The fastest team in the Big 12

You guys already know OSU is one of the fastest teams in college football, but would you believe it if I told you they were one of the fastest teams in Big 12 hoops as well?

It’s true — we’ve been beating at the big, wooden door of speed since the ink was still wet on Travis Ford’s preposterous contract and he finally put together a squad that delivered.

The Big 12 in general is not a particularly speedy conference (14th out of 33 conferences in possessions per game per team at 65.5) but OSU was indeed the cream of the crop.

Here’s the full conference-games-only list (tempo = possessions per game):

This is actually a little big surprising to me because it felt like a lot of times (especially at the end of games) that Ford liked to take the air out of the ball.

The Cowboys had the third-best defense at creating turnovers though, which helps. Those five-second Smart-gets-a-steal-and-Markel-gets-an-oop offensive possessions add up quickly.

The pace of play is also good heading to the Tournament because OSU is not an efficient offensive team. If we roll with a No. 1 or No. 2 seed in the Sweet 16 in a few weeks I want as many possessions as possible.

More opportunities for steals and fast breaks — I don’t want to get into a slug-it-out game with some B1G team that shoots with two seconds left on the shot clock every possession. That doesn’t bode well for OSU going deep into March.