As always, the final weeks of college basketball&rsquo;s regular season will bring a daily inspection of bracket projections, bubble talk and all the stuff that we love about the stretching exercises for the March Madness sprint.</p><p>The error of those ways is not paying closer attention to the action on the front end, beginning Monday.</p><p>Non-conference competition is where teams and conferences build their credentials, most critically their rating percentage index (RPI). It&rsquo;s the tool used by the selection committee to help identify at-large teams and seed the NCAA Tournament.</p><p>Squawking about a bracketologist&rsquo;s disrespectful tone toward a team or conference is about as effective as shedding pounds a week before spring break. By then, it&rsquo;s too late.</p><p>Kansas State&rsquo;s 2008-09 season is a prime example.</p><p>The Wildcats put themselves in the bubble conversation with a fast finish &mdash; 10-4 to end the regular-season &mdash; a winning Big 12 record and a No. 4 seed in the league tournament. Usually that&rsquo;s a solid resume.</p><p>But a two-week stretch in November and December with successive losses to Kentucky, Iowa and Oregon wounded K-State&rsquo;s RPI. In most years, losses to such marquee opponents wouldn&rsquo;t cause that much damage, but none of the teams made the NCAA and only Kentucky finished with a winning record. They turned out to be bad losses, and Kansas State started Big 12 play with the conference&rsquo;s 10th lowest RPI.</p><p>The Wildcats rallied. There was a six-game winning streak and big victories at Texas and Texas A&M. But they simply had surrendered too much ground.</p><p>On a conference level last season, the Big 12 did well for itself without having a Final Four team. Half of the teams reached the NCAA Tournament and the 11 postseason victories trailed only the larger Big East.</p><p>But it might have been better. Better seeding for the squads that made it or even a seventh team in the field might have occurred had there been some tidier work in late autumn.</p><p>In 2008-09, Big 12 squads lost 18 games to teams with RPIs between 101 and 343. Of the two conferences ranked ahead of the Big 12, the ACC lost eight and the Big Ten four.</p><p>The lesson here is easy.</p><p>The Big 12 expects big things this season. Plenty of star power returns, and the league welcomes an excellent newcomer class. Kansas and Texas are preseason top five entries, and the league has never opened a season with such a strong pair.</p><p>But all major conferences have top 10 teams and Final Four candidates. The strongest conferences are the ones with teeth in the middle and at the bottom &mdash; programs so strong that even the league&rsquo;s best is in danger of losing when it visits.</p><p>That brings us to a pair of comers, one further along than the other. But the improvement of both bodes well for the Big 12.</p><p>Iowa State and Colorado expect to have their best teams in the tenures of fourth-year Cyclones coach Greg McDermott and third-year Buffaloes coach Jeff Bzdelik.</p><p>Iowa State has a player in Craig Brackins, who is a probable first-round draft pick. It also has junior-college transfer Marquis Gilstrap, voted the Big 12&rsquo;s preseason newcomer of the year.</p><p>&ldquo;I just saw them practice. And if that&rsquo;s the ninth- or 10th-best team in the Big 12, it&rsquo;s going to be a great year,&rdquo; ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla said.</p><p>Colorado features one of the league&rsquo;s top offensive threats in Cory Higgins, who teams with another talented player, Dwight Thorne II, to create a formidable backcourt.</p><p>These teams should be incapable of bad losses, and have the ability to create some fine credentials of their own. The Cyclones have early games against California and Duke. The Buffs open Maui Invitational play against Gonzaga, then face either Arizona or Wisconsin.</p><p>Kansas and Texas are expected to be great.</p><p>It says here Kansas State, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Oklahoma State and Missouri are NCAA Tournament teams. Baylor shouldn&rsquo;t fall that much.</p><p>If the rest, starting with Iowa State, improve, it undoubtedly will be the best year in Big 12 history.</p><p>And if they take care of business over the next few weeks, they won&rsquo;t have fret about their fates as March Madness approaches.