Big 12 Basketball: Way-too-early power rankings for 2022-23 season
By Joey Loose
1. Kansas
National champion Kansas returns some of that talent from last season, with Bill Self riding the high of his second title into next year. The Jayhawks lose Ochai Agbaji and Christian Braun but have reloaded quite nicely, as Kansas tends to do. The bottom line is that these Jayhawks look like a national title favorite once again, which at this point isn’t any kind of surprise at Kansas.
Jalen Wilson (11.1 ppg, 7.4 rpg last year) is the biggest piece back from last year’s team, while guard Dajuan Harris Jr. should also play a much bigger role. The Jayhawks landed a star in former Texas Tech forward Kevin McCullar and will lean heavily on their young talent. This is a recruiting class that includes 5-star forward Gradey Dick, who’ll make an impact from the beginning, as well as talented 4-star athletes like MJ Rice and Ernest Udeh Jr.
It’s hard to replace what exactly Agbaji and Braun meant to this program, but some of these young guns have a chance to do just that. The talent on this Kansas squad is still immense and they are in fantastic shape to defend their title next season. It’s all going to depend on how up to speed these young players can get and how much of the scoring and depth they can provide; either way, this team is loaded with talent.
We’ve completed our look and attempt to rank the teams of the Big 12; which do you think we got wrong or right?