Seeing the Big 12 conference among the top in the NCAA is nothing new, with the league having more than half of its teams competitive nationally each year.  The Big 12 is currently as balanced as it has ever been with all ten teams currently boasting winning records while four of them are ranked top fifteen in the latest AP poll.

For a conference constantly deemed as the best in the country year round, the Kansas Jayhawks have won the league’s regular season title an impressive fourteen straight years. But like every year the other teams won’t likely make it a cake walk for the young Kansas team.

One of the bigger threats to dethrone the Jayhawks this year are the Oklahoma Sooners who have already beaten Kansas this year at home. The Sooners have one of the better stories in college basketball in freshman guard Trae Young. Young has no doubt been the best player in the country this year, so far averaging 30 points 10 assists and 2 steals a game.

The Texas Tech Red Raiders were an afterthought in the Big 12 race for many years but this year they find themselves right behind Kansas as well. The Raiders don’t impress statistically but with three scorers in double digits, they get the job done.

The depth is unreal in a league where it seems like everyone beats each other in a round robin-type of process. Earlier this week a ranked West Virginia team went on the road versus an Iowa State squad that was ninth in the conference.

The Cyclones controlled from the start and West Virginia failed to capitalize, the story of the Big 12 conference. The balance and overall competitiveness of the league really makes it interesting to think of how the NCAA tournament selection committee will view these Big 12 teams.

In the past the committee let it be known their thoughts on the strength of a particular conference by the NCAA tournament seeding for those teams, but it may be hard to punish a conference that has eight or nine teams that match the criteria for an NCAA tournament team.