The Big 12/SEC Challenge took place this Saturday, and teams approached it in a variety of ways. For some, it was a chance to get bench guys minutes. For some, it was a chance to rest an injured player. For few, it was coached with the urgency of a conference basketball game, because for all unconcerned with the NCAA Tournament bubble, conference basketball games are the ones that count right now.
It’s one of the best aspects of college sports, the conference title, and in basketball it’s special fun, especially in leagues where the regular season championship is the agreed-upon top priority. Round after round of action, rises and falls and often a complete home-and-home series between contending teams. Regional rivals getting a little too familiar with one another. Upsets throwing the whole standings off-kilter. A claim, for the winner, of not just a pretty win–loss record but dominion over a whole collection of territory. The Big 12 champion, most years, is not just a team who got hot for a few days in Kansas City. It’s the best team on the Plains. The Big Ten champion, most years, is not just a team who had a good week in Indianapolis or Chicago or wherever. It’s the best team in the Rust Belt. National titles are the ultimate goal, but league titles are more realistic, less random, and more an exercise in competition with one’s neighbors. UCLA and Arizona battling for the Pac-12 crown is a joy.
Any talk of the beauty of regionalism in college sports brings conference realignment to mind. Conference realignment is attacking geographic regionalism. The SEC is still southern, but it stretches further than it did. The Big Ten is suddenly a coast-to-coast conference. Who knows what the Big 12 and Pac-12 will soon be? Compounding matters, conference schedules are no longer home-and-home round robins, thanks to just how many games that would take. When the Big 12 adds its new members, only the Big East and potentially the Pac-10, among the power leagues, will play traditional full schedules. Part of the beauty of regular season titles is that they come through hand-to-hand, head-to-head combat in the fairest way possible. That beauty lessens as the fairness decreases. If UCLA and Maryland are the best teams in the 2026 Big Ten but they only play once and it’s in College Park, UCLA fans will be justified in being unbothered, and not only because they don’t run into many Terrapins in their daily lives.
Still, there’s hope for college sports regionalists, in two key areas:
First, while geographic regionalism appears to be waning, schools that are similar culturally are lumping together like never before. UCLA has more in common with Michigan than it does with Washington State. That could start something.
Second, just as the shifting tectonic plates form supercontinents every few hundred million years, these superconferences will inevitably, after they mass, need to do something similar to breaking up. It doesn’t make sense to have one set of standings for a 24-team basketball league. Three 8-team leagues, though, within a conference? That can—and likely will—play.
So, as the Big 12 particularly reminds us of the joy of regional combat this winter, don’t lose all faith. Conference realignment is taking right now. But it should give, soon enough.
Tennessee, Kansas, Alabama
Tennessee beat Texas soundly enough to rise to the top ranking in KenPom, which is your best objective measure of who is really the best team in the country at any point in time. This doesn’t make Tennessee the most likely to win the national championship, but Tennessee is, at this moment, probably a little better than Houston. Interestingly, the second half was high scoring in Knoxville (after the Vols went into the break up 40-28, which was itself a scorcher for the home team), but there probably isn’t much to make of that. Yes, the offense looked good, but ball movement hasn’t been the problem, so don’t make too much of Zakai Zeigler grabbing another double-double. The issue for this team, statistically, is that it’s an inefficient bunch of shooters prone to turning the ball over. Against a strong defensive rebounding team, it’s still liable to be in trouble if shots don’t fall.
Kansas broke its losing streak, beating Kentucky on the road, and to go back to KenPom for a moment, the Wildcats are probably only better than two or three Big 12 teams. Kansas should win games like that, even if it was a fun scene. It’s noteworthy—winning indicates an absence of implosion—but it doesn’t change much for the Jayhawks. They still need to catch Texas and hold off Iowa State/Kansas State/Baylor/TCU. That’s where their focus is right now.
Alabama was walloped in Norman, and I’m not sure how much to care. Oklahoma shot the lights out and Alabama’s defensively forced some of the worst shooting in the country, but a lot of the Sooners’ looks were from close. Was this OU getting to the basket? Are Big 12 teams much better at shooting the basketball than SEC teams, and are Alabama’s defensive stats thereby inflated? Once things were going the way they were going, did the Tide simplify and shut down and move on mentally to the rest of the SEC schedule?
A thing about our categories—we’ve generally grouped teams this year as “teams who wouldn’t be surprising NCAA Tournament champions,” “the questioned,” and “good not great”—is that even at the top, there are questions. Every team has questions. Houston—who struggled with Cincinnati at home six days after losing at home to Temple—has had a few conspicuous disappearing acts on offense (that wasn’t the problem this weekend, but it’s the broadest concern). UCLA—who lost Thursday night at USC—has only a 1-3 record against teams we’re confident will make the NCAA Tournament. Purdue’s defense is better, but it isn’t great yet, and the Boilermakers are young in the backcourt and winners of enough close games to resemble Kansas before its losing streak.
