With a convincing win over Iowa State on Monday, Kansas moved into control of the Big 12 race. At 8-1, the Jayhawks have separated themselves from the pack, two games ahead of the nearest team. The conference has eight teams in contention for an NCAA Tournament berth, but none look to be well-rounded enough to pose a serious challenge to the Jayhawks. The king stay the king in the Big 12 - Bill Self is going for his 11th consecutive conference title.

Year after year, no matter how many guys Self loses, he is still able to piece together a team that laps the field. It helps when you have significantly more talent than almost every other team in the conference:

 

5 star recruits

4 star

3 star

Kansas

3

6

2

West Virginia

 

4

5

Iowa State

 

4

1

Oklahoma

 

4

3

Kansas State

   

6

Baylor

 

3

2

Oklahoma State

1

2

4

Texas

2

6

2

TCU

 

2

5

Texas Tech

   

4

You can divide the other nine programs into two categories. Those with coaches who can gameplan against Bill Self but who don’t have access to the type of recruits he gets and those with coaches who can recruit against Self but who don’t have the X and O chops to stay up with him.

The Overachievers

1. Iowa State

Under Fred Hoiberg, the Cyclones have emerged as one of the biggest threats to Kansas and they are the only Big 12 team to give the Jayhawks a loss this season - an 86-81 win at Hilton Coliseum. You can think of Hoiberg as college basketball’s version of Chip Kelly or Jeff Hornacek, but the basic idea is the same. He spreads the floor, plays a lot of shooters and attacks the other team in space. Iowa State has become a Transfer U in the last few years, as the simplicity of Hoiberg’s schemes has allowed him to integrate a number of different players on an annual basis.

The big difference for Iowa State this season has been Jameel McKay, a 6’9 215 transfer from Marquette who gives them their first legitimate rim protector in the Hoiberg era. The problem for Hoiberg is that Kansas has four guys like that - Jamari Traylor (6’8 220), Cliff Alexander (6’8 240), Landen Lucas (6’10 240) and Hunter Mickelson (6’10 235). Mickelson, a transfer from Arkansas, would start for most of the teams in the Big 12 and he barely get minutes for Self. Not many college programs can roll that type of size off their bench. Tarik Black built more of an NBA buzz after one season as a backup at Kansas than three seasons as a starter at Memphis.

2. Kansas State

Kansas State has been competitive with their in-state rival for the last few years thanks to the efforts of Bob Huggins and Frank Martin, who brought a ton of out of state talent into Manhattan, particularly through a pipeline in DC that produced Michael Beasley, Jacob Pullen and Wally Judge. Bruce Weber took over when Martin decamped for South Carolina, a move that didn’t speak well for Kansas State’s commitment to the basketball program, and the fear is that Weber will oversee an unwinding similar to what happened to him when he took over from Self at Illinois.

No one is doubting Weber’s ability to coach, but he never had much success bringing in elite talent to Illinois and he doesn’t appear to be even trying to go after the type of guys that Martin got. Weber will have to find a lot more diamond in the rough three stars like Marcus Foster to have much of a chance to compete at the highest levels of the Big 12.

3. West Virginia

West Virginia is a little bit of a wild card. Bob Huggins has proven he can win at a high level there, taking the school to the Final Four in 2009, but he has struggled to get his sea legs in his first two seasons in the Big 12. They just need to recruit a higher quality athlete if they are going to be able to full-court press teams like Kansas and succeed. Huggins recruiting has picked up since they made the move, but he will likely have to hit the transfer wire if he has any hope of beating Self. Going forward, he will need to find more guys like Jonathan Holton, a former top recruit who had several brushes with the law before winding up in Morgantown.

4. Oklahoma

Under their previous administration, OU would have been in the other category. Jeff Capel, as you would expect from a Coach K protege, never had a problem bringing in talent. They looked ready to take the next step a few years ago, when they followed up a trip to the Elite Eight with Blake Griffin with recruiting classes that featured McDonald’s All-Americans like Willie Warren, Tommy Mason-Griffin and Tiny Gallon. Long story short - things didn’t exactly work out for those three guys.

