College Hoops 3rd Best Conference History - Big 12

Amazing that a conference as dominant as the Big 12 could in turn be so dominated by one team. Kansas record streak of 14 consecutive titles finally ended in 2019. That year Iowa State won the tournament title after Texas Tech won the regular season title and then just missed the National Title.

However, from Wilt Chamberlain in 1957, to Paul Pierce in 1997 and Mario Chalmers in 2008 - three of the top six teams are from Kansas and those teams have combined for a 17-7 mark with a 5.5 rating, the third best in the game.

When you consider that Texas Tech team, Baylor's dominant 2021 national champs, and Wayman Tisdale's 1985 Sooners are the others in the Top 6, you can see the top six is tough to beat.

The 2008 national champs from Kansas ranked 2nd in the game with a 15.2 currently, but that is a bit suspect. In typical Kansas fashion they rolled up huge margins of victory against the other 21st century Big 12 teams to pass shoot up through the rankings.

Note I do list Danny Ainge's Brigham Young team with the Big 12 teams rather than in the "other" grouping since they are joining the Big 12. I did not include the American Athletic Conference teams that are moving to the Big 12 since they are in a conference list I include.

Rnk	Great Team	Year	Key Player	W	L	Pts	Allow	Rate
	Top 6 Big 12			17	7	74.1	68.3	5.5
1	Kansas	2008	Mario Chalmers	5	1	74.7	56.0	15.2
2	Kansas	1997	Paul Pierce	3	0	75.3	60.3	10.1
3	Baylor	2021	Jared Butler	2	2	86.0	78.5	7.1
4	Oklahoma	1985	Wayman Tisdale	3	1	75.3	73.8	1.9
5	Texas Tech	2019	Jarrett Culver	3	2	65.6	67.2	0.3
6	Kansas	1957	Wilt Chamberlain	1	1	67.5	74.0	-1.5
7	Oklahoma St.	2004	John Lucas	1	3	68.8	71.0	-3.1
8	Kansas St.	2008	Michael Beasley	1	1	75.0	75.5	-3.3
9	Oklahoma	2016	Buddy Hield	1	3	60.3	67.3	-4.4
10	West Virginia	2010	Kevin Jones	1	3	70.3	76.0	-4.6
11	Oklahoma St.	1946	Bob Kurland	0	1	80.0	82.0	-5.0
12	Texas	2003	T.J. Ford	1	2	68.7	76.3	-5.3
13	Kansas	1988	Danny Manning	0	1	58.0	67.0	-7.6
14	West Virginia	1959	Jerry West	0	1	68.0	69.0	-8.4
15	Brigham Young	1981	Danny Ainge	0	1	67.0	77.0	-8.6

We invented the Value Add Basketball Game, and since then have grown it to to 135 teams of all-time great teams and players. We have played 188 games to date, and 63,000 unique visitors have clicked on the game. 

Seven current conferences have at least six all-time great teams in the game. We decided to rank those conferences based on the average rating of their top six teams so far in our games against other teams.

Click on the game to play yourself - it contains everything you need to play the Value Add Basketball game, which lets you pit any of 136 great all-time college teams against each other. To pick your two teams it is best to click on this Google doc and print the pages of the teams you want (each team is one page). I track my games on this google sheet, but play your own for free!

Kansas Overcomes Olajuwan's 9 blocks, 18 rebounds

 Hakeem Olajuwon set a game record with 9 blocked shots and added 18 rebounds in the greatest defensive performance we've had in the Value Add Basketball Game.

However, Paul Pierce's 1997 Kansas squad played defense of their own with 13 steals to win the turnover battle 22-10 and defeated the Houston 1983 Phi Slamma Jamma squad 64-59 to advance to our Final Four.

The key moment occured with 4:58 (7 possessions) left when Clyde Drexler hit a 3-pointer to pull Houston within 57-58, but then fouled out guarding Pierce at the other end.

Twice after that Kansas scored on plays with a 31 die roll on the two 6-sided dice which would have led to a steal by Drexler and fast break due to his highest possible 11-20 steal range, but his replacement Benny Anders' worst steal range (11-10) meant the best steal ranges in the game were Michael Young and Larry Micheaux (11-15) allowed Kansas to score.

Normally steals only occur on a roll of 11-16 in the defenders range, but a roll of 31 is only a steal if any defender is an 11-20 steal.

Houston did cut it to 60-59, and with 1:30 (3 possessions) to play and Olajuwan had his record 9th rejection on a roll of 32 (which like the 31 for steals is the universal block number for any block 11-30 on the court which Olajuwon is). However Pierce grabbed the offensive rebound and scored to make it 62-59 en route.to the 64-59 win that sent Kansas to our Final Four.