Since the turn of the century, the Big 12 has been one of the nation’s most dominant men’s college basketball conferences, regularly sending half the league to the NCAA Tournament and capturing multiple championships along the way.
The Kansas Jayhawks, Baylor Bears, Iowa State Cyclones, and Kansas State Wildcats went a long way in bolstering the conference’s reputation, but the recent additions due to conference realignment has made the Big 12 deeper and better than ever before.
In the past couple of seasons, the Big 12 added the Arizona Wildcats, Houston Cougars, Cincinnati Bearcats, BYU Cougars, and UCF Knights. It also welcomed the Colorado Buffaloes and Utah Utes back into the fold.
Monday marked the release of the preseason AP Top 25 for men’s basketball for the 2024-25 season, and five Big 12 teams appeared in the top 10 spots. According to CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander, this is the first time a conference has held five of the top 10 spots in a preseason poll.
Here’s a doozy: The Big 12 has five teams in the preseason top 10 of the AP poll.
1. Kansas
4. Houston
5. Iowa State
8. Baylor
10. ArizonaIt’s the first conference to ever have that many top-10 teams in a preseason ranking in college basketball history, per Stats Perform. https://t.co/sEmGqsiQQy
— Matt Norlander (@MattNorlander) October 14, 2024
While there are other strong college basketball conferences, such as the Big East which is home to the back-to-back national champion UConn Huskies, or the Big Ten, which regularly sends many of it’s teams to the NCAA Tournament, the Big 12 is once again shaping out to be the best of the best.
The regular season gets underway on Monday, November 4.
