Generally the fewest eyeballs want to see those two games, so I suppose it makes sense.
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Iowa State once again is not actually good. But they are better than last year.
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Baylor is 87th in defensive efficiency.

As suspected, Drew has no clue how to coach defense on his own. The year Tang became associate head coach over there was the year they dropped that shitty zone and magically got better at defense and learned how to defend.
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I think the Big 12 might be simultaneously underrated and overrated.

It's obviously a very deep league. One of the deepest ever. There are no bad teams and 9 of the 10 are top 30ish per Kenpom. Ridiculous.

But I'm not sure that it's terribly strong at the top. KU is solid, but even they aren't a vintage KU team with dominant talent/athleticism. Texas and Baylor have plenty of talent but I don't know if either is a legit top 10 team. Texas could be, but the Beard situation might hurt their chances.

I'm not sold yet that Iowa St or K-State are great teams.
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What's the story there? Was Tang the architect of their new defense?

This year's Baylor definitely feels more like Baylor of old than the Baylor of the last few years.
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This, played slow and timid, now just going full speed and letting it all hang out!

And to think that so many of my Fowl Feathered Flocker Friends had given up on him this year!

But to be fair here, there was a major difference between his athletic play from last year and his slow play from this year. Even I was starting to question why, I'm just glad the light has gone off.
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There aren’t any good teams in CBB. UNC was ranked #1 preseason and have cratered. UK is cratered. MSU is middling. Gonzaga is meh. UConn is supposed to be good but I haven’t seen them.

It’s hard for me to believe there is a team that is materially better than KU. There are going to be other contenders. And one might be KSU if they can keep focused and maintain their performance. They look fucking nasty.
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Other than our next "worst possible matchup", nobody is that much better than KU this year. Some solid teams. Some decent teams. Some bad teams. Some teams named Kentucky & North Carolina.

Some random team could get hot at the right moment and walk away with a championship. We could end up back to back championships..... Assuming we don't run into our worst possible matchup.
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Tennessee looks like the best team in the country so far and their offense a few months ago against us was fairly unimpressive. Anybody who can adjust to their ridiculous physicality on defense (we didn't and played one of the worst offensive games in KU history) can likely take them out.
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Is Houston the real deal?
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They're very good it appears but they're also not playing any real competition until the tournament at this point. Good chance they finish #1 in all the metrics (and maybe the polls) in the lead up to it.

What happens when they finally play a good team in March and run into real adversity after playing nobody good for 2+ months though?
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The B12's Adj EM is 18.22 right now on KenPom (1st among any conference this year).

Only four leagues have been stronger in the 21-year KenPom era: the 2004 ACC at 20.32 (five top 15 teams), the 2017 B12 at 19.81, the 2022 B12 at 18.74, and the 2021 B10 was at 18.68.

Fair bet when Houston joins the conference next year that it will be the strongest in history.
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I don’t know how much we can take away from that Tennessee game. Playing an elite defensive team like that in your third game in three days is rough. Plus, Harris was off the court for I think more than half the game due to fouls.

But yeah, they’re probably as good as anyone.
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What happened to WV man handlining KU like thugs at home. Seems to me the first year they didn't do that.
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Also missing Pettiford for the majority of that game as he went out with an injury.
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