The Big 12 is college basketball’s most boring and unpredictable conference

By most customary standards, this has been a banner season for the Big 12. The bulk of the past three months has seen more than half of the 10 teams in the conference owning national rankings, and the league rightfully expects to have at least six or seven squads in the field of 68 when the bracket is revealed four Sundays from now.

While the league should be proud of these past, present, and future accomplishments, it also has a massive issue that’s impossible to avoid at this point. You see, Big 12 basketball hasn’t been any fun to follow this season. I’m not talking about low scoring or Kansas appearing to be on its way to an 11th straight regular season championship, I’m talking about the fact that its best teams keep destroying one another.

Through a month and-a-half of conference play, the 10-team Big 12 has been home to a whopping 22 games featuring two AP Top 25 teams squaring off against one another. That’s pretty remarkable. Of those games, a staggering 15 have been decided by 10 or more points. That might be even more remarkable. The average margin of victory in these “showdown” games is 16.3 points. That could be the most remarkablest ... look, if the league’s going to be this bizarre then I’m not going to take the time to use actual words to describe it.

The total one-sidedness of the majority of the conference’s high-profile games has not only made it frustrating to follow, but impossible to figure out. Kansas, the only team in the league without a double-digit league loss, has distanced itself from the rest of its Big 12 brethren yet again, but after that, the league remains a bigger mystery than Stonehenge.

Every time the college hoops world has come to a semi-agreement on who the best team in the Big 12 is besides Kansas, that team has promptly done something very un-second best teamish.

Iowa State has probably been the team saddled with the “No. 2” label most often, and as a result, it’s also the team that has probably let its believers down most frequently. The fighting Hoibergs beat Kansas at home in the game every Cyclone fan had circled before the start of the season, then promptly turned around and handed cellar-dweller Texas Tech its first conference win a week later. ISU then got predictably thumped by Kansas in the rematch in Lawrence, and surrendered 94 points in a one-sided loss to Oklahoma the next week.

That brings us to the Sooners, the most recent recipient of the “team besides KU best-suited to make a run in March” label. OU, which had previously lost on the road to West Virginia and Baylor by a combined 32 points, proved it was worthy of its newfound affection by losing for the second time to Kansas State, one of just three Big 12 teams with a losing record in conference play.

Basically, all seven of the Big 12 teams besides Kansas, TCU, and Texas Tech are every frustratingly inconsistent major conference team you’ve followed over the past decade, and none of us are going to know what to do with any of them when we’re filling out our brackets a month from now.

For the best look at how hard to watch and insane to follow this league has been up to this point, here’s the full breakdown of how all seven current or previously ranked teams have fared in their conference meetings with other top 25 squads.

West Virginia

1/10 - Lost to Iowa State by 2
1/13 - Best Oklahoma by 21
1/17 - Lost to Texas by 27
2/3 - Lost to Oklahoma by 19
2/7 - Lost to Baylor by 18
2/14 - Lost to Iowa State by 20

Average margin: 17.8 ppg

Oklahoma

1/3 - Beat Baylor by 10
1/5 - Beat Texas by 21
1/13 - Lost to West Virginia by 21
1/17 - Beat Oklahoma State by 17
1/19 - Lost to Kansas by 7
1/24 - Lost to Baylor by 11
2/3 - Beat West Virginia by 19
2/9 - Beat Iowa State by 11

Average margin: 14.6 ppg

Oklahoma State

1/13 - Lost to Kansas by 10
1/17 - Lost to Oklahoma by 17
2/9 - Beat Baylor by 9

Average margin: 12.0 ppg

Iowa State
1/10 - Beat West Virginia by 2
1/14 - Lost to Baylor by 1
1/17 - Beat Kansas by 5
1/26 - Beat Texas by 3
2/2 - Lost to Kansas by 13
2/9 - Lost to Oklahoma by 11
2/14 - Beat West Virginia by 20
Average margin: 7.9 ppg

Baylor

1/3 - Lost to Oklahoma by 10
1/7 - Lost to Kansas by 1
1/14 - Beat Iowa State by 1
1/24 - Beat Oklahoma by 11
1/31 - Beat Texas by 23
2/7 - Beat West Virginia by 18
2/9 - Lost to Oklahoma State by 9
2/14 - Lost to Kansas by 10

Average margin: 10.4 ppg

Texas

1/5 - Lost to Oklahoma by 21
1/17 - Beat West Virginia by 27
1/24 - Lost to Kansas by 13
1/26 - Lost to Iowa State by 3
1/31 - Lost to Baylor by 23

Average margin: 17.4 ppg

Kansas

1/7 - Beat Baylor by 1
1/13 - Beat Oklahoma State by 10
1/17 - Lost to Iowa State by 5
1/19 - Beat Oklahoma by 7
1/24 - Beat Texas by 13
2/2 - Beat Iowa State by 13
2/14 - Beat Baylor by 10

Average margin: 8.4 ppg

Perhaps the most odd thing about all these numbers is the fact that Kansas and Iowa State, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the current conference standings, have the lowest average margins of victory in their games against fellow ranked conference teams. Basically, nothing about the league makes sense, and it doesn’t seem likely that this is going to change at any point over the course of the next three weeks.

It’s going to be fun to look back at all the wild numbers once the Big 12 regular season is finally in the books, and the league tournament figures to be proportionately insane. As for actually watching the rest of these league games that appear so enticing on paper ... you’re probably better off rewatching season two of Deadwood and checking the box scores later.