No running and hiding for Jayhawks in superb Big 12

The team picked to finish fifth stands in first place. The one picked to finish sixth is ranked sixth nationally.

Oh, and two teams have been ranked No. 1 in the country and the conference has delivered some of the nation’s most memorable games.

All this in one-third of a Big 12 men’s basketball season.

In recent years, once conference play started, Kansas would seem to collect an early important road victory and/or a top contender would fall at home and the league race was already a battle for second place.

The early returns this year suggest a new narrative.

Kansas is right there. The Jayhawks take a 4-2 league record into Saturday’s home game against Texas.

But KU is tied with four other teams for second place, trailing league-leader Baylor, which starts league play on Saturday with a monster home game against Oklahoma.

The Bears were the fifth choice in the preseason poll, West Virginia was sixth. The Mountaineers visit Texas Tech today as the nation’s No. 6 team.

The top-ranked team in The Associated Press and USA Today coaches poll has come from the Big 12 for the past three weeks, with Kansas and Oklahoma splitting the distinction one week. Against that backdrop, the teams staged the epic contest in Lawrence with Kansas prevailing 109-106 in triple overtime.

But instead of that victory springboarding them to the top, the Jayhawks have dropped two of three since and are coming off a 19-point loss at unranked Oklahoma State.

The league has been that unpredictable … and good.

“The reality of it is you’ve got six teams in our league that can win the league,” Kansas coach Bill Self said. “I mean, not go to the NCAA Tournament, but win the league.

“I think it’s very unique that you have that many top-heavy teams.”

The personality of the conference started taking shape after last season. Only one member of the all-conference team didn’t return. And the Big 12 had its thinnest NBA Draft class — two players selected in the two rounds — in more than a decade.

Talent and experience were due to return, and everybody showed up, starting with reigning Big 12 player of the year Buddy Hield, who could become the first repeat winner of the award since Kansas’ Raef LaFrentz won the first two in 1997 and 1998.

But if not Hield, the honor could go to another senior, such as Iowa State’s Georges Niang or Baylor’s Rico Gathers, West Virginia’s Devin Williams or Kansas’ Perry Ellis. A senior has won the award only once in the last 10 years.

The Big 12’s player of the year award reflects the sport’s one-and-done rule era, which started in 2006 and says something about where the league stands today.

The first 10 winners were seniors and juniors. One year into implementation of one-and-one, Texas freshman Kevin Durant led a parade of youngsters — Kansas State’s Michael Beasley, Oklahoma’s Blake Griffin and Oklahoma State’s Marcus Smart — who won it as a freshman or sophomore.

The Big 12 has produced several one-and-done draftees over the past few seasons, players such as Texas’ Cory Joseph, Tristan Thompson and Myles Turner and Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid and Kelly Oubre. But none was a player of the year, and only Wiggins was chosen first team all-conference.

This season, the Big 12 is so upperclassmen heavy the top 14 scorers are seniors and juniors. Only Hield, who leads the Big 12 and is second in the nation in scoring at 26.1 points per game, is showing up consistently in mock NBA Draft first rounds.

“But I think we’ll have a lot of guys in our league make rosters,” Self said.

The abundance of superb upperclassmen appears to have flattened the top half of the Big 12. Kansas may end up winning the league. But it could be Oklahoma, West Virginia, Baylor, Texas or Iowa State.

They play with different styles, take difference approaches. But one-third of the way through the conference schedule they all look alike, which should make for a wild finish.

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 4:59 PM with the headline "No running and hiding for Jayhawks in superb Big 12."