The Most Overrated and Underrated Basketball Teams in the Big 12

The Big 12’s preseason poll (as voted on by the coaches) came out last week, and for the first time in 22 years, Oklahoma State was picked to finish last in the conference. In fact, before this season, Oklahoma State had never been picked to finish worse than 8th in the league, even when it was at 12 teams.

I thought it would be fun to look back at the data on which teams are traditionally the easiest to peg and which are the toughest as well as the most overrated and underrated by coaches in this league.

First, let’s look at which teams are easy to pick.

Kansas is easy because you just write a “1” every year. Same with TCU and “10” except for this year when the Frogs were picked to finish third (!) Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas and Baylor have traditionally been the most volatile in the league as all four have on average finished more than two spots different (either good or bad) from where they were picked preseason.

It’s important to note that I used data from the Big 12 media guide for these charts. The preseason polls are straightforward, but for the postseason finish, when there were ties, I rounded up. For example, last year WVU, Baylor and Iowa State all finished at 12-6 behind Kansas so I put them all as second-place finishers.

I don’t know if this is the best way to do this, but it’s how I did it. In football, it’s more straightforward because you have a direct tiebreaker (head to head), but in hoops where you play each other twice it’s messier. I figured that since we keep saying Kansas has won 103 straight Big 12 titles even though they tied some of those that this was the fairest way.

Anyway, here are the most often overrated teams in the league.

Oh no! In 38 percent of seasons Oklahoma State has been overrated by Big 12 coaches. That includes 1997, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2016. The biggest miss was in 2014 when OSU was picked to finish first and finished, gulp, eighth.

It’s not a huge surprise that Texas has been the most overrated team. Nor is it a surprise that Kansas has been the most-accurately picked one.

Here are the Oklahoma State years.

Eddie overrated teams: 4/10
Sean overrated teams: 1/2
Ford overrated teams: 3/8

Of course Ford’s teams were also picked to finish, on average, two spots lower in a (mostly) 10-team league compared to a 12-team league.

The bottom line here, though, is that Oklahoma State has not lived up to its billing throughout the history of the Big 12 Conference and especially not in recent years. I think in a lot of ways it resembles Texas in football. You always think they’re going to be better than they are, and when you start to take a closer look at their history in this conference, it’s not so pretty. OSU has one regular season Big 12 crown in basketball. One. In 21 years. That’s as many as it has in football.

Here’s one more intriguing chart. The average of where teams were picked against their average finish.

The good news for the Pokes? After being picked No. 10 in the league this year, it’s impossible for them to be overrated no matter what happens on the court..