Bill Self shares what makes Big 12 so difficult

Less than three games separate 12 teams in the current Big 12 standings, and no team has been safe from upsets through the early portion of conference play.

No. 7 Kansas continued its road struggles on Saturday with a 79-75 loss to No. 23 Iowa State. According to Jayhawks head coach Bill Self, Kansas’ loss is just another example of the Big 12 being so close this season across the board.

“I think the teams are good and you got good coaches in our league, too,” Self said postgame. “We’ve got a nice team. And we’ve shown this year we can meet anybody. Connecticut, Tennessee, Kentucky, we can beat anybody. We’ve also shown this year, anybody can get us for the most part. But there’s no ‘anybody’s’ in our league. Everybody’s good.

“If West Virginia, folks, had the three kids that got eligible late the whole year long, they’d be an NCAA bubble team right now. This league is a monster. … It seems like, to me, it’s like that every year. We’ve had some success and won the league a few times. But it seems like we were a game or two behind at some point in time throughout the year, throughout all the years anyway. And certainly, this year will be harder because our schedule is tougher than then a lot of teams’ schedules in the second half. So we’ve gotta go steal one or two. But [the Big 12] is just good, good players and our league is old.”

As of Sunday, Texas Tech sits alone atop the Big 12 standings at 5-1 — but is one of two teams, including Baylor, that has only played six conference games so far this season. Everyone else has seven under their belts.

That leaves Iowa State and Houston half a game back from the lead in the standings, while Kansas, TCU and Kansas State are 1.5 back. Baylor’s six-game conference slate has them two games behind TTU, and then BYU, Texas, Cincinnati, Oklahoma and UCF are all 2.5 games back.

The Jayhawks have fallen in the rankings thanks to their slew of road losses against UCF, a 16-point loss to West Virginia, and then to the Cyclones as well.

Thankfully for the Jayhawks, they have Oklahoma State at home on Tuesday and host No. 4 Houston on Saturday. They won’t return to the road until they face in-state foe Kansas State in Manhattan on Feb. 5. With the Big 12 standings so close, the rankings could look completely different by the time the two rivals play.