No trash talk intended.
We had similar discussions at OSI. It was a moderately strong league this year, but short of Big 12 standards.
Kansas was fine. Maybe a little down with struggles at PG.
Kansas State held up their end (although not in the Dance).
Over the last few seasons Missouri, Baylor and Texas would/should have been up there with Kansas State. Texas was awful, Baylor underachieved (they do this fairly often under Drew, but then again they were nothing before he got there) and this wound up being an unlucky season to trade Missouri for West Virginia. I still think that trade was fairly even in hoops, so I'm not worried about it.
Oklahoma, Oklahoma State and Iowa State all had good seasons considering where they were coming from, but they weren't ready, talent wise, to carry as much slack as the three teams above created. These programs, especially the two Oklahoma schools, getting back in gear is good news though. OU and OSU were among the top 4-5 programs in the Big 12 it's first ten years. They both have long rivalries with Kansas and a nationally recognized rivalry between themselves.
Texas Tech remained awful, but that's kind of par lately. I don't think Tubby can fix that, but he may at least improve them enough not to drain RPI's as badly for the rest of us and keep our kids from having a night off.
TCU for A&M is a bad trade in basketball and there's no way around that.
Still, this conference has the potential to be a top 3-4 conference most years, and could be the best in the country once every 4-6 years. That's not much of a stretch. We hold our own in terms of NBA prospects nearly every year. We don't have as many basketball schools as most of the other big conferences, but Texas and the old Big Eight schools are, like the Big Ten schools, focused on balance. I think this will get better as early as next year.
So, all that said, who's leaving early? I haven't seen an announcement from McLemore yet, or Austin. We have no idea what Smart will do yet at OSI, but signs point toward an announcement soon.