Sunday, September 24, 2017

Big 12: TCU's Bursts into Football Title Hunt, Then Could Challenge in Toughest Hoops Conference

The best basketball conference, according to Ken Pomeroy, will be back with six of the top 21 players in the country, including two from Texas Christian. Forgive the TCU fans from not paying attention yet, after they went into Oklahoma State Saturday for a huge football upset that makes them the biggest potential threat to Oklahoma and a National contender for the football title.

After a terrible 11-22 opening campaign, Value Add projects that former VCU coach has the talent lined up to let the Texas Longhorns take a major step and potentially give the conference a fifth ranked team in a group led by Kansas.

Here is where Value Add ranks each Big 12 team for the season, and the Massey Rankings rank the football teams against all other schools. TCU will jump substantially from their football ranking of 24th and Oklahoma State will drop from No. 7 after TCU's big upset. Updates will be provided here.


Big 12 / 2017 SeedHoops 2017-18Football
Kansas 18128
West Virginia 41535
TCU1624
UTEP17186
Texas2654
Texas Tech3139
Baylor 35387
Oklahoma603
Oklahoma St. 10617
Kansas St. 1110838
Iowa St. 515757

Here are the top 15 projected players in the conference in order. Jevon Carter projects as the 5th best player in the country, while Kenrich Williams is one spot behind him as the 6th best returning player.

Top 15 Big 12 PlayersValue AddSchoolHt
Jevon Carter 29.96West Virginia`6-02
Kenrich Williams 349.93Texas Christian`6-07
Jeffrey Carroll 309.61Oklahoma St.`6-06
Devonte' Graham 49.20Kansas`6-02
Mohamed Bamba8.94Texas`7-00
Vladimir Brodziansky 108.82Texas Christian`6-11
Malik Newman 148.20Kansas`6-03
Manu Lecomte 207.70Baylor`5-11
Keenan Evans 127.20Texas Tech`6-03
Andrew Jones7.10Texas`6-04
Dean Wade 326.84Kansas St.`6-10
Trae Young6.80Oklahoma`0-00
Billy Preston6.70Kansas`6-10
Zach Smith 116.70Texas Tech`6-08
Jo Lual-Acuil 06.64Baylor`7-00

Ken Pomeroy ranked the Big 12 the best of 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, which will all be previewed here with notes on which schools are now "basketball" or "football" schools based on which program is stronger this season. Football revenue is much higher, but programs are much more expensive between equipment and the requirement of matching enough women's scholarships in other sports. Therefore some programs forgo FBS football programs to focus on low cost basketball programs as their biggest revenue sport.

Sports IllustratedFox Sports and ESPN have lauded Value Add Basketball for estimating the number of points each college basketball players is worth to his team above a replacement player - similar to baseball WAR (Wins Above Replacement). Massey Ratings is used for the football rankings above.

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