Kansas State Wildcats

The Big 12 has not been short on surprises in the last year.

On the football side, a league that appeared to have few top 10-caliber programs in the preseason produced one that spent much of the season there (Baylor) and another that finished there by defeating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl (Oklahoma).

In basketball, Kansas, as usual, is atop the standings, but the league has shown impressive depth with teams like Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas State and Iowa State all surprising through the course of the year.

Five freshmen were among the midseason top 25 released by the Wooden Award earlier this week, but the nation’s top freshman — at least this week — was not among them.

Syracuse’s Tyler Ennis, Duke’s Jabari Parker, Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins, Kentucky’s Julius Randle and Arizona’s Aaron Gordon all made the watch list for the national player of the year. The Jayhawks’ Joel Embiid did not.

No question the top storyline in 2013-14 for the casual fan — and even a handful of NBA fans — is the glut of elite freshmen.

Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Julius Randle and Aaron Gordon have become appointment viewing. Anyone paying close attention has ideas of who is delivering and who has work to do to live up to the recruiting rankings and NBA Draft stock.

Anyone just paying attention to those four — and other notables like Tyler Ennis at Syracuse and Noah Vonleh at Indiana — is doing themselves a disservice.

The Big 12 coach rankings start with Bill Self.

That’s the easy part.

After that, ranking the Big 12 coaches is a chore. Three of the league’s most accomplished career coaches — Bob Huggins, Rick Barnes and Tubby Smith have more than 1,700 wins among them — are coming off of lackluster seasons. Smith was let go from his last job, and Barnes will be under pressure to turn things around at Texas in a hurry.