Perhaps stung by the implosion of Capel’s program, OU went in the opposite direction with Lon Kruger, a basketball lifer with no real interest in “playing the game”. Kruger has turned them into a perennial Top 25 team, but he hasn’t produced an NBA player, although Buddy Hield should have a chance. If he can’t bring in more talent, there’s a ceiling on his program, at least with Bill Self a few hundred miles up the road.

5. Texas Tech

It has never been easy to convince elite basketball players to come out to Lubbock to play ball, whether it was Bob Knight or Tubby Smith or anyone else at the helm. Tubby has won everywhere he has gone, but getting Tech back into the Tournament could be his toughest challenge yet.

The Underachievers

1. Texas

If you look at that chart, the only team with talent even close to Kansas is Texas. Rick Barnes has never had a problem getting elite players to come to Austin, but fitting them together and getting them to be better than the sum of their parts has always been a challenge. When you consider all the future NBA players he coached - Kevin Durant, LaMarcus Aldridge, TJ Ford, DJ Augustin, Daniel Gibson, Avery Bradley, Jordan Hamilton, PJ Tucker, Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph - it’s kind of amazing that he has never won a Big 12 conference championship and has only tied for a share of the regular season title twice.

It’s the same story this season. Texas is one of the only teams in the country with the size to match up with Kentucky, as they have five different 6’9+ players with a chance to play at the next level. Myles Turner, their star freshman, will be a lottery pick whenever he declares for the draft. The problem is that none of their guards can consistently stretch the floor, which has been a recurring issue for Barnes. For whatever reasons, he has never shown much of an interest in recruiting shooting, preferring to sign waves of defensive-minded athletes and assuming he will be able to figure things out on offense.

Spoiler alert - he hasn’t.

2. Baylor

Over the last decade, Scott Drew has performed one of the biggest turnarounds in recent memory, shepherding Baylor from unimaginable tragedy to perennial Top 25 team. He has done it by outworking people in recruiting and developing deep ties in Dallas, where he has found wave after wave of talented big men, guys like Kevin Rogers, Quincy Acy, Perry Jones III and Isaiah Austin. A decade ago, no one would have thought Baylor would be reeling in McDonald’s All-Americans and churning out NBA players.

The problem for Baylor has been Drew’s steadfast belief in the 1-3-1 match-up zone, even as he watches opposing coaches in the Big 12 slice it to death on an annual basis. It works well in the first few rounds of NCAA Tournament against teams who have never seen the Bears length and athleticism, but eventually they run into a disciplined and talented team like Wisconsin who runs them off the floor. That’s usually what happens when they play Kansas - eventually Self finds the cracks in the defense.

3. Oklahoma State

Travis Ford reeled in a potentially program-defining recruit in Marcus Smart, but he was never able to put all the pieces around Smart and Oklahoma State lost in the first round of the NCAA Tournament in each of the last two seasons. Talent wasn’t the issue - Smart and Markel Brown are in the NBA and LeBryan Nash, one of the only five stars in the conference not playing for Kansas, will at least get a chance at the next level. I broke down all the gory details of the Ford era in Stillwater here.

4. TCU

TCU has almost no basketball tradition to speak of, but they have a chance to build something now that they are in the Big 12. They are opening up a new basketball stadium next season and they are hoping for a rise similar to cross-town rival SMU, who have become one of the best programs in the country since Larry Brown took over. Trent Johnson is no Larry Brown, but if Brown’s history repeats itself and SMU’s program ends up imploding, TCU is right there to pick up the pieces.

As it stands now, Self starts each season with a huge advantage against the rest of his conference. You still have to give him his props for what he has done, but the basketball coach at Kansas is expected to beat a bunch of football schools just about every season. There are no other blue-blood programs in the Big 12. No Duke to his UNC. No Florida to his Kentucky. No UCLA to his Arizona. Texas is the sleeping giant, but as long as Barnes is there, it’s hard to see them ever being able to knock off Self.

Here’s the key though - just because Kansas wins the Big 12 doesn’t necessarily mean they will have a deep run in March. You can forget the statistics and even their record. For as deep as the conference is, the Jayhawks are beating up on a bunch of teams they are supposed to beat.