Overall, the categories are currently as follows:
- Teams Who Wouldn’t Be Surprising NCAA Tournament Champions: Houston, UCLA, Purdue
- The Questioned: Tennessee, Alabama
- Good Not Great: Kansas, Texas, Marquette, Creighton, Arizona, Virginia
You could probably toss Saint Mary’s in there, and maybe Baylor or TCU or UConn, but that’s the list. The thing, though, again, is that everyone has questions. Houston and UCLA and Purdue just have a few fewer questions than Tennessee and Bama right now. It’s an arbitrary distinction, and there are few clear favorites.
Caleb Grill’s Back, Is Caleb Grill Back?
Iowa State signaled its intent on Saturday morning when confirmation came that Caleb Grill wasn’t going to play in Columbia. The turnovers were concerning, but good luck gearing up for a game when you’ve been playing rivals nonstop, you’ve got a long-pursued conference title in your sights, and part of your backbone is out because of his own backbone (and/or associated area). The question is whether Grill is healthy enough to gut it out tonight, and how well he can play if he’s out there. Texas Tech is mediocre—they’re not snakebit, they’re mediocre—but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous, and it’s hard to believe Mizzou’s pressure could be worse than that of the team in Lubbock. It’s a tough matchup, and we all already knew that.
There’s some speculation about Grill’s status based on shifts in the betting odds—the line has evidently swung from Texas Tech by 1 to Iowa State by 1.5 and back again, or something like that—but I wouldn’t put too much stock in swings between 1 and 1.5 on either side. You don’t see many pick ‘ems in college basketball, for reasons I don’t entirely understand. The line just usually goes to 1. So while it’s bigger than a 1.5-point swing, it’s probably not even a full 2.5-point swing. Grill’s status might be public by the time these notes are published, but as they’re written, we don’t know.
In scoreboard watching, we probably want Baylor to beat Texas, just because Texas has a game on the Bears right now. They’re close to identical entities for Iowa State’s league title purposes, so the more cannibalization, the better, and at the moment Texas both leads Baylor and is projected to hold its lead (unlike Kansas State with regard to Kansas, where the Wildcats lead the Jayhawks but aren’t projected to hold that).
Brock Purdy Tore His UCL, Patrick Mahomes’s Timeline
News is out, Purdy tore his UCL yesterday, so no wonder he couldn’t throw the football. That’s an injury often accompanied by Tommy John surgery when it happens to a pitcher, but I don’t know what’s normal for a quarterback in this arena. It sucks for him, but somewhat cynically, he probably did enough over this stretch to get himself into a quarterback competition somewhere in training camp when he’s next healthy heading into training camp, whether that’s this summer or in 2024. The cynical part? He might not have been in as good a position if he’d had to withstand a full game of the Eagles’ front seven yesterday.
To mention the obvious and echo many, it’s a shame the refereeing was so bad in Kansas City, because that was a hell of a game and the conversation shouldn’t have surrounded that particular set of guys in stripes. There were so many baffling calls that it’s hard to know which made what impact, but Kansas City’s probably the better team, so the better team did probably win. If I were a Bengals fan, I’d still be excited about next year, but it hurts to miss chances. Speaking of which…
We’re at a point in Patrick Mahomes’s career not dissimilar from where Aaron Rodgers and the Packers were back around 2015. Mahomes is a lot younger than Rodgers was then, but we’re a decent number of seasons removed from his first title, and with his contract what it is, the team construction is starting to pivot. The Packers infamously addressed this by continuously trying to beef up the defense while trusting Rodgers to keep the offense competent, sometimes against troubling odds. The Packers infamously did not succeed in winning a second Super Bowl with their quarterback. Had one play gone differently in Seattle eight years ago, they probably would have gotten a second, but they didn’t, which highlights what a fleeting opportunity this could be for Kansas City. Joe Burrow and the Bengals aren’t going away. Josh Allen and the Bills aren’t going away. Others will rise, and may already be ascending, and that’s just in the AFC. It is so, so hard to be the best team out of 32 teams. It’s just about as hard to actually win a Super Bowl.
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What’s happening tonight:
College Basketball (the big game)
- 9:00 PM EST: Baylor @ Texas (ESPN)
College Basketball (the interesting games)
- 7:00 PM EST: Virginia @ Syracuse (ESPN)
- 9:00 PM EST: Iowa State @ Texas Tech (ESPN2)
NBA (the best game)
- 9:00 PM EST: Toronto @ Phoenix (League Pass)
NHL (the only game)
- 8:00 PM EST: St. Louis @ Winnipeg (NHLN)
