Big 12 Men’s Hoops 2024 postseason FINAL

thru FRIDAY 2024-03-29
7-8 NCAAT; 2-3 NIT .

THE BIG 12 is done

2024-03-29
NCAA
Duke 54
Houston 51

2024-03-28
NCAA
Illinois 72
Iowa State 69

2024-03-26
NIT
Cincinnati 81
Indiana St 85 Bearcats are last Big 12 NIT team to fall.

2024-03-24
NCAA
Texas A&M 95
Houston 100 OT

Clemson 72
Baylor 64

2024-03-23
NCAA
Gonzaga 89
Kansas 68

Washington St 56
Iowa State 67

Texas 58
Tennessee 62

NIT
Bradley 57
Cincinnati 74

2024-03-22
NCAA
Colgate 67
Baylor 92

Longwood 46
Houston 86

TCU 72
Utah State 88

2024-03-21
NCAA
Duquesne 71
BYU 67

Colorado St 44
Texas 56

S Dakota St 65
Iowa St 82

NC State 80
Texas Tech 67

Samford 89
Kansas 93

2024-03-20
NIT
Cin 73
San Fran 72

2024-03-19
NIT
KSU 82
Iowa 91

UCF 77
S FL 83


BIG 12 TEAMS IN THE POSTSEASON
NCAA TOURNAMENT
Seed/Region/Team
4M KANSAS
1S Houston
2E Iowa State
3W Baylor
6E BYU
6S Texas Tech
7M Texas
9M TCU

NIT
Cincinnati
Kansas St
UCF

Oklahoma declined an NIT invitation after being left out of the NCAA Tournament

Next up for KANSAS is Gonzaga on CBS at 2:15 PM Saturday.

Fun fact
Self & Few were born on the same day in 1962

CorpusJayhawk's pregame on KU v Gonzaga (reproduced here with permission)

Let us turn our attention to Gonzaga. Gonzaga and Kansas are the winningest teams in the NCAA in the last 21 years, since Self came to Kansas. Of course, KU has played a much much tougher SOS. And Mark Few has never missed the NCAA tourney. He has a nice roster led by big man Graham Ike, a Wyoming transfer. Here is his roster.
Gonzaga is a very good offensive team ranked 10th in adjusted offense. They are pretty consistently good across all offensive categories. They rebound well (33rd), they protect the ball well (26th), they shoot well (7th). They, like Kansas, lean into shooting from the 2 a little more than the 3. Defensively their weakness is ball pressure. They are sort of the antithesis of the Samford team. They are 35th overall defensively. Kansas is the 8th ranked defense even with the embarrassment against Samford. All of these stats are right up to the minute.

Based on the DPPI (and not adjusted for the loss of McCullar), KU is a little surprisingly a 2.5 point underdog against Gonzaga. I just am not quite ready to give up the ghost so I'm going with a win... KU 74, Gonzaga 73 - CorpusJayhawk

DPPI Rank
16 KU (O 19, D 13)
17 Gonzaga (O 16, D 45)
(NB: The above are taken from Corpus' comparison table in his Kansas v Gonzaga email, and do not match the info in his textual analysis above. HE)

DPPI Projected Score and [Win Probability]
76.3 Gonzaga [56.8%]
73.8 KANSAS [43.2%]
Margin 2.5

For comparison, here's the Kenpom info
Kenpom RANK
13 Gonzaga (O 8, D 42)
23 Kansas (O 61, D 13) (and yes, I double checked O was ranked 61 and it is. Unusual to see such a huge delta between kenpom and the DPPI -- HE)

Kenpom Projected Score and [Win Probability]
77 Gonzaga [59%]
75 KANSAS [41%]
Margin 2

Hoping that Corpus is right and KU earns Self's 589th KU career win (one short of Phog) and 57th NCAA Tournament win (which would tie him with Squid for 5th place in Most NCAAT wins).

LET'S GO JAYHAWKS!!!

I was hoping for a win at best, but a good showing at least.
That second half KU performance was all too familiar this season.

Ok, HCBS, you are now on the clock for next year.

Good luck and get 'er done in preparation for AY2024-25.

ROCK CHALK!

Kansas and Texas fall (good bye and bad luck in the SEC shorthorns) and Iowa State advances.

Tomorrow it’s
Baylor v Clemson 5:10 pm CDT ON TNT and
Houston v Texas A&M 7:40 pm on TNT

I’m rather torn in the later game as I’d like my Aggies to win, but I see Houston as one of the few teams that can beat UConn or UNC, and I really, really don’t want either of those programs winning again.

Also of note, Jayhawk Tad Boyle’s Colorado Buffalos play that Milwaukee team at 11:10 am on CBS.
BEAT ‘EM, BUFFS!

