The 2021-2022 college basketball season Begins with a Big 12 team being the defending national champion\u2026 and it\u2019s not the Kansas Jayhawks. The Big 12 has a great chance of landing at least one Final Four team this season, for reasons which will be explained below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Team Likely To Surprise<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Oklahoma State Cowboys will be expected to falter by many people who will immediately identify the absence of Cade Cunningham and arrive at the conclusion that the Pokes won\u2019t be very good. However, coach Mike Boynton developed the other players on the roster last season. Cunningham was certainly the main reason the Cowboys did so well, but he had help from role players who matured and gained confidence as the season went along. Those players are back for another season, and they should be very good. Oklahoma State won\u2019t finish in the top three of the Big 12, but many people will expect the Cowboys to finish outside the top five of the conference. They probably will finish fifth, which would be a very solid result this season, all things considered. That would get Oklahoma State back to the NCAA Tournament and maintain momentum for the program one year after Cunningham\u2019s departure to the NBA, where he became a No. 1 overall draft pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Team Likely To Disappoint<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Texas Tech Red Raiders reached the national championship game of the NCAA Tournament in 2019, falling to the Virginia Cavaliers in overtime of a classic. Chris Beard is the man who coached the Red Raiders to that game. Now he is in Texas with the Longhorns, seeking bigger money and a chance to build a superpower. Texas Tech was a solid NCAA Tournament-caliber team last season. It lost to Arkansas in the second round of March Madness. Beard, had he stayed in Lubbock, was likely to continue to make a steady string of NCAA Tournament appearances. He was going to keep Texas Tech relevant on the national scene and maybe make another darkhorse March run every now and then. However, with the resources available to him at Texas, Beard can create a superpower which is able to compete with Kansas and Baylor for No. 1 seeds on a regular basis. Beard\u2019s absence from Texas Tech could be a bigger blow than many people anticipate. Mark Adams, a Beard assistant, was promoted to head coach. He knows his players and enjoys great familiarity with the local recruiting scene, but it remains to be seen if he is the right coach for this program. Expecting a downturn for Texas Tech seems fairly logical this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Conference Champion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chris Beard difference will turn Texas from a sleeping giant into a powerhouse. Beard is an elite coach who now gets his hands on Texas\u2019s elite resources. He brought in two high-impact transfers \u2013 Marcus Carr of Minnesota and Timmy Allen from Utah \u2013 who should give UT the edge in a ferocious competition with fellow Big 12 title contenders Kansas and defending national champion Baylor. The Longhorns are in position to do special things this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2021-2022 college basketball season Begins with a Big 12 team being the defending national champion\u2026 and it\u2019s not the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":5326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ncaab"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19648,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19633\/revisions\/19648"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}