Big 12 Basketball: Iowa State, TCU, Texas Tech rise in latest power rankings

More than half of this January has passed us by, meaning we’re more than halfway through the college basketball season. The excitement of the regular season is in the rearview mirror and conference play has already begun to transpire. What we’ve already seen these last few weeks is indicative of what’s to come: more thrillers, more buzzer beaters, and more conference surprises.

It’s important to remember that it’s only January. While we’ve learned a lot about every team in the nation, we still have several weeks before March and Selection Sunday and the most important games of the season. Clearly, these weeks are very important to certain teams and certain leagues, and that’s undoubtedly the case in a league as a jam-packed with talent as the Big 12.

This conference has been extremely successful in basketball in recent memory, claiming two of the last three national titles and regularly placing many teams into the Big Dance. It’s also a conference in a state of flux, with four new schools in the league this season and four more joining next year, just as Oklahoma and Texas mark their farewells. A conference that’s seen stark competition between its ten members has fourteen pretty solid schools doing war on a regular basis this year.

We won’t go too into detail quite yet about those competitive schools, but we will stare closely at the Big 12’s current state and standing, ranking those fourteen teams. We’re not just scanning the standings or considering only head-to-head, but each team’s body of work and recent play, especially how the teams have looked now in Big 12 play. It’s a long season and much could still change ahead, but this is how we see the Big 12 right now in the middle of January.