New-look Big 12 Tournament set to begin Tuesday in Kansas City with Houston as the No. 1 seed

By Canadian Press on March 10, 2025.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The new-look Big 12 Tournament begins with the first of three straight quadruple-headers Tuesday, and the addition of four new programs and the departure of Texas and Oklahoma aren’t the only things that promise to make it look a bit different.

Kansas as the No. 6 seed for a second straight year? Cincinnati playing on the opening day as the No. 13 seed?

Nobody would have expected that at the start of the season.

But after the first run through the expanded 16-team league crowned Houston the regular-season champion and No. 1 seed, and set up the rest of the bracket for the T-Mobile Center, that is exactly what the Big 12 is looking at this week.

“I still think there’s enough gas in the tank that we can play our best moving forward,” said Kansas coach Bill Self, whose team was preseason No. 1 in the AP Top 25 but will now play No. 11 seed Utah or No. 14 seed UCF in Wednesday’s second round.

“We needed confidence,” Self said after a win over Arizona on Saturday, “from the way the game went, from playing well, from an energy standpoint, from falling behind, from losing all momentum, from players making plays on their own to rallying together.

“This game from a team standpoint had a lot of good things in it that should give us confidence moving forward.”

Meanwhile, the Bearcats were ranked as high as No. 14 in early December before collapsing in conference play. They went just 7-13 against Big 12 teams to fall into a tie with UCF and ahead of only Arizona State and Colorado. Now, Wes Miller’s team is in the position of needing a big run — perhaps at least to the title game — to reach the NCAA Tournament.

The Bearcats have played in the NIT each of the past two seasons.

As for the best of the league’s newcomers, Arizona tied for third in the standings but earned the No. 3 seed ahead of BYU due to tiebreaker procedures. That means the Wildcats could face Kansas again in Thursday’s quarterfinal round.

“We’ve got a couple of days to recover and get our minds right and build, build for this postseason,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said. “Obviously I got really high standards for myself and the program and I wish we were higher than third, but it’s where we ended up. I don’t think there’s anything to be ashamed of being third in the Big 12. So now we got to prepare for the conference tournament and see what we can do. I’m looking forward to the Big 12 Tournament and experiencing that.”

More new faces

Utah earned the No. 11 seed for its first Big 12 tourney, despite firing coach Craig Smith a few weeks ago, and will play UCF on Tuesday. Arizona State landed the No. 15 seed and will play No. 10 seed Kansas State. And Colorado, which returned to the Big 12 after a foray in the Pac-12, is seeded last and will open against No. 9 seed TCU on Tuesday.

Tournament favorites

Houston rolls into town having won 10 straight, including victories over No. 2 seed Texas Tech and fifth-seeded Iowa State. In fact, the Cougars have lost just once since November — an 82-81 overtime loss to the Red Raiders on Feb. 1.

The Cougars, who were beset by injuries at the time, lost to Iowa State in the Big 12 title game last season.

“There’s a winning DNA that this program has had for a long time that all the new players have to buy into, and it can’t be one foot in, one foot out. You have to surrender to this crazy culture that we have,” Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson said. “I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination are we a great team, (but) we are a good team.”

Defending champions

Iowa State will play the Cincinnati-Oklahoma State winner in Wednesday’s second round. The Cyclones were ranked as high as No. 2 in the AP Top 25 earlier this season before injuries and illnesses set in. They wound up losing three of their last five in the regular season, including a loss to the Cowboys in Stillwater late last month.

Curious coaching case

The Utes will be led by interim coach Josh Eilert in Kansas City, despite announcing last week the hiring of former star Alex Jensen as their next head coach. Jensen had been serving as an assistant with the Dallas Mavericks.

“I had a great talk with him,” Eilert said. “We had a great conversation and he’s leaning on me to lead the program.”

Other coaching situations

There could be more Big 12 vacancies after the Tournament. Arizona State’s Bobby Hurley has made only three NCAA tourneys in 10 seasons, while UCF coach Johnny Dawkins has qualified just once in nine seasons.

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Dave Skretta, The Associated Press