After the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, the Big 12 was staggering. Five of its six teams had fallen, three knocked from the bracket as the better-seeded team.
Only Texas Tech remained, and the third-seeded Red Raiders were part of a West Region from which the top four seeds advanced.
But Tech plowed through, defeating second-seeded Michigan in the Sweet 16 and top-seeded Gonzaga for the regional championship in a pair of defensive masterpieces.
The Red Raiders are headed to their first Final Four and will face Michigan State in one of two national semifinals on Saturday in Minneapolis. A big reason for their success, according to coach Chris Beard, is the strength of a conference that didn't flex its muscles early in the tournament.
The Big 12's complete round-robin scheduling, a lineup of some of the nation's top coaches and the overall talent level of the players helped prepare the Red Raiders for their March run, Beard said.
"In terms of the round robin, it's brutal when you're going through it, but it's just cool, man," Beard said. "The rivalries exist because you play everybody twice every year.
"The coaching in this league is just ridiculously good, and everybody has NBA (level) players."
That's mostly true even for Big 12 teams that didn't make the NCAA Tournament. Some mock NBA drafts have two Big 12 players projected for the first round _ Tech's Jarrett Culver and Jaxson Hayes of Texas. Hayes' Longhorns meet fellow Big 12 member TCU in an NIT semifinal on Tuesday.
Beard said his Texas Tech team, which reached the Elite Eight last year before falling to Villanova, was prepared for the rigors of the NCAA Tournament because of what it faces during the regular season.
"The last two years, we get to March and no matter who is in front of us, we've played a team just as good in the Big 12," Beard said.
ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla points out that every Big 12 program has played in the NCAA Tournament in the last three years.
"The league (in 2019) was as good as it's ever been because of a competition from one to 10," Fraschilla said.
Also, the Big 12 joins the ACC as the only conferences to advance a team to the Final Four in three of the past four seasons.
Now, it's a matter of finishing the deal. There's been just one national champion from the Big 12 since the league's inaugural season in 1996-97: Kansas in 2008.
Texas Tech is the fifth Big 12 program to play in the Final Four and this is the conference's 10th appearance. Only the Jayhawks have played in the national title game, in 2003, 2008 and 2012.
