Oread Observations: The irrelevance of the Big 12 Tournament
Championship Week is finally here, one of the most thrilling weeks of the college basketball calendar. To some spectators, it may even be the most exciting, with wall-to-wall hoops for days on end with dreams being achieved or shattered at every turn.
Locally, it’s a chance to celebrate the best conference in the sport, the Big 12, with the league’s 10 members battling for bragging rights, NCAA tournament seeding and maybe even a spot in the bracket, period.
Yet, for the Kansas Jayhawks, this week shouldn’t mean anything.
KU deserves to be the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament, or at least a spot among the top two overall seeds. Its resume speaks for itself in a way no other team’s can. The Jayhawks won the toughest conference in the nation, they have more Quad 1 wins than anyone and they’ve played the country’s toughest schedule.
No matter what happens at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri, Kansas shouldn’t be in any danger of dropping on the final seed list.
It's a net positive for the sport that the NCAA tournament selection committee puts more emphasis on analytics and predictive metrics these days, splitting the value of those numbers and outputs with those of the team's accomplished resumes to determine who's in, who's out and who's going where. Those metrics are helping programs like the Houston Cougars, who have had a great season against lesser competition, in their bid for better seeding.
But the best combination of resume and metrics belong to Kansas.
KU enters the Big 12 Tournament ninth in the nation according to KenPom. It ranks second in the KPI. Per KenPom, again, the Jayhawks have played the hardest schedule in the country. They're also seventh in the NET rankings with 15 Quad 1 wins, six more than the next likely No. 1 seed, the Alabama Crimson Tide.
As for Houston, who’s also in the discussion for the tournament’s top overall seed along with Kansas and Alabama, its six Quad 1 wins are nearly a third of KU’s total, plus the Cougars have as many Quad 4 games as Kansas does Quads 2-4.
Metrics are meaningful, and they’ve loved Houston all year. But the games you’ve already played, won and lost should mean a lot, too. They have to. When you factor those in, nobody holds a candle to KU.
Houston will likely waltz through the American Athletic Conference Tournament with little trouble. Alabama plays a tougher conference tournament, but also already owns an abominable loss to the worst team in the Big 12 this year and that needs to matter for something. Nothing those teams do should have a major impact on their seeding, just like nothing the Big 12 champions do in a tournament for a league they already won outright should impact them.
It would be a shocker if the Jayhawks went one and done in Kansas City. They will probably win at least one game and will likely be favored to win at least two. But even if their conference tournament run ends on Thursday, they’ve done more than enough to establish themselves as the most deserving team of the top line on the selection committee’s seed list.
Hopefully, the committee realizes that, too.
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