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MORGANTOWN -- All season long, Bob Huggins has been consistent in his insistence that the Big 12 is the best basketball conference in the nation, but only now, as the spotlight glares on the sport through coverage given the Final Four, are they really taking note of his words.
This is especially true as we have reached the Final Four without a Big 12 representative in sight unless he possesses a ticket to a game, Seven teams were in the field but by the end of the first weekend five of them were gone, including the flag carrier for Big 12 dominance, defending champion Kansas.
It was a dismal performance from what most regarded as the nation's top conference, yet Huggins has held strong to his beliefs, his message going after appearing with Jeff Goodman on his podcast heading into the Final Four weekend.
It was noted that as strong as the conference was, it gets four new teams next year -- Cincinnati, Houston, Central Florida and BYU -- and that could make it even stronger, but Huggins' response indicated they were in for a rude awakening.
"You want the honest answer? I feel sorry for them," Huggins said. "They have absolutely no idea what they're getting into."
He was indicating that as good as they have been, as strong as any of their history may be, they were walking head-on into a gun fight carrying nothing more than a penknife.
"I've been in a lot of leagues and I've been in a lot of leagues with the best coaches in America. And with the best players in America. And I'm telling you right now, [it's] the hardest league that I've ever coached in…ever," he went on.
And there was more.
"And (the Big 12 has) the best fan bases. You go in and they may be 3-17 and they've got 14,000 people sitting in there," he said. "It's unbelievable the fan support, how good the players are, how good the coaching is, it is such a hard, hard league. And you got to go through it twice. And I'm going to tell ya, they're not ready for that."
That Huggins is saying this is nothing new.
Go back to last October, to the Big 12 Media Day.
"I think if you take a look at the NBA draft picks over the years, it's incredible, the amount of No. 1 picks, the first pick in the draft, first-rounders. There's great players in the league, for one. There's great coaching in the league. How do you get better than the coaches we have in this league?
"There's no easy out. And the guys that coach here — and we show it to recruits all the time, the number of people from this league that have gone on and not just played in the NBA, but starred in the NBA. You don't do that unless you're a really good player. Players and coaches have made it a great league."
As so often happens, when this took off on social media, there were those who jumped upon Huggins' comparison of leagues, especially those from the Big East, a league the Mountaineers were calling home when Huggins arrived and a league many consider to have been the most contentious of all-time.
That two of the Final Four this year, four-time NCAA champion UConn and Creighton, come from the Big East, there was a push that Huggins might be exaggerating just a bit.
They turned the clock back more than a decade, to the 2011 season, a year after Huggins and West Virginia came out of the Big East to reach the Final Four, and noted that season the Big East sent 11 teams to the NCAA Tournament.
That's more teams than the Big 12 has in its membership until next year … and, coincidentally, the UConn Huskies won that NCAA tournament.
And, if you want to look at things from a historical perspective, certainly the Big East carries as much prestige as does the Big 12 with Syracuse, Georgetown, Villanova, UConn and Louisville all having great players, legendary coaches and national titles.
Huggins's, and the Big 12's, claim to being the superior conference comes from its claim that "it has no bottom" and that on any given day a team can beat any other team. They add to that the fact that they have been playing a round-robin schedule where each team plays home-and-home against the other nine teams, beating up on one-another all season long.
Using that 2011 Big East Conference of 2011 when it sent 11 teams to the tournament, it was very soft at the bottom … Seton Hall finishing at 13-18, Rutgers and Providence at 15-17, South Florida at 10-23 and DePaul at 10-24, finishing its conference schedule with a 1-17 record.
That, of course, meant that the challenge was not the same day-in and day-out that teams in the Big 12 faced this year as seven of its 10 teams went to the NCAA Tournament.
That constant wear upon players from January through March of playing without ever a night off, facing quality teams built on quality players with quality coaches is unmatched today.
But if you are talking about 2011, I'm not sure any conference can match the Big East's Jim Boeheim, John Thompson III, Jim Calhoun, Bob Huggins, Rick Pitino, Jay Wright, Jamie Dixon, Mike Brey and Mick Cronin.
Either way, Bob Huggins has spent a whole lot of time banging heads with the biggest, fastest, smartest in the business and is right that those four incoming teams better brace for something they've never contented with before.