A Season of Big 12 What-Ifs

Monday night was painful for the Big 12. 

Houston came devastatingly close to winning the league’s third national championship in five years, but Florida stormed back from a 12-point second-half deficit to steal a 65-63 win. 

The pain is amplified by the fact that Texas Tech had the Gators down by nine with three minutes left and couldn’t finish the job, either. Throw in UConn’s late collapse in the round of 32, and three teams had Florida dead in the water throughout the tournament. 

Unfortunately, Florida played the role of a cockroach. They can seemingly survive anything. 

I’m devastated for Houston Head Coach Kelvin Sampson. It was right there for one of the game’s most respected elder statesmen. He will have more great teams with the Cougars, including next season, but will he ever have a 12-point lead in the national championship game again? 

It was also a huge missed opportunity to swing the narrative of the college basketball season away from the SEC and toward the Big 12. Instead of Florida’s win becoming a perfect coronation of the SEC’s dominant regular season, much of the talk likely would have shifted toward the Big 12 winning three championships in five years while being poised to do it again next year. 

CBS Sports’ Jon Rothstein already has four Big 12 teams ranked 11th or higher in his initial preseason top 25 for next season, including Houston at number one. It would have been easy to connect the current run of titles to the way next season lines up for another Big 12 trophy. 

Now, we’ll have to endure the chants from SEC country becoming even louder–on Twitter, podcasts, and even in the boardroom. They’re already the preeminent college football conference, last season notwithstanding, and now they can win basketball titles, too? 

They’re going to be nauseatingly obnoxious. 

Unfortunately, this is not the first time the Big 12 has let the SEC off the hook this academic year. 

I couldn’t help but think about how similar Houston’s loss felt to Arizona State’s heartbreaking double overtime loss to Texas in the College Football Playoff. 

That was an opportunity for the Sun Devils to shove all of the talk about the Big 12 and Group of Five not deserving playoff byes right back into the face of the loudest voices in the room from the SEC. It would have come right on the heels of the playoff committee sticking it to SEC country by leaving Alabama and Ole Miss out, and just before the SEC failed to make the national championship game for a second straight season. 

It also would have earned the Big 12 some much-needed respect on the national stage, which is valuable currency in the existential threat-laced college sports environment in 2025. 

And just like Houston, they came painstakingly close. 

In overtime, the Sun Devils were a 4th-and-13 stop away from an improbable comeback and upset for the ages. They may not have even needed overtime to finish the job if not for a bogus missed targeting call that should have saved an ASU drive late in the fourth quarter. 

While it’s easy to waste time daydreaming about how different things could be had Houston and Arizona State finished the job, take solace in the fact that the Big 12 has proven it can still compete on the biggest stage in both revenue sports. 

It’s progress, not perfection, right now for the league.

And the next Big 12 teams that find themselves doubted by the masses when they’re thrust into the spotlight should draw plenty of confidence from what we’ve seen this year.

What You Need to Know

• Baylor point guard Robert Wright entered the portal this week, and it didn’t take long for a report to come out about a destination. SicEm365’s Grayson Grundhoefer reports that Wright will head to BYU for an NIL deal worth a staggering amount of money. Predictably, and understandably, it’s turned into a contentious subject. Baylor Head Coach Scott Drew was expecting to build around Wright this year, and the Bears thought they had him locked in with a lucrative NIL deal. 

• BYU Advancement Vice President Keith Vorkink insinuated in an interview with Deseret News that the $3.5 million NIL number for Wright isn’t accurate. He also says BYU won’t be the highest bidder when recruiting players. The Cougars definitely have much more to offer in Provo than just money, but it seems a little hard to believe they weren’t the highest bidder to land number one prep prospect A.J. Dybansta.

• Speaking of Dybansta, a fan recently confronted him about rumors that he got $7 million in NIL money from BYU to choose the Cougars over Alabama and North Carolina. Here’s how Dybansta responded. 

• Texas Tech’s war chest helped lock down the Big 12 Player of the Year. J.T. Toppin is coming back to Lubbock for another season to make a whopping $4 million, according to Matt Norlander of CBS Sports. 

• Fellow Tech star Darrion Williams is exploring all of his options, including entering the transfer portal and declaring for the NBA draft. According to On3, he is the sixth-ranked player in the portal and has until June 15th to withdraw from the draft. 

• Houston didn’t wait long after the national championship game to get to work on its roster for next season. Former Texas Tech Red Raider and Creighton Blue Jay Pop Isaacs committed to the Cougars on Wednesday. Isaacs only played in eight games at Creighton this year due to a season-ending hip injury. He averaged 16 points per game at Texas Tech as a sophomore.

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