OK, Iowa State dominated the final. But Big 12 newcomers held their own this season
The year of expansion in Big 12 men’s basketball came to a crushing but unsurprising end. Top-ranked Houston, the most successful of the league’s four newcomers, fell hard to Iowa State 69-41 in the Big 12 championship game on Saturday.
The Cougars were up against history. Once the Cyclones get to the title game, there’s been no alternate ending. Saturday’s outcome made them 6-0 on trophy night in the event’s 27-year history.
Iowa State out-scrapped and somehow out-defended the nation’s top defensive team in an environment so pro-Iowa State that Hilton Coliseum should be renamed T-Mobile Center North.
Houston (30-4) won’t face a more difficult assignment in March than playing Iowa State in Kansas City.
“I don’t remember Hilton being this tough to play in,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said. “It says a lot about Iowa State’s fan base. ... Other games all felt like a fair fight. This one didn’t see very fair. But all kudos to Iowa State’s fans.”
For the Cyclones, Milan Momcilovic’s 18 points included a crazy corner 3-pointer, and Keshon Gilbert, voted the tournament’s most outstanding player, added 16.
Iowa State savored the net-cutting ceremony. In coach T.J. Otzelberger’s third season, the Cyclones (27-7) are headed to a top three seed and likely will open their NCAA Tournament quest in Omaha, Nebraska. Play like this starting next week and Iowa State can make some serious NCAA noise.
The title-game loss aside, Houston gets mad respect for blowing through the nation’s top-rated conference to finish in first place and reach the tournament championship game in its first year.
The Cougars will be rewarded with a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, and should be one of two Big 12 newcomers to reach the Big Dance, along with BYU.
Cincinnati and UCF are the others new to the Big 12, and both programs are likely headed to a tournament.
Before the season, the speculation about the new schools’ preparedness for the Big 12’s bright lights were well founded. After all, they were joining a conference that had won two of the previous three national championships and had placed a team in the Final Four in four of the previous five tournaments.
The newcomers’ response? For starters, they all beat Kansas this season, and the Jayhawks finished a collective 2-4 against them.
At the Big 12 tournament, all of the newcomers won at least one game. The last time the league expanded, it took TCU three years and West Virginia four to win a league tournament game.
If this tournament didn’t live up to its reputation in competitiveness — the average margin of games before the championship was 14 1/2 and Saturday’s margin was the biggest in Big 12 title game history — the event and environment scored in other ways to the coaches.
“It’s a great city, a great city,” UCF coach Johnny Dawkins said. “The arena is spectacular.”
BYU’s Mark Pope called T-Mobile Center an “incredible venue.”
Cincinnati’s Wes Miller grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina, and attended the storied ACC Tournament, which set the standard for conference championships.
“I always thought that experience was special in Greensboro, it was the right place for the ACC Tournament,” Miller said. “You get that same sense here, that old-school conference tournament feel.”
How will a second year of expansion affect men’s basketball in the conference? Perennial power Arizona leads the way. Colorado played for the Pac-12 championship on Saturday. Utah has a proud program with a history of success and Arizona State played in last year’s NCAA Tournament.
Those schools collectively will have a tough act to follow.
