TCU’s Jamie Dixon says Big 12 will remain ‘best basketball league in the country’
The Big 12 will remain the best basketball league in the country with its latest additions. At least that’s according to TCU basketball coach Jamie Dixon and the well-respected statistics website KenPom.
“Obviously the basketball additions are tremendous, and it solidifies us as a Power Five conference,” Dixon said. “We’ll continue to keep Big 12 basketball as the best in the country.”
The league is adding BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and Central Florida with Oklahoma and Texas bolting for the SEC. BYU is expected to join the league by the 2023-24 season, while Cincy, UH and UCF will join no later than July 1, 2024. OU and UT are set to depart in the summer of 2025, at the latest.
Oklahoma and Texas are known as football schools, of course, but have boasted strong basketball programs over the years. But those basketball losses to the league are offset by the likes of BYU, Cincinnati and Houston.
BYU returned to the NCAA Tournament last season and has been to seven Sweet 16s in its history; Cincinnati has been to six Final Fours in its history and made nine straight trips to March Madness from 2011-19; and Houston is coming off a Final Four run last season and has reached the 20-win mark for six consecutive seasons under Kelvin Sampson.
UCF has the least basketball tradition of the four schools but did make the NCAA Tournament two years ago.
“We have to prove ourselves as a league going forward, but I do think it gives us the opportunity to all improve, all get better, go national a little bit more,” Dixon said. “The opportunity is upon us. It’s there. You can speak in the past to some degree, but it’s all about the future. We need to go prove it again.”
The KenPom ratings were based on seasons from 2014 through last year in determining which leagues played the best basketball based on current membership and future membership. The Big 12 ranked first under both calculations, although the reconfigured Big 12 saw the average rating drop from 16.78 to 15.42.
Still, that was better than the Big Ten (15.2), ACC (14.39), Big East (13.72), SEC (13.24) and Pac-12 (11.25). By adding Texas and OU, the SEC’s average rating improved from 12.75 to 13.24.
Memory Lane
Dixon has some history with every school joining the Big 12, most notably Houston.
TCU and Houston were members of the Southwest Conference when Dixon played for the Horned Frogs from 1984-87. He remembers facing Houston’s famed “Phi Slama Jama” team as a freshman and guarding future Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon in the post.
“I fronted Hakeem my freshman year when I was 160 pounds,” Dixon said, laughing. “That’s why he left and went to the league.”
Dixon recalled another unpleasant memory of facing Houston his senior season in 1986-87. The Frogs were undefeated at home until the Cougars defeated the Frogs late in the season.
“They weren’t very good, but they hit every shot,” Dixon said.
Dixon has coached against the other three programs. He’s never faced BYU as a head coach but saw it as an assistant at Hawaii in the 1990s.
He recently faced UCF as TCU’s head coach. The programs met in the semifinals of the 2017 NIT in Madison Square Garden with TCU rolling to a 68-53 victory.
Dixon has the most head coaching experience against Cincinnati. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati were members of the Big East for several years when Dixon coached at Pitt. Dixon has an 8-4 record against Cincy.
Donati weighs in
TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati feels the league is headed toward the right direction with these additions.
As Donati told the Star-Telegram, “It is definitely an exciting day for the Big 12 Conference. Expanding with these four schools will bring quality football and athletics programs and provides the entire membership access to new time zones and media markets that will help strengthen the league overall.”
This story was originally published September 11, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