As I write this Oregon and Creighton have just gone to their second overtime tonight in the second consecutive Pittsburgh game to go to OT today.

The last time an NCAA site saw back to back OT games was in the Sweet 16 in the San Antonio Alamodome in 1997.

Anna and I were living in San Antonio then.
I was in the arena with my visiting father-in-law Frank and brother-in-law Gabriel watching
Minnesota beat Clemson 90-84 in 2OT and
Iowa State lose to UCLA 73-74 in OT
while over in Birmingham our Jayhawks fell to AZ 82-85.

Houston (2-0) and Iowa State (2-0) are the only Big 12 teams still Dancing.
Baylor (1-1) texas (1-1), Texas Tech (0-1), TCU (0-1), BYU (0-1) and sadly KANSAS (1-1) have all gone home.

Big 12 is 7-6 overall as of today.

Should Houston and Iowa State meet in this year’s NCAAT it will mean that the Big 12 will have another NCAA title, 3 of the last 4 (2021, 2022 and 2024).

Neither has won it all to date.

At least it wouldn’t be UConn (5), Duke (5) or UNC (6).

Who else still dancing has never won an NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament title?

Purdue
Gonzaga
Creighton
Tennessee
San Diego St
Illinois
Alabama
Clemson

Which helps explain my order of preference for whom I want to win it all from the Sweet 16 programs.

PROGRAM - CONFERENCE (# titles) REASON BEYOND #
Iowa State - Big 12 (0) going with the old school Big 8 program
Houston - Big 12 (0) at least the newcomer would be returning the crown to the Big 12
Tennessee - SEC (0) one for Gentleman Rick Barnes
San Diego St - Mountain West (0) because they aren’t a P6 hoops school & not Gonzaga
Gonzaga - West Coast (0) because they aren’t a P6 hoops school
Creighton - Big East (0) because they are Midwest and not in ACC or Big 10
Purdue - Big 10 (0) because they aren’t ACC or SEC and have fallen short of expectations so often
Illinois - Big 10 (0) because they aren’t ACC or SEC
Alabama - SEC (0) because they aren’t ACC
Clemson - ACC (0) last program Dancing that’s never won it all
NC State - ACC (2) because they aren’t AZ or Marquette
Arizona - Pac12 (1) Big 12 next fall, don’t dislike the HC, but can’t put them any higher after 1997
Marquette - Big East (1) ugh due to Smart, but program only has 1 title
UNC - ACC (6) rather see them win another in any year before another Duke or UConn win
Duke - ACC (5) because they aren’t UConn
UConn - Big East (5) because I want anyone else but UConn to win it all.

The origin post has been updated to reflect Cincinnati's loss to Indiana St in the NIT.

Additions to the OP are
1. the remaining NCAAT Schedule at the beginning of the post and
2. a listing of all the AY2023-24 Big 12 teams that made either the NCAA or National Invitational Tournaments after the RESULTS section.

The origin post has been updated to reflect Iowa State's loss to Illinois in the Sweet 16 Thursday.

Only Big 12 newcomer Houston left standing.

I would be okay with the Big 12 winning 3 of the last four tournaments.

BLUF
ANYONE but UConn -- or Duke, but if I HAD to choose between the two which I'd choose to have to lose, it would be UConn.

Don't care for Duke, but have a strong dislike for Hurley and UConn's "Johnny-come-lately" Final Four success (6 FF, 5 NCs), I must confess, stirs up clouds of envy, especially when I look at the history of our program missing by "that much!".

My wish list for tonight (NCAA Tournament titles in parentheses) --

• Houston (0) beats Duke (5)
• NC State (2) beats Marquette (1) -- it's Shaka, after all, and NC State is something of a Cinderella with it's ongoing 7 game 2024 post-season winning streak.
• Purdue (0) beats Gonzaga (0)
• Creighton (0) beats Tennessee (0) -- although I would be very happy for Rick Barnes if he finally won tonight and went on to win the title... guy is a class act, and I could simply not resist the opportunity to envision all those shorthorns fans simmering as he cut down the nets at "that OTHER UT".

Lucky Duke.

Houston loses Big 12 POY and 1st Team AA Jamal Shead in the first half and that is essentially the game.

Duke so damn lucky.

1986 Archie goes down with KU leading, Duke goes on to win.*

They lose tonight if Shead can play.

I do think NC State will best them on Sunday. The Wolfpack are on a 2011 UConn type run, and watching them today they are not slowing down.


*And no, I am NOT saying Archie was anywhere near as good or valuable to his team as Shead is to his. Just similar situations, losing a valuable team member at the worst time possible.