Arizona State men’s basketball coach Bobby Hurley emphasizes toughness in practice as the Sun Devils prepare for their inaugural Big 12 season. (File photo by Bennett Silvyn/Cronkite News)
PHOENIX – There are sure to be adjustments and maybe some growing pains in the upcoming 2024-25 college basketball season for this year’s inductees to the Big 12 Conference.
Arizona State, Arizona, Colorado and Utah all became members of the league following the collapse of the Pac-12 Conference and joined a pantheon of college basketball powerhouses in the Big 12.
The overarching theme of the Big 12 Basketball Media Day was the challenge former Pac-12 teams face while adjusting to the officiating, style of play and travel the newcomers will experience in the Big 12.
The Big 12 has a reputation for playing a physical and aggressive brand of basketball, particularly on the defensive end.
“A few guys that I respect have said Big 12 games may be officiated a little differently than Pac-12 games in terms of physicality,” said Arizona State coach Bobby Hurley. “I’ve tried to reinforce that message in practice, by allowing more contact to go.
“We start the season playing in non-conference games, but once we face teams in Big 12 basketball, we have to be prepared to win in the trenches and in the paint. There are some really good basketball teams that are good at rebounding and scoring around the basket.”
Utah coach Craig Smith acknowledged the challenge the new teams face in terms of physicality and officiating.
“It’s a different brand of basketball compared to the Pac-12, and you have to adapt in order to be successful in this league,” Smith said. “It’s an incredibly physical league, you have to prioritize defense and rebounding. Not a lot of fouls are called, and that’s not a good or bad thing. You have to be able to adapt and adjust to that style of play.”
The adjustment to calls might not be as severe as anticipated. The Big 12 averaged 16.5 personal fouls per game in 2023, according to teamrankings.com. On the other side, the Pac-12 conference averaged 16.8 personal fouls per game in 2023.
Another topic of discussion heading into the season is the higher level of talent the new programs will face across the conference, which is arguably the toughest in men’s college basketball.
The Big 12 is the first conference in history to have five teams ranked among the top 10 in the Associated Press Top 25 preseason men’s basketball rankings, including No. 1-ranked Kansas and 10th-ranked newcomer Arizona. Cincinnati, at No. 20, is also nationally ranked.
The league produced back-to-back national champions in 2021 and 2022 and sent eight teams to the NCAA Tournament last season. The league has also had at least seven representatives in March Madness in seven of the last 10 years. It’s no wonder Kansas coach Bill Self has called the league “a monster.”
Still, Big 12 coaches unanimously welcome the challenge. Houston’s Kelvin Sampson rejects the notion that the conference has evolved into a gauntlet too great to conquer. However, he concedes that with the additions, the league “should be better now than it was” having added eight teams in two years.
“Now that’s the difference,” Sampson said. “Fan bases, the arenas, the atmospheres.”
Travel, too, will be a challenge. The league now spans four time zones from three.
West Virginia coach Darian DeVries agreed that the Pac-12 teams are in for a new level of basketball culture and fandom around the Big 12.
“There’s so many great venues in this league, and atmospheres – including ours in Morgantown – that I’m excited about it,” Devries said.
The newcomers aren’t the only ones who will have to adapt on the fly. Longtime Big 12 official John Higgins was recently named coordinator of officials for the Collegiate Officiating Consortium, which now includes the Big 12 and Missouri Valley conferences, along with the Big West, Big Sky, Western Athletic and Mountain West conferences.
Higgins plans to make changes that will improve transparency and accountability across all of the leagues within the consortium. And he will be using officials from conferences in the west that are new to the Big 12’s veteran coaches.
“We’re going to go from coast to coast, obviously, and pull (referees) that you may not have seen before from (conferences on) the West Coast and the East Coast,” Higgins said.
Under Higgins, officials will be held to a high standard this season, with comprehensive evaluations being required after the conclusion of each game by an “independent person,” something that wasn’t done while Higgins was blowing the whistle.
These evaluations will be conducted by retired basketball officials and coaches to assist in determining whether an official meets the criteria to be retained into the following year, or to reassess the number of games they are assigned to officiate.
Even though the game evaluation reports will not be available to the public or media, players and coaches now have additional insight into the calls being made on the floor and the reasoning behind them.
In an effort to provide further transparency regarding the officiating in the Big 12, information explaining expectations on calls will be available for coaches and players to review.
“Every two weeks there will be a training video that goes to our coaches, our players and our officials, and it’s guidelines on how we’re going to teach and train officials on certain plays,” Higgins said. “Whether it be a block/charge play, path-play drives, basket interference, all those kinds of plays.”