Rodney Terry makes case for Big 12 champion getting No. 1 seed in NCAA Tournament

With two weeks left in the regular season, Texas, Kansas, Baylor and even Kansas State and Iowa State have legitimate chances to win the Big-12’s regular season title.

Nearly every team in the conference is preparring for the NCAA Tournament, and interim Texas head coach Rodney Terry made a bold statement about what the winner of the conference’s regular season title.

“There’s no question about it. When you look at the teams, I think we have six ranked teams in our league right now and could probably make a case for the teams not ranked in our league,” Terry said Monday. “They are all really good teams … There are no nights off in our league. There are a lot of leagues that can’t say that. I think our league is very deserving of a 1-seed. If you come out of our league, you’re battle-tested every night.”

Seven of the 10 teams in the Big 12 are within three games of the conference’s top spot. Still, Terry took a second to shout out the bottom three teams — Texas Tech, West Virginia and Oklahoma — for holding their own against some of the nation’s best competition. In fact, the Red Raiders just upset the Longhorns last Monday 74-67 after UT beat Tech by one basket last month in their first meeting.

In fact, eight out of the 10 teams of the league are either firmly in the tournament or are hovering in and around the bubble hoping to get in. The Sooners and Red Raiders are the two teams out of that group, but Oklahoma State made Joe Lunardi’s ‘Last Four Byes’ list, while the Mountaineers are one of the ‘Last Four In’ hoping to bulk the league’s presence on the dance floor.

As of Monday, Kansas is Lunardi’s third No. 1 overall seed, while Baylor and Texas sit at the two-seed line. Kansas State and Iowa State are behind them as projected three seeds.

For, Texas all they have to do is win their next four games and they’ll nab a one-line.

That’s easier said than done, though, as the Longhorns play four of the other five ranked Big-12 teams — including Baylor and Kansas. Four Quad 1 wins to finish the season will nullify anything that happens to the Longhorns in the conference tournament.