-unanimous pick to win the league several times, Baylor’s emergence has been significant. The Bears were the league favorite entering the 2020-21 season and BU, of course, won the national title that season.
Kansas followed that up by winning the title during the 2021-22 season, and the showdown between the two elite programs has been big news both in the Big 12 and nationally for the past several years.
It’s that rivalry, along with the talent throughout the round-robin league that has Self and some of his players worried about everything but which team was picked to win the league in October.
“We’ve been picked to win it a few times and I don’t think that’s meant anything in the big scheme of things,” Self said Thursday. “And I don’t think being picked not to win it means anything in the big scheme of things.”
Added sophomore guard KJ Adams: “(The Big 12 season is) close, but it’s still far away and we’re still working to come together as a team. So we really don’t look at any other teams right now just because we’re really so focused on getting ourselves prepared for this season.”
Oklahoma State and Texas Tech tied for fifth in the voting and Oklahoma, Iowa State, West Virginia and Kansas State rounded out this year’s preseason poll in spots 7 through 10.
Big 12 teams have played in the last four Final Fours and the last three national championship games, and, according to a conference release, 60% of Big 12 institutions have advanced to the Final Four since 2002, which is the highest percentage among all conferences.
The Big 12 is the only conference to have three different teams play in three consecutive championship games.
The Big 12 coaches and select players will head to Kansas City, Missouri, next week for the annual Men’s Basketball Tipoff. The regular season will begin Nov. 7 and conference play is slated to start on New Year’s Eve.
1 – Baylor (5), 77
2 – Kansas (4), 73
3 – Texas (1), 64
4 – TCU, 58
5 – Oklahoma State, 42
5 – Texas Tech, 42
7 – Oklahoma, 32
8 – Iowa State, 30
9 – West Virginia, 20
10 – Kansas State, 12
