The Big 12 women’s basketball season is four games into conference play and all 16 teams were in action on Wednesday night, as TCU and Kansas moved its game from Tuesday due to weather.
We’re now starting to get a much clearer picture of where each of these teams are with almost a quarter of the season done. Seven teams would make the NCAA Tournament if it started today, per ESPN, but the league is hoping to sneak in at least eight.
Our last power rankings were right before the holidays and right after the first round of league games. Now that we’re in league action, we’ll be on a weekly cadence every Friday until we get to Kansas City and the Big 12 Tournament.
This week we’ll focus on last year’s four new teams — BYU, Cincinnati, Houston and UCF.
Let’s dig in.
No. 1 TCU (16-1, 4-0; Last Ranking: No. 1)
No. 2 Kansas State (16-1, 4-0; Last Ranking: No. 2)
No. 3 Oklahoma State (13-2, 3-1; Last Ranking: No. 6)
No. 4 Baylor (13-3, 3-1; Last Ranking: No. 3)
No. 5 West Virginia (13-2, 3-1; Last Ranking: No. 7)
No. 6 Utah (12-3, 3-1; Last Ranking: No. 4)
No. 7 Colorado (11-4, 2-2; Last Ranking: No. 5)
No. 8 Arizona (11-6, 2-2; Last Ranking: No. 8)
No. 9 Iowa State (11-6, 2-2; Last Ranking: No. 10)
No. 10 Kansas (11-4, 1-3; Last Ranking: No. 11)
No. 11 Arizona State (8-8, 2-2; Last Ranking: No. 15)
No. 12 Cincinnati (9-5, 1-3; Last Ranking: No. 13)
It’s a fight between the Bearcats and the BYU Cougars to be the best among the four second-year Big 12 teams. And, for now, it’s the Bearcats, by virtue of their win over the Cougars last weekend. Otherwise, Cincy has played the top three teams in these rankings and lost. There are more opportunities coming.
For the Bearcats to have any postseason hopes — NCAA, WBIT, WNIT, what have you — they’re going to need to win at six or seven games down the stretch before Kansas City. That means Cincy cannot lose to UCF and Houston. Then, coach Katrina Merriweather and her crew must steal some wins from teams like Colorado, Arizona, Arizona State, Kansas and Texas Tech.
The final scores of their Big 12 losses show blowouts, but the Bearcats were in each game before those top three teams pulled away from them. Cincinnati has the talent, led by Jillian Hayes, to win games down the stretch.
No. 13 BYU (10-5, 1-3; Last Ranking: No. 12)
BYU won a “had-to-have-it” game on Wednesday over Houston. And the Cougars have been in each of their three conference losses, though WVU got away from them in the second half.
I saw the Cougars in person in November and I felt they were a team capable of sneaking into the NCAA Tournament behind Delaney Gibb, Amari Whiting and Emma Calvert, the last an underrated forward in this conference. BYU’s problem has been closing the deal. The losses to both Arizona and Cincinnati were winnable.
They’re in the same boat as Cincinnati. The Cougars probably need at least six more wins by the Big 12 Tournament to get consideration for postseason play. BYU won’t want to leave it up to winning a game or two in Kansas City to get an invite to postseason play.
No. 14 Texas Tech (12-5, 1-3; Last Ranking: No. 9)
No. 15 UCF (7-7, 0-4; Last Ranking: No. 14)
It’s been a rough go lately for the Knights, who were without Kaitlin Peterson and Hannah Gusters for a bit due to illness and minor injuries. Both are back, but it hasn’t stopped the bleeding for UCF, which has lost five straight and seven of their last eight games.
The Knights have lost their four league games by an average of 25.7 points per game. Some of that is skewed by the 40-point loss to TCU. UCF just hasn’t been in any of those games. The Knights will get a shot at Cincinnati this weekend. That’s a game it must have to start trying to turn this season around.
No. 16 Houston (4-11, 0-4; Last Ranking: No. 16)
The Cougars have been behind the eight-ball from the start. They lost a pair of key contributors to injury before the season even started and they started the season with three straight losses.
Houston lost to BYU on Wednesday, and it has now lost four straight and eight of its last 10 games. It’s hard to see the Cougars turning this around enough to get back to .500 by season’s end.
Guards Laila Blair, Gigi Cooke and Eylia Love are all averaging more than 11 points per game. And Kierra Merchant is coming. She dropped 23 points on BYU. She’s one of the future pieces of this program.
Coach Ronald Hughey’s job bears monitoring. The Cougars haven’t been to any kind of postseason play since the WNIT in 2021. This is starting to feel like a TCU 2022-23 situation, where the Horned Frogs won eight games, including just one in the Big 12. That compelled TCU to move on from Raegan Pebley.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
