Big 12 Tournament matches battle-hardened teams

They come to Kansas City as battle tested as never before.

The Big 12 Tournament tips off Wednesday and many of the matchups will look like NCAA Tournament games.

Take Thursday’s quarterfinals. The day opens with fourth-seeded Baylor against No. 5 seed West Virginia. The teams are ranked 16th and 18th in The Associated Press poll and projected to be top-five seeds in the NCAA field.

It’s the type of battle worthy of the NCAA second round or Sweet 16.

(More Big 12 Tournament coverage)

The day will end with Bedlam, Oklahoma vs. Oklahoma State, and it also could feature a Kansas-Kansas State showdown earlier in afternoon if the Wildcats can get past their opening-round opponent, TCU, on Wednesday night.

“No question that every single night, especially the second half of the year, these have felt like NCAA Tournament games,” Oklahoma State coach Travis Ford said.

The action begins Wednesday at the Sprint Center with the Wildcats and Horned Frogs, the eighth and ninth seeds, at 6 p.m., and seventh-seeded Texas against No. 10 seed Texas Tech around 8:30 p.m.

How rugged was the Big 12 this season?

Kansas won its 11th straight conference title. But the Jayhawks’ 13-5 mark represents the most losses by a champion in Kansas’ conference history, dating to its debut in the Missouri Valley in 1908.

Most of those years, the conference schedule included 14 or 16 games. Still, several times a program won the league with four losses. Never five, until now.

The Jayhawks one-game margin in the standings over Iowa State and Oklahoma happened because Kansas was the only Big 12 team to go undefeated at home in league play, 9-0.

To do that, the Jayhawks had to overcome an 18-point deficit in its home finale against West Virginia.

When Kansas lost Saturday at Oklahoma, the Jayhawks finished 4-5 in league road games, the first losing mark on the road for KU since 1991.

“The bottom line is it was hard to hold serve at home,” Kansas coach Bill Self said.

Kansas led the Big 12 in average victory margin of conference games at 6.8 points, by far the lowest spread of their 11 conference titles. The previous low was 9.7 points in 2013, and that was the only year KU’s victory margin was in single digits, topping at 17.3 in 2007.

This season marked the fourth year of the complete round-robin schedule. The Big 12 stands alone as the only power conference that plays each conference member twice in men’s basketball, a product of its 10-team membership, and coaches see the grind as an advantage heading into postseason.

“Nobody goes through what we go through as a league,” Texas coach Rick Barnes said.

The upside is exposure to the various styles teams figure to confront when they begin to play teams outside the conference.

“The grueling season helps more than anything,” Iowa State coach Fred Hoiberg said. “You see West Virginia’s pressure, Baylor’s zone, Texas’s length, the pressure of Kansas State and Kansas. So many different styles help you prepare. It’s good for us.”

The conference tournament games bring additional layers of intrigue and pressure.

The Cowboys and Texas are battling for NCAA Tournament inclusion. Projections have both teams in, but barely. A few upsets in other conference tournaments this would could find both in precarious positions as at-large candidates.

The upper crust, seeds 1-5 — Kansas, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Baylor and West Virginia — are jockeying for NCAA Tournament seeds.

Entering the event, Kansas appears to be a No. 2 seed, Oklahoma and Iowa State third or fourth seeds, and Baylor and West Virginia fourth or fifth seeds.

The Cyclones are the defending tournament champion. Kansas has won six tournaments since its Big 12 regular-season title streak started in 2005. Baylor coach Scott Drew is the only Big 12 coach who hasn’t won a conference tournament in his career, but his Bears have reached the Big 12 title game three times, including last year.

“You could make a case that there are seven or eight teams that could win the tournament if they get hot,” Self said. “I don’t think there are any other tournaments in America with that type of competitive balance.”

This story was originally published March 10, 2015 at 2:51 PM with the headline "Big 12 Tournament matches battle-hardened teams."