Big 12 Basketball power rankings: Road warriors dominate the week

There were only one group of games this week, but it was as crazy a start for Big 12 basketball as possibly imagined. These updated rankings prove it.

Coming into the conference season, each Big 12 basketball team had varying levels of success, from top-notch signature wins to just simply avoiding bad losses altogether. At this point, all 10 teams are certainly in the NCAA tournament conversation, and the Big 12 top to bottom is the best league without question right now.

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Conference play opened on Friday evening, with eight of the 10 teams playing. To some degree, the results weren’t all too surprising considering the amount of talent involved. But the interesting aspect of the results was that four out of the winners were the road teams. The only team that held serve was No. 22 Texas Tech, who blew out a No. 18 Baylor team that was hobbled on the interior coming in.

As far as the other winners go, No. 7 West Virginia went to Stillwater to beat Oklahoma State in a comeback effort despite their best player struggling. Kansas State went into the Hilton Coliseum to blow past Iowa State, thanks in part to an explosive first half.

The Texas Longhorns had a great chance to beat No. 11 Kansas, but the team’s defense failed them at the end. Then finally, No. 10 TCU and No. 12 Oklahoma had an instant classic, but it was Trae Young and the Sooners who pulled out the close win.

This was just the first week and only one game has been played, so it’s incredibly soon to make definitive observations, but the fact that teams have found early success winning on the road could mean that the locations of these games may not matter much.

There’s not going to be too much analysis in these rankings, but plenty of teams have moved based on this weekend’s results. Here’s how the Big 12 teams look heading into 2